A new restaurant is sharing a space with Curt’s Cafe South after Curt’s closes in the evening.

Heavenston Eatery opened mid-April, shortly after the opening of Curt’s South, 1813 Dempster St., said Susan Trieschmann, Curt’s executive director.

Husband and wife restaurateurs Malaika Marion and Adam Lebin opened Heavenston after their former restaurant, The Brown Sack in Logan Square, closed last October after more than eight years of service. Heavenston offers a varied menu of soups and sandwiches, similar to some of The Brown Sack’s offerings.

Curt’s Cafe, which specializes in food industry job training, opened its second location, Curt’s South, at the end of March. Curt’s South focuses on training at-risk young women and teenage mothers.

Trieshmann said she had the idea to lease Curt’s South’s space as an easy way to generate revenue for the program.

“One of my ideas was to rent the space out at night to people who wanted to start a restaurant but didn’t want to put half a million dollars into a buildout,” Trieshmann said. “The idea was to build revenue without having to run a program all day and all night.”

Trieshmann said Marion and Lebin have proved a great addition to the Curt’s South team, bringing passion for the food industry and compassion for Curt’s trainees to the table. Two Curt’s South graduates currently work at Heavenston Eatery, where they continue to receive some restaurant training, she added.

“Adam and Malaika are amazing with the students,” Trieshmann said. “They’re still training them at night even though they’re not part of our formal training program. … They genuinely have embraced the students the way that our managers (at Curt’s) do, and most people don’t do that.”

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