Emma’s Back Porch closing
The pandemic that shuttered games has now claimed an old friend on the Burlington waterfront
Steve Milton takes a look back:
Cut out my heart and serve it with the buck-a-bones.
Except, there will be no more rib specials. No more trough feeding on discount chicken wings. No more bell ringing after a tip.
No more “John, at the bar, he’s a friend of mine.” Which he really was. Of mine and hundreds of others, Burlington residents and visitors alike. Emma’s closing? This pandemic takes no prisoners.
To infrequent but appreciative diners, many of them family groups, the two restaurant/bars located in the old Estaminet Hotel were known as Emma’s Back Porch and The Water Street Cooker. But to regulars and long-timers — and they were a cross-generational legion — it was only “Emma’s” and “upstairs.”
Emma’s, a downtown Burlington landmark located on a prime lakeside site about a half-kilometre east of Spencer Smith Park, announced Tuesday on Facebook that it is closing its doors after 30 years. There had been restaurants there going all the way back to 1919. The announcement said “circumstances have prevailed and we cannot move forward.” The pandemic was cited when the company shut down takeout operations earlier.
This was my local, my home for about seven hours a week, even long after I’d moved out of Burlington and into Toronto to be closer to the Jays/Leafs/Raptors for The Spectator, and then back into Hamilton.
Emma’s was not a sports bar, but part of it functioned that way: As a screening room for games, the nightly and the once-in-a-lifetime. It sponsored betting pools, trips to NFL games, and a must-attend annual fundraising golf tournament. Rec league teams cooled off in Emma’s after their own games. You would frequently bump into Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Burlington Cougars, national-class figure skaters, NHLers such as Bob Boughner and the late Gaye Stewart. There were commemorative sweaters and jerseys adorning the walls of one of the four distinct rooms: Longtime barkeep “Willie” was a former OHL and pro goalie; John, who ran Boston Marathons and now surfs, worked the bar before I became a Wednesday-and-Friday dinner-hour guy and was still its friendly lightning rod this quarter-century later; Craig, the owner, is a knowledgeable and opinionated student of sport. As The Estaminet, it had hosted the Burlington Sports Hall of Fame Dinner. The Cedar Springs Ski Club reconvened there after a full day on the slopes. Countless sports organizations held executive meetings over wings and beer.
But you could also go there regularly and not be fully aware of any of that because sports didn’t permeate the place. Emma’s had an uncanny equilibrium and that was one of its bedrock beauties, along with its sorta-planned but mostly organic cottage atmosphere, its lack of pretension, robust staff and lake’s edge location. And, oh, the ode to wood. Everywhere.
Emma’s seamlessly balanced the social against the sporting. The greying late-afternoon regulars against the Wednesday night and weekend much-younger set. You could take your 80-year-old parents in for a quiet anniversary dinner the day after you had stumbled out with a drinking buddy. Families grazed on bounteous beef dips while a singles club held its weekly meet-and-greet in a side room. And where else could you lounge in a Muskoka chair on a patio, gazing across the lake and watch lake freighters glide by.
My daughter recalls that some frenetic bars were more popular in bursts at times for the 18-to-30’s of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but none had Emma’s staying power. Clubs were about loud music and dancing. Emma’s offered live bands but not too often, and the recorded music wasn’t overwhelming so, she says, even teens would end up in real conversations.
It felt welcoming and celebratory. And the indoor-outdoor mobility was unparalleled.
She reminded me of the times I’d come out later than usual from the Wednesday cheap wings dinner hour and run into her — yes probably a few months underage — waiting in line with her friends.
“And that,” she says wistfully, “is all you need to know about Emma’s.”
She’s right, our family was a microcosm of that Emma’s balance. She loved the comfort and respectful staff, my son and I ate there and he even worked briefly in the kitchen. But I was also an older single and appreciated that being even well over 30 at Emma’s was not a social crime. Older people discovered new and permanent friends. Some found spouses.
My closest friends, guys like Bosco, Thumb and Mize — nobody in my lifelong inner circle has a real name — would meet me there a couple of times a year, most memorably at the legendary customer appreciation nights. We met even after none of us lived in Burlington. Most of them, in fact, never had lived there, but it was one of our public squares, our community well.
I called them Tuesday and after the obligatory “Are you #@$#% serious?” they landed on the same spot as me. Emma’s had been a gift. We already missed its old-slippers reliability as a gathering place. It out-Muskoka-ed Muskoka. We’d find any excuse to gather there.
“It was,” one sighed, “just that kind of place.”