Fried and true

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2012 (5210 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Karen Ashley ever decides to change the sign at her West Broadway restaurant, she might want to steal a page from the Golden Arches.As in, “Wanabees Diner: Over 1,000,000 eggs served.”

“I was doing the math the other day. If I multiply the number of eggs I go through in a week by the number of weeks I’ve been open, I figure I must have cracked my millionth egg sometime last summer,” says Ashley with a hint of pride.

More impressive: for the last 15 years, the married mother of two has been the chief egg-cracker, cook and bottle washer at the 31-seat nook, located at 639 Broadway.

“I had a partner for the first three years but since she left, it’s been all me, pretty much,” says Ashley, who opened Wanabees (“We were just a couple of 22-year-old wannabes — what else were we going to call it?”) in October 1993.

“I’m pretty fast but everybody around here knows better than to complain if their food is taking a minute or two longer to come out,” Ashley says.”They get that I’m alone — that I’m the one taking their orders, cooking their food, cleaning their tables and kicking their asses out the door when they’re done.” (Ahem. Cheque, please.)

 

We’ve only just begun

ASHLEY grew up in East Kildonan. After graduating from high school, she bid adieu to friends, family and a job at Mr. Steak and moved to Whistler, B.C. She spent three years there, splitting her time between the slopes and a bartending position that paid her “tons of money.”

Enough money so that when Ashley returned to Winnipeg, she immediately began shopping around for a restaurant to call her own. Not everybody was in a congratulatory mood, however, when she and a friend bought Peter’s Coffee Shop, a Chinese food joint that came complete with “no business and 12 pounds of grease on the grill.”

“My parents thought we were nuts coming down here; you have to remember that 19 years ago, Broadway and Langside wasn’t exactly considered a good part of town,” Ashley says. “Even my health inspector said that I was going to come out of work one day and find my car with no tires on it.

“So from the get-go, my goal has been to prove everyone wrong.”

 

We are family

ONCE upon a time, Wanabees Diner was open from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Saturday. Then Ashley had her first child, Keenan, and started closing an hour earlier. Then she had a daughter, Kiera, and cut the hours back again, to 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Some of my customers are worried that if we have any more kids, we won’t be open at all.”

 

Taking care of business

BACHMAN-TURNER Overdrive bassist Fred Turner and CBC-Radio personality Larry Updike both chow down at Wanabees on a routine basis. But Ashley concedes she’s at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to star-gazing.

“I’m so busy I barely have time to look up. People could tell me that so-and-so is here and to be honest, I wouldn’t even notice.”

Ashley’s heart is set on feeding one specific group of celebs, mind you. “I definitely want to get the Jets boys in here,” she says, mentioning that she’s chummy with Craig Heisinger, the team’s assistant general manager. “I’ve sent ‘Zinger’ a few emails, telling him that what his guys need is some good bacon ‘n eggs.”

Everyday people

ASHLEY doesn’t need a clock to know what time of day it is; all she has to do is look around the room and see who has or hasn’t shown up yet.

“You can set your watch by most of ’em, which is nice because everyone has gotten to know each other. It seems like there’s always two or three conversations going back and forth between tables.”

Every once in a while somebody who has never been to Wanabees will come in for breakfast or lunch and take the first available seat. Not so fast, says Ashley.

“When that happens I usually warn the person by saying, ‘You might want to change spots ’cause the person who normally sits there will be here any minute. And if you’re in his seat when he gets here, all he’s going to do is stand over your shoulder and make you feel uncomfortable.'”

 

I fought the law

A COUPLE of months before Wanabee’s opened for business, Ashley attended a country music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minn. There she bumped into a Winnipeg police officer who asked her what she did for a living. Ashley told him she was a budding restaurateur. He asked her what the name of her place was going to be.

“Two weeks after we opened, he walked through the door. Ever since then this place has been popular with police,” Ashley says.

Perhaps somebody should have mentioned that to a fellow who used to frequent Wanabees uh, five to 10 years ago.

“He was a quiet guy, as short as he was wide, with grey hair. Never said a word, just sat here every morning, minding his own business and eating his breakfast,” Ashley says. “One day four cops walked in, took one look and said, ‘You’re under arrest.’ It turned out he was a major bank robber.”

(Question: did said crook settle his tab before he was hauled off to the hoosegow? “Oh yeah, the officers told him to pay up. I can’t remember if he left a tip, though.”)

 

It’s raining men

THE overwhelming majority of Wanabees’ customers are male, Ashley says.

“And that’s fine by me — I like men. I like women, too, but men are easy. And this is a no-nonsense kind of place; if you’re looking for a croissant or tea with lemon and honey, you’re in the wrong spot.”

Although the owner knows most of her clientele by their given names, she rarely refers to “Jerry” or “Joe” when she’s talking about something amusing that happened at work.

“Instead of saying ‘Dan did this,’ I’ll call him ‘kubasa and eggs-over-easy,'” Ashley says.

“I may not always remember your name but if I like you, I will remember your order.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca