It’s been 3 years, almost to the day, that our family took a chance and decided to open a restaurant. We quit our jobs, found an amazing 1700’s building, and started to build an incredible, cozy, love filled café. Our children, then 17 and 13, helped us create a place that we love, fresh local ingredients, colorful decorations, amazing staff and a happy place for many. We worked day and night, 7 days a week to prepare to open a space of delicious delights, comfortable dining and a second home for some.
Through the years we have met the most incredible people, locals, visitors, farm owners, bakers, and many we now call friends. The amazing support of our community gave us the courage to jump in feet first, and open a café to serve the people. Over the last three years we have had the best staff, people that cared about our café, and wanted to do everything to help us succeed and make this the friendliest place to stop in for a meal. We couldn’t have done it without them, the love our staff family gave to us and all of our customers is never ending, and we believe everyone that joined us for a meal felt that love.
We made plans to grow, inside and outside, we created a beautiful patio and garden to sit and enjoy the beautiful weather, the inside colorful and cozy for cold days, and the food fresh and homemade. We had big plans for the café in 2020, and well, covid hit our country and stopped us all in our tracks. We all had to adjust to the changing world, and fast. We made adjustments, created a curbside carryout menu and shuffled our way through the winter months into the spring. When the weather got nice, we opened our patio for outdoor dining, spread out all over the yard, and created a lovely space for people to get outside and have a nice meal, safely, for the first time in many months. We never closed our doors last year due to covid, the dedication to safety from our staff helped to maintain an environment of safe eating on the patio and contactless carryout, so that many could enjoy a few moments of “normal”.
Sadly, we never had customers inside the café to dine since Valentine’s Day last year. We made the best of it all, we continued to serve fresh foods, we supported local farms by purchasing their products for our menu, we were able to cook meals for healthcare workers, fire fighters, and frontline workers. We created Grab ‘N Go meals for local children when schools closed, and made hot meals to help those in need. We saw a need and we did our best to help. We wanted to support our community the way they supported us when we first opened. It’s been a long, ever changing year, and we are still not quite through it yet.
So, as we do, we have made a plan, adjusted to the change and set our hearts and minds to continuing to do our very best, filled with love and kindness. Our plan is another leap of faith for our family, another change that we feel is for the best. We have decided to close Canal House Café, and set our goals to serve delicious, fresh foods with a new food truck. We found the perfect set up, and we have the perfect location starting in April. This week will be our last weekend open in the building that gave us so much love. We will open for the weekend on Friday, February 12, and cook until the food is gone, hopefully serving up a few more amazing homemade meals, seeing a few friendly smiles and sharing our love of food and community. We hope you can stop by, to pick up carry out, share a story and an “air hug” with us one last time here at the café.
As sad as we are that this is ending, our hearts are overflowing with the kindness and love that you all have shared with us. And remember, kindness and smiles are free, share with everyone you see, this isn’t goodbye, it’s just see ya later. WE LOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!