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Courtney Morse and her partner Stephen Yorsz are working with Mountain Burrito owner Mike Brown to open a new full-service restaurant in the 149 W. Main St. location in Valdese.

Morse said Mountain Burrito now offers a breakfast menu from 7:30-11 a.m. and will continue to offer lunch. Mountain Burrito will close after lunch. The space will transition into dinner with Major’s Supper and Social, the new restaurant that Morse and Yorsz will soon open.

To start out, Major’s will be open from 5-10 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Morse said. She said they want to offer people more options for dining, particularly on Sunday and Monday.

Mountain Burrito’s service counter sits in one corner of the restaurant. In the opposite corner, Morse and Yorsz built a bar and decorated it with with blue paint, framed pictures and dark wood.

“We built a bar inside the building, and we’re currently decorating the space so that it kind of feeds that transition throughout the day into like this nighttime restaurant, and we’ll open with a full service restaurant with a curated wine and cocktail program and a full dinner menu,� Morse said.

The restaurant will have seating for about 50, with some outdoor tables as well, she said.

Morse described the menu offerings as Asian-inspired country food. She said the menu will reflect what she and Yorsz like to eat at home.

Specifically, the menu will include yakitori and yakatan, which is grilled meat on a stick, in pork and chicken. It also will have rice croquettes, Asian-flavored salads, as well as a Caesar salad with Asian influences, a cucumber salad, a chicken katsu sandwich, a Bahn mi sandwich and a Chinese Five Spice roasted chicken, Morse said.

In addition, the menu will offer a snapper collar, which is the tender collar portion of the fish, and is popular in Japanese restaurants, Morse explained. A grilled hanger steak with Japanese-style eggs also will be available.

She said most of their options are gluten-free and there will be vegetarian options and substitutions.

Morse said by sharing the space, responsibilities and some costs with another restaurant, they will have more money to source food locally, where that might have been cost prohibitive if they tried to do it all separately.

“It gives us a lot of leeway in how we want to execute this. And it’s a great space, and in a small community I think that space can serve people in a lot of different ways.�

Morse and Yorsz are not strangers to the restaurant scene.

Yorsz owned a bar in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and worked in the liquor industry for a long time, including as a representative for Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey, Morse said.

Morse is a former co-owner of Homer’s in Morganton, and has worked in many restaurants in Morganton, she said.

Morse grew up in Valdese and recently bought a house in the same neighborhood where she was raised, about two blocks from the restaurant.

“For me, it is a very real homecoming,� Morse said. “So I’m very proud to open this restaurant in Valdese.�

Morse said they want to do a soft opening with a portion of the menu and a full bar in the coming weeks.

“We just want to make sure that we give ourselves the space and the time to execute everything well and to figure out our kitchen flow,� Morse said. “I think that’s an important part in sharing the space with the other concepts, is making a kitchen work for three different types of service in one building. So we’ll definitely take our time rolling out the menu. It might take us a month, six weeks, to have the full menu, but we’ll be in business every week.�

So how did the restaurant get its name?

“Major is Steve’s cat. Very beloved cat to me as well. And he has to be in the middle of the kitchen on a stool whenever someone’s cooking,� Morse said. “He likes to be in the middle of the action. So we really felt like he was kind of the patron saint of this restaurant, because he’s so happy to be in the middle of the making of the meals.�