Feast for the eyes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2017 (3306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WEST ST. PAUL — McDonald’s Canada made headlines in late January when it announced as of Feb. 21, 1,100 of its 1,450 Canadian outlets would begin serving breakfast all day, every day.

One week later, A&W Canada followed suit, proclaiming if customers were in the mood for pancakes or bacon and eggs after 11 a.m., that would no longer be a problem.

Big whoop, thought Janet Bauer, owner of the Red Eye Diner, a 1950s-style eatery at 3132 Main St. that, since the day it opened as the Eye Opener Diner in 2001, has offered its army of regulars all-day breakfasts.

“For some people, it’s like the happiest day of their lives when they come here at one in the afternoon and find out they can still order poached eggs on toast,” Bauer says, seated in a red vinyl booth steps away from a retro lunch counter outfitted with five chrome stools she picked up from the long-mothballed Dutch Maid ice cream parlour on Osborne Street.

“Since the beginning, people have told me I wouldn’t be able to make a living serving breakfast (all day) and that I’d be doing nothing but counting my pennies and nickels. But there’s definitely money to be made if you know what you’re doing.”

 

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In the summer of 1993, Bauer was enjoying a night out with friends at the Rolling Stone Cabaret, which used to be situated almost directly across the street from the late, great Rorie Street Marble Club, in the Exchange District.

At around 10:30 p.m., Fred Bauer, a bricklayer by trade, spotted her from across the room, at which point he “bulldozed everybody out of his way,” Bauer says, as he marched across the dance floor to introduce himself to his future wife.

The Bauers, who tied the knot in 1997, lived in a cosy, 900-square-foot home at 3136 Main St., in West St. Paul. When their next-door neighbour put his house up for sale in 1998, they bought it with the intention of using the sizable backyard for a swimming pool. They didn’t have any immediate plans for the dwelling itself, but after the roof caved in days after they took possession, Fred razed what was left of the structure.

A year later, Fred floated the idea of building a restaurant on the vacant site. Bauer breaks into a grin when she is asked why her husband, who died of cancer in 2015, broached the topic in the first place.

“I think he thought it was high time I got a job,” she says, tossing her head back in laughter.

Bauer may have had plenty of experience in the service industry — before meeting “Fabulous Freddie,” she toiled at a number of restaurants in Winnipeg, including Paparazzi and the Settebello Cafe — but that didn’t mean she was prepared for opening day, she admits.

Guessing business would be slow for at least the first few months, she assured her husband she could handle everything — cooking, waiting on tables, taking payments — on her own. She realized she was in for it, however, when she unlocked the front door and was greeted by a queue of people, all of whom were anxious to give her homey, 49-seat locale a shot.

“It was so busy that at some point, I yelled out the door at Fred — who was fooling around in the backyard with his forklift — to come inside and start washing dishes,” Bauer says.

“I had to close early because I was running out of food. At around 1 (p.m.), I was like, ‘Fred, shut the (bad word) door; I can’t take it anymore.’”

Because Bauer lived next door to her place of work, it wasn’t uncommon for her to roll out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and spot a couple of police cars parked in her driveway, she recalls. In the “old days,” she used to open at 5 a.m., but that wasn’t early enough for police officers who would knock on her door and ask if she’d mind letting them inside the restaurant so they could have a cigarette and a cup of coffee.

 

‘My philosophy has always been if you put out good stuff and try to be good people, customers will find you, regardless of what your sign says’

–Janet Bauer

For health reasons, Bauer sold the restaurant in 2009. She and her husband bought a plot of land in Matlock, where they built what they thought was going to be their retirement home. Their dream started to unravel in 2012, however, when they discovered the diner, which they still held the mortgage on, was about to go belly-up, leaving a trail of unpaid bills in its wake. (How different were the offerings under the new regime? In a 2003 review, former Winnipeg Free Press restaurant critic Marion Warhaft raved about Bauer’s fare, in particular, her house-cured ham and chicken-and-asparagus club sandwiches. Her tone changed when she revisited the Eye Opener seven years later, after which she wrote “meat loaf was… cloaked in a mysterious gravy,” “near-inedible over-salted soup” and “service was inexplicably slow and unsmiling throughout.” Ouch!)

“It was not a good situation. Basically, we lost so much money on the deal, we had no choice but to start all over again,” says Bauer, who, after initially chalking her poor health up to stress, was finally told she had a treatable thyroid condition.

“The nice thing about it was it didn’t take long for people to figure out we were back, and soon enough, they were dropping by to say hi, give us a hug and have a bite to eat.”

“Janet always says we are what we eat and that she would never serve food she wouldn’t eat herself,” says Sarah Bauer, who has helped her stepmother run the Red Eye since it reopened on March 3, 2014, after being shuttered for 12 months.

“For restaurants, there’s no big prize at the end for doing things like making your own jam or only using free-range organic eggs. You have to love it, (and) Janet has always loved it, which is reflected in the produce she buys and the food she serves.”

Sarah, a business student at the University of Winnipeg, says one of the benefits of working at the restaurant is getting a chance to talk with regular customers who got to know her late father, from the days when he worked the cash register.

“You mean pretended to work the cash register,” Janet interrupts with a chuckle.

“I swear, I’d be in the kitchen while he was having these super-long-winded conversations with people trying to pay their bills, and I’d be like, ‘Fred, you have a long lineup, shut up and move it.’ But the funny thing was, nobody ever seemed to care if it took them 20 minutes to pay. They all loved him.”

“He was this great big presence that people couldn’t help but love,” Sarah adds, noting the restaurant’s Armchair Quarterback breakfast special — three eggs, bacon, sausage, kubasa, ham, hashbrowns and toast — is a tribute to her dad, who was a huge football fan.

“Janet and Dad’s antics were beloved by their customers, and they remember him fondly.”

Janet laughs again when she is asked about the sign in her parking lot, which still reads Eye Opener Diner.

“We had to change the name when we reopened for legal reasons, but the truth of the matter is I’m cheap, and I was just getting back on my feet, so I couldn’t afford a new (sign),” she explains.

“I hear it all the time, how your sign is everything and you can’t run a business this way. We’ll get around to changing it eventually, don’t worry, but my philosophy has always been if you put out good stuff and try to be good people, customers will find you, regardless of what your sign says.”

The Red Eye Diner is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca