Cedar Rapids clock-themed Tic Toc restaurant reopens this month

Tic Toc, the clock-themed neighborhood restaurant in Cedar Rapids, will be reopening. Located at 600 17th St. NE, the restaurant is under new ownership and has undergone a major remodel.

Tic Toc will officially open March 23, according to Kory Nanke, who along with his wife, Candy, and brother Kevin, own the restaurant under KN Properties 5 LLC. They also own Kickstand, Midtown Station, Boston Fish and the Red Frog.

Nanke said the Tic Toc actually will be opened with a very limited food menu this Saturday and St. Patrick's Day to capture revelers.

While the Bar2Bar bar crawl in the Irish district officially has been canceled due to the pandemic, talk on social media suggests people still will be participating this weekend out of tradition.

'We caught wind of it on social media, too, which is why we're opening. Honestly, I'm hoping not a lot of people show up,” Nanke said.

They just got approval from the health department yesterday, allowing them to start moving food into the building, and details are still being worked out.

The menu is being created by Rob Bly and his sons Jerrad and Ryne Bly, who created the menu at Midtown Station, Nanke said. Some Tic Toc favorites will remain, including the hand-breaded mozzarella logs. Space also has been leased from the city to open a patio.

Reopening rumors on social media in the past couple of days garnered a lot of cheers from people who have fond memories of Tic Toc and its menu.

'So excited to hear it's coming back to life! It's been so crazy to watch this area slowly coming back to life,” said one commenter who lives in the neighborhood.

Nanke agrees.

'I've always loved the building and the neighborhood. It has good parking, which is hard to find in that area, so when it came up for auction four years ago, we bought it,” he said.

He hopes the remodeled restaurant helps. Improvements Mount Mercy University and Coe College have made in the area certainly made a difference in the neighborhood, he said.

He and his partners had hoped to reopen last fall, but with the pandemic it didn't make sense, Nanke said, adding that business is improving at his other restaurants as people start to venture out again.

Tic Toc will be open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to midnight most days, closing later on the weekend.

Send restaurant news to features@thegazette.com