Lunch at Luda’s: North End hotspot has welcomed regulars for 30 years

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This article was published 07/10/2017 (3206 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Oct. 22, Little Brown Jug, at 335 William Ave., will host the inaugural World Borscht Championships, an event supporting Siloam Mission.

We’re not sure what criteria judges will use to select a victor, but if the distance travelled for a bowl of borscht is a determining factor, the offerings at Luda’s Deli, a North End breakfast and lunch nook celebrating its 30th year in operation, would be tough to, err, beet.

“I can’t even tell you how many times a person who used to live (in Winnipeg) has told me they just got off a plane, and the first thing they did was drive here for some borscht, before they even went to visit their family or anything,” says Tracy Konopada, who runs the folksy, 43-seat dining spot at 410 Aberdeen Ave., with her daughter Kristi Konopada.

“Just last week a lady who works up north dropped by on her way to the airport, to pick up a few containers (of borscht) to take back with her. Honest to God, people have been so wonderful to us through the years I don’t even know where to begin.”

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Konopada grew up on Burrows Avenue. An only child, she taught herself to cook potato pancakes at the tender age of 8, primarily so she could head outside to play when her mother, a single parent, returned home from her job at the Coca-Cola plant on Inkster Boulevard.

“Whenever I waited for my mom to come home and start supper, she’d always get me to help set the table and stuff. But if I had something ready when she walked through the door, I was able to spend a few hours with my friends, before bedtime,” Konopada says with a wink.

Before he died of cancer in 1992, Konopada’s father, Eddie Koranicki, ran Eddie’s Place, a diner/billiards hall at 669 Selkirk Ave. Konopada started washing dishes for her dad when she was in Grade 7 at Aberdeen Junior High School, and was still pulling shifts at Eddie’s in 1987, when her husband Greg Konopada, whom she met 9 years earlier at a “good, old-fashioned North End social,” purchased a mothballed arcade at the corner of Salter Street and Aberdeen Avenue together with his sister, which they gutted and reopened as Luda’s Deli.

Two weeks after the restaurant welcomed its first customers, however, Konopada’s sister-in-law walked into Eddie’s Place, handed the keys to Luda’s over to Konopada and said, “Here, you go do it instead.” (Luda, from the Ukrainian nash lyudy, means “our people,” and yes, Konopada and her daughter wish they had a nickel for every time a person has asked, “Which one of you two is Luda?”)

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For three decades, Konopada, who describes her fare as “nothing fancy but everything tasty,” has made a point of greeting customers by their given name, as much as possible. Early on, people were forever saying, “What’s new Tracy?” or “How are you Tracy?” when they plopped themselves down in their preferred booth, so she began doing mental exercises to remember regulars’ names, in return. (As if on cue, a fellow named Roger who apparently hadn’t been by for lunch in five years interrupts our interview to give Konopada a peck on the cheek, on his way out the door. After Konopada says, “I hope we see you again, Roger,” he replies, “I hope so, too; I’m not that old.”)

That personal touch is reflected on the deli’s menu, which features such choices as the Andrew Clubhouse, the Terry Sandwich and Wally-size french fries. Or, if you prefer, Wally-size fries with gravy.

“I think that all started with a retired policeman named Ron who always wanted me to make him an omelette, but with everything in it,” Konopada says. “Pretty soon, people were saying, ‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ so we had to come up with a name for it.”

After overhearing our conversation from an adjacent table, Robert Hand, who guesses he’s been noshing at Luda’s on a near-weekly basis for 28 years, wants it stated for the record he’s the only person with two selections named in his honour — the Robert Sandwich and the Robbie Burger, the latter of which is described on the menu as “ground beef patty, double cheese, lettuce, tomato, raw onion, mayo, mild mustard; Served uncut.” (“I wish,” he says, when asked if the Konopadas pay him royalties, every time a customer orders one of “his” concoctions.)

Konopada, a grandmother of three, acknowledges a 30-year-run in an industry where restaurants seemingly open and close every week is an achievement to be proud of. But it’s not as if there haven’t been challenges along the way. In 1988, 12 months after she took charge, Konopada ended up in hospital for six weeks with a head injury after falling from a sprinting horse that hadn’t been saddled properly. One of her legs is still numb from the hip down, because of that tumble, she says.

In April 1992, she didn’t even want to leave the house, never mind prepare bacon and eggs or Reuben sandwiches, after her father and husband died within 11 days of one another. A few years later, she was diagnosed with cancer, which kept her away from the deli for close to six months while she underwent treatment.

“My mom is a warrior, there’s no other way to put it,” says Kristi, lightly pinching her mother on the shoulder. “Whenever I see our doctor, he always says, ‘Your mom’s a miracle, you know that, right?’ because of just how sick she was. During that period, so many people came here not necessarily to eat, but just to tell me they were praying for her to pull through.”

The Konopadas don’t have anything special planned for their milestone, 30th anniversary, though Kristi has been toying with the idea of hosting a social, just so she and her mother would have a chance to sit down and chat with their longtime customers and suppliers for longer than three minutes at a time.

“That’s one of the things I do wish I could do more often,” Konopada says. “So many people come into the deli and say, ‘Tracy, pull up a chair and sit with us for a while,’ but because it’s usually so go, go, go in here, it’s impossible to oblige everybody.”

“What my mom really needs to do is let me do all the cooking and retire. Not completely, but just a little bit,” Kristi pipes in. “Then she’d have all the time in the world to talk with people about their kids or grandkids or whatever. After 30 years, I think she deserves that.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca