Hidden Manna restaurant serving Creole treats

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Photos by Melanie L. Brown with Steed Media


What are your names?


Glenis: My name is Glenis Harvey.

Mark: I’m Mark Harvey and we’re the owners of Hidden Manna.


How did this restaurant get started?

Mark: We bought the building four years ago. It took us two years to rehab the restaurant. We weren’t going to run a restaurant at first. We were just going to lease the space out. We decided since we both basically retired to do it.

What did you both retire from?

Mark: CTA [Chicago Transit Authority]

Glenis: He was a mechanic and I was an electrical engineer for CTA.

Is that where you guys met?

Mark and Glenis: Yes

Why did you decide to open this restaurant?

Glenis: It was not our choosing. We have a common joke between us that if anybody decides to open up a restaurant they need to have their head checked. Actually we love this space and as we were working in this space we had a specific vision for this place. However the Lord has his own plans and we just took his lead. He told us to open a restaurant and s we’re here. We were going to focus on coffees and teas at first but as we were working on it people were saying “Ok that’s fine, you’re going to have coffees and teas but what kind of food are you going to serve?” We just kind of put a menu together and the customers have actually told us what they wanted. We didn’t actually dictate and say we wanted a specific thing, it just so happen to be that we were asking input of the customers and this is what they wanted. My family is from New Orleans and so some of the recipes are crafted around family recipes and put in input from the customers as well as the chef.

Mark: Everything is made from scratch, made fresh. We make nothing really beforehand except for the soup. It takes us a little longer at times to get the food out but we focus on the quality.

Whose the ultimate chef between the two of you?

Mark: Neither one of us. We have a professional chef.

Glenis: We have a chef but I like to cook. He thinks I don’t like to cook but I really like to cook. I like playing with food a little more than to his liking. I like different things ans trying things out. I’ll try different recipes and have the chef try them out and we’ll adapt them for here. I had a few appetizers that we wound up doing that way.

What’s your favorite meal from the actual menu? What’s typically your customer’s favorite?

Mark: Well our number one meal is the shrimp and grits, that’s since we’ve opened. We’ve done that dish more than anything else. My favorite dish is the New Orleans pasta.

Glenis: My favorite dish is the seafood omelette. It has shrimp with lump crab meat, that’s my favorite. The second favorite will be the gumbo. The gumbo is my grandma’s recipe we’ve adapted for here. it’s pretty authentic for being in Chicago. It has some things you wouldn’t normally see in a restaurant gumbo. We have a lot of people that come in who are originally from New Orleans and they say everything that we have that is Creole based is like from originally New Orleans.

What ingredient makes your gumbo special?

Mark: The roux.

Glenis: The roux is what really makes it important for a good gumbo. Some odd things that you would not find in a gumbo is chicken gizzards. We have chicken gizzards in our gumbo, whole crab clusters as well as shrimp and have chicken parts in there as well so that makes an authentic gumbo. Gumbo was usually a scrap dish, it wasn’t really a top of the line meal. It was something that they put the leftovers together in a pot so it’s a little spicy and like I said ours is really authentic.

Why this location?

Mark: Since we were doing real estate we happen to find this property vacant. It was an Italian restaurant for a number of years, like 7 years. The building with the restaurant portion was closed for 7 years before we got rolling. Like she said our intentions was not really to run a restaurant but we liked the property, that’s how we ended up here.

Do you live in Matteson?

Glenis: We live right across the street in Olympia Fields. It was really close, it’s five minutes a way from home. I think that was the biggest thing.

Mark: That was really the biggest thing.

Glenis: That was a big benefit. The humorous thing about it is it sat vacant for about 7 years and during that 7 years a few people tried to purchase the building and just couldn’t for different reasons. When we came alone everything just kind of fell in place. We have rehabbed buildings for fun in the past and this was just our next project. We actually like the building and the atmosphere.

Mark: We did all of the work ourselves

Glenis: We did all the work ourselves. We did as well as our sons. We reused as much as we could. The floors, the tile work, my husband rebuilt the bar. Everything has our touch on it in different ways, We like working with our hands. We think we make it for a homely atmosphere.

Mark: Yes

How do you market your Hidden Manna restaurant? How has business been going?

Mark: We opened the doors and I was like where all the people at and she was like “Well baby we didn’t do any advertising.” We started pushing focus on every door delivery service marketing utilized that and it’ brought some people in for us. The majority has been word of mouth. We’ve done a little bit magazines, couple ads.

Glenis: We’ve done tv for Chicago’s Best. It’s really difficult trying to figure out your best avenue for advertising or marketing.

Mark: You don’t know the return.

Glenis: You don’t know what the return on investment is and people can make promises but I think the best thing that has worked for us is the tie between word of mouth and Facebook. We have a lot of customers that come in post things on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. People see that and they love it so we get a lot of referrals that way.

Where did you get the funding to open up the restaurant?

Glenis: We got a small loan from Accion, when we originally first started but everything else has been out pocket.

Any customers you had that stood out?

Mark: We have a couple of regulars.

Glenis: We have a lot regulars and they bring people with them every time they come. What has really been beneficial for us is where we’re located which is Rich Township. Even though we’re located in Matteson we have other townships that have really good. Park Forest and University Park have been really good. They have all stepped up and referred people to us. They come in themselves.

Mark: The best experience I would say was when Chicago’s Best came out that was really a boost for getting the word out. We opened April 8, 2014, that aired on

Glenis: March in 2015

Do you all want to expand?

Glenis: We’ve been asked if we want to expand, if we want to move. I think we would like to have different locations but to say that we like to get to the point where we could hire managers so we couldn’t have to be here 6 days a week and we can just take a vacation every now and then.

When are you all open?

Glenis: We’re open Monday thru Thursday from 9am to 3pm and on Fridays and Saturdays 9am to 10pm.

Mark: We cook dinner on Fridays and Saturdays. We do live entertainment on the weekends sometimes, it’s a soloist, sometimes it’s a three piece. It kind of depends, but you can check all that out to see who perform on our website weekly, hiddenmannacafe.com.

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