The Lumpia Queen served its first lunch inside Stratacache Tower at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, marking the Filipino food truck's leap into a full-time storefront at 40 N. Main St. in downtown Dayton. Owners Catherine and Damon Roberts opened the doors at the corner of Second and Jefferson streets with a 10 a.m. ribbon cutting, and the first 50 customers walked away with a golden lumpia ticket good for a free three-piece order of lumpia on their next visit with a $10 purchase.
The new restaurant sits in the ground-floor corner space once occupied by Carmen's Deli & Bistro, a decade-old downtown fixture that closed on April 28, 2023, after a steep drop in daytime office workers during and after the pandemic, according to WHIO TV. As reported by Dayton Daily News, the menu leans on Filipino staples like lumpia, pancit and adobo, with the adobo carrying what staff writer Russell Florence Jr. described as a smoky taste and soul-food essence. Calamansi, a citrus fruit, is used to brighten the flavor of the noodles.
From Home Kitchen to Skyscraper Storefront
The business traces back to a catering operation, according to The Lumpia Queen's own account. The food truck launched six years ago and became a familiar presence at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, per the Dayton Daily News report. The company still runs a fixed food facility at the base's Building 1250 on Birch Street alongside the mobile truck, per the Lumpia Queen's website.
Before landing its own address, the business was one of the founding vendors when W. Social Tap & Table opened in July 2022 as Dayton's first-ever food hall, a $2.1 million venture at 1100 W. Third St. in the Wright Dunbar District, according to the Downtown Dayton Partnership. Damon Roberts said the couple hopes the support built through the food truck and the food hall will carry momentum into the new storefront, and that the new space will help Catherine Roberts expand beyond her classic dishes into other Filipino food, according to Dayton Daily News.
New Menu Items Beyond the Food Truck Classics
The downtown menu broadens well past the truck's staples, adding halo-halo, a layered Filipino shaved-ice dessert, along with specialty bowls, burgers and Filipino barbecue, per a Facebook announcement from The Lumpia Queen. The restaurant also plans to rotate select dishes weekly or monthly and expects to serve sweet, savory and spicy options alongside American-style dishes, according to Dayton Daily News. Damon Roberts said the goal is for customers to enjoy both the food and a tropical Filipino atmosphere, per the same report.
The Lumpia Queen will operate 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and stay closed Sundays. Catherine and Damon Roberts have said the restaurant brings their Filipino heritage to downtown Dayton, according to the Dayton Daily News account.
A Tower With a Complicated Ground Floor
Stratacache Tower itself is a 30-story, 407-foot steel-and-glass high-rise built in 1970 that remains the tallest building in Dayton and the anchor of the city's Central Business District, according to CommercialCafe. Digital signage firm STRATACACHE bought the tower in 2019 to serve as its international headquarters, renaming what was formerly known as Kettering Tower. The ground-floor corner space had also once been slated to house Troni's Pizza alongside Carmen's Deli before the recent commercial turnaround, according to the Downtown Dayton Partnership.
Office tenants inside the tower have shown renewed commitment in recent years. Law firm Taft Dayton signed a 15-year lease extension in June 2021 to renovate and occupy the tower's 16th and 17th floors, a move aimed at retaining corporate office workers downtown, according to Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP. That kind of steady weekday presence factors into the daytime lunch crowd that ground-floor restaurants like The Lumpia Queen depend on.
Part of a Broader Downtown Food Scene Shift
The Lumpia Queen's opening lands amid a wider 2026 expansion wave among downtown Dayton eateries, which includes Phase II development at the 6888 Kitchen Incubator in the Dayton Arcade and new storefronts for former food trucks such as Road Runner Mobile Espresso Bar, per the Downtown Dayton Partnership. Whether daytime office traffic, combined with new menu additions like halo-halo and burgers, will be enough to sustain full-service storefront hours downtown remains an open question for the business as it settles into its new home at the base of Dayton's tallest tower.
