SAVOURING MEMORIES
As the city weighs a proposal by the owners of Kristy’s on Richmond Road to tear down the eatery and build condo towers in its place, loyal patrons like Abby Yuill, and her grandmother, Mary Yuill, reflect on the restaurant’s past and its future.
Although some of the details are lost to time, Abby Yuill can tell you the exact date and occasion of her first visit to Kristy’s Restaurant on Richmond Road. It was Feb. 7, 1998 when she and her mother, Janet Yuill, along with a handful of other moms and babies, gathered in the restaurant’s bright solarium to celebrate Abby’s first birthday, a party so new and exciting that Abby had cake icing under her fingernails before the first guests had even arrived.
In the intervening years, until Janet died of ovarian cancer last Oct. 6 at 64, Kristy’s became their special place. “We would sit in the booths and have coffee after coffee, and talk about conspiracy theories or whatever problem we had, or our dreams and what we wanted to do and how we would get there. Of course, we could do that at home, too, but when we were here, it was like getting down to business.
“And after a chemo treatment or something like that, we would come here for breakfast. It’s friendly — the staff is great — and we knew what we were getting. And the atmosphere … .”
“It’s home-ish,” interrupts Abby’s grandmother, Mary. “And the food is good.”
The Yuills are among the family restaurant’s longtime customers who in the coming years may be left in the lurch, at least temporarily, if the restaurant is torn down to make way for a 24-storey condominium tower — with a new Kristy’s on the ground level. The city’s planning committee is expected to recommend approval of the project on Tuesday, which would send the plan to council on Aug. 23. The time frame for construction isn’t known, although restaurant staff members were told that the shovels are likely three or four years away.
Built, according to one staff member, in 1946, the restaurant was a 24-hour Fuller’s until the mid-1970s, when it was bought and renamed Kristy’s. Its current owner, Walter Boyce, bought the establishment about five years later.
The restaurant’s Facebook page indicates that the plan has been brewing for some time, and that it makes sense to time it to coincide with the LRT construction that will tear up Richmond Road.
“Kristy’s coming down will be a very emotional thing for me,” adds Abby. “I’m so happy to hear that it’s coming back, but this particular Kristy’s has always been special. I have really fond memories of my mom here. And now it’s become the place where my grandmother and I come. It’s kind of like a memorial spot.”
Abby points to the Tiffany lamps that dot the wood-panelled lounge. “I need the lamps. If they keep those it’ll still feel like a Kristy’s of some sort. The lamps and the sun room.”
Other customers on a recent visit echoed Abby and Mary’s thoughts about the current Kristy’s and its future incarnation.
“It reminds me of a small-town restaurant,” says software consultant Shawn Jackson Dyck, who’s been a regular at Kristy’s since moving to an office in the same west-end neighbourhood three years ago.
“I grew up in a small town — I’m an old farm boy from Morden, Manitoba — and this place reminds me of home in that way. And the staff are the same; very homey. I’d say I come here for lunch a couple times a week, and I like the smalltown feel.
“They’ll obviously give it a facelift, so we’ll see what they change it into. But I think people like that feel, so maybe they’ll keep it rustic, which would be cool. The older people would like it, because it’s like back when the days were simple, when they were young, and they want to remember when they were young.”