Corner Cafe gets a new owner (11/21/07)

A rural Portland woman is cooking up plans to return to work at a Portland restaurant where she began waitressing at the age of 17.

Kathy Davidson, now 59, was a waitress at the former Beals Lunch, 301 N. Meridian Street, Portland.

But she has plans to mix things up a bit. Instead of waiting tables, Kathy is the new owner of the former Corner Café and Laramie Lunch (its most recent names) and is restoring it to look the way it did when she first began serving burgers and fries at Beals in the mid 1960's.

"He was a sweet old man. I thought the world of him." Kathy said of her old boss Delbert Beals.

"I've been kicked around restaurants all my life" Kathy noted and recently finished working two years as a waitress at Jinny's Café in Bryant.

Work on the café has included roof repairs, and tearing up the concrete floor to replace drains and repair gas lines.

The retro look for the diner will include a jukebox "Right there where it belongs" Kathy said, pointing to the spot where the jukebox was at Beals. The floors will be returned to black and white tiles, and there will be a counter with stools. Kathy wants to put the old coat rack back up where it belongs and thinks she knows where she can find one. She is trying to remember what sat in the front corner and plans to put a replica in its place.

The new menu at the Koffee Kup (for Kathy Kay) Diner will include "Nothing but home cooked food, cooked grandma style." There will be pork chops, meatloaf, homemade pies and bread and each day will feature a daily special. She plans to include mostly farm raised meat.

The Koffee Kup Diner doors will open to the public as soon as the roof is completed. Kathy says two of her daughters who live locally, Linda Heitkamp and Janet Butcher, plan to help out. The hours will be Monday through Saturday from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.[[In-content Ad]]