Readers recall decades of food and family at dearly departed eateries

Betsy Haynes spent her career with the National Park Service, specifically the Booker T. Washington National Monument. Her work took her to lots of places and led her to lots of breakfasts.

None was as good as the ones she ate at The Roanoker.

“You know what I found out? Most places serve biscuits with gravy on purpose” because the biscuits don’t stand on their own, Haynes said.

“Their biscuits were like, you just can’t find them anywhere else, sorry,” she added. “They had good waffles and just good home-style Virginia breakfast, you know.”

The decades-long regional dining icon closed three years ago, but its name came up frequently this month in response to a Cardinal News post on Facebook. News that two other dining standbys, the K&W Cafeteria chain, including its Roanoke location, and Mrs. Rowe’s Family Restaurant in Staunton, had set off a nostalgia wave that extended to other local and regional favorites.

Cardinal Facebook followers’ 187 comments covered a wide range of past eatery options, but The Roanoker love shone through with 23 comments that sparked threads and emojis aplenty. The next closest was Pete’s Deli, another restaurant that had been open for decades, with 10 comments and their accompanying “likes.”

Angler’s Cafe in Roanoke, the Country Cookin’ chain, The Homeplace Restaurant in Catawba and Mike’s Grill in Blacksburg rounded out the list with a handful of reactions apiece. (A touch of good news here: The Homeplace has new owners with plans to reopen next year.)

We made contact with some of the social media commenters, along with The Roanoker’s former owner, Renee “Butch” Craft, who said that she mourns the business as deeply as the countless regulars.

“I could not even start to tell you the number of people that ate there every day, a couple meals a day, one meal a day, and at this time of year, we did so much business for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Craft said. “And I’m not going to say that I don’t miss the turmoil and the fighting to get the turkeys cooked and fighting to get the ham. I do miss that. I do miss that hustle and bustle, getting people fed.”

The Roanoker: ’81 Years of Food and Family‘

Growing up in Damascus, Teresa Gereaux feasted on her father’s holiday country hams. 

As an adult living in Catawba, she found that The Roanoker restaurant hit the spot with its take on that classic item. Her family’s holiday gatherings often included a stop at The Roanoker.

“It was a staple,” Gereaux said. “You could always count on it. Many times, we did holiday meals there. We would go for Easter, or sometimes if we didn’t feel like cooking for Thanksgiving or something, we might pick up a meal and bring it home. It was just always one of your family dinner options.”

Haynes, the traveling biscuit lover, and her husband of two years had one of their first dates at The Roanoker. Haynes’ host of memories included multiple takeout Thanksgiving lunches at the Booker T. Washington site. “They had one of the best Thanksgiving lunches anywhere,” she said.

Her favorite meal was breakfast, though, and The Roanoker provided a homey atmosphere where no one was really a stranger.

“It wasn’t real expensive either,” Haynes, of Burnt Chimney, said. “You stood in line, but it was worth it, and you met people in the line while you were waiting, you know, so that was sort of fun when it was busy like that.”

Haynes was sad when the eatery closed. Craft, who worked at The Roanoker for 52 years and owned it for 20 of its 81 years in business, found herself in deep grief. She said the restaurant thrived through COVID-19, as she and her manager/daughter-in-law, Samantha Craft, pivoted to carry-out. But they had to lay off wait staff, which was psychologically difficult all around, Butch Craft said. 

Longtime employees, including cooks, were retiring, and finding quality, committed replacements was getting harder to do.

“And I was aging out, too,” she said. “I was 72.”

She thought she had found a buyer but didn’t trust that he would be onsite consistently — an absolute necessity to control quality, in her book. Samantha Craft could have run it, but her heart was in teaching, Butch Craft said. She decided in 2022 to close the restaurant, and the family of its founder, Crafton Warren, sold the building to Balance Wellspace.

Butch Craft went in when the building renovation was nearly finished, and couldn’t visualize what had been there before, it had changed so much. 

“It hurts to see that, and I was depressed,” she said. “I had a lot of depression. It’s like a death. It really is.”

Since then, she has frequently run into regulars who remind her of how much they loved the place and its food. Facebook comments on the restaurant’s still-extant page preserve goodwill that customers shared when it closed. And this month, a couple dozen social posts remembered The Roanoker fondly.

“I’m so glad,” she said. “It makes me think we did things right.”

Craft stays busy, singing in a couple of gospel groups and working part-time at Now, Then and Again, an antique shop in Salem. The store keeps copies of the book she co-authored with Samantha Craft and the late Sandra Brown Kelly, “81 Years of Food and Family.” It has multiple recipes from those decades, often recalculated to serve smaller groups than the hundreds that Butch Craft would see in a day at The Roanoker.

She might miss the hustle of the restaurant days, but she’s not looking to recreate it in her home kitchen, she said with a laugh.

“My husband says it all the time: I would love to have our meatloaf, and we have our meatloaf in here,” she said, pointing to the book. “I said, learn to make it.”

Pete’s Deli: Favorite Saturday lunches

Butch Craft pointed to Pete’s Deli as the place that held to the same standard that The Roanoker had. Pete’s, which was in business for 60 years, announced in late March that it had closed, after its landlord at Towne Square Shopping Center ended its month-to-month lease, according to multiple published reports.

“They had good food and good service,” she said. “And it really made me so upset that they had to close.”

Gereaux said that she and her family had made Pete’s a regular stop in recent years. It became a nearly-every-Saturday visit.

“You know, run a few errands, grab lunch at Pete’s or something,” she said. “My mother-in-law and I spent many Saturday lunches there. It was also just one that you could depend on kind of home cooking family atmosphere and just, you know, a good dependable option.”

Her go-to was the turkey pita, and her ma-in-law “loved” the quesadilla. When Gereaux’s husband was alive, he liked to try the daily specials, as opposed to the go-tos he had at most of their dining stops.

Angler’s Cafe: Missing that chicken Senegalese stew

Angler’s Cafe, at Second Street and Kirk Avenue, closed in fall 2005, but it left a good impression on six commenters.

Amy Hoots-Hendrix remembers going on a few dates in the late 1990s with her soon-to-be husband. It was the first place she ever tried fish tacos, but another item hooked her.

“I was all but addicted to the chicken Senegalese stew,” Hoots-Hendrix said. “And I’m sitting here with the recipe beside me.”

She printed it out in 2012 after finding it in a column written by The Roanoke Times’ former food writer, Lindsey Nair.

“She, too, loved the chicken Senegalese stew, and so she printed a version of the recipe from the owner, and so I regularly make it and regularly think about Angler’s.”

Hoots-Hendrix remembered wooden tables and benches in a small joint with a homey feel.

“There was a waitress there who waited on us whenever we were there,” she said. “And I just remember her being just so sweet and welcoming, and she was kind of bohemian. And it just was a great place to go. It made you feel comfortable. And it was sort of like my first foray into something that was, you know, African flavors.”

Country Cookin’: ‘Just good country food’

Six people commented that they missed Country Cookin’, a chain with multiple Southwest Virginia locations that closed all of them in 2020.

Pat Hunt of Buena Vista grew up going to the one in Lexington, and occasionally to the Daleville location.

“It’s just good country food, and it was reasonable, and I loved their chopped steak,” Hunt said. “I’d get the big chop.”

Add a sweet potato, veggies from the hot bar and salad bar items, and you would not leave wanting, she added.

Hunt has tried other chains that have similar options, but they were more expensive and didn’t taste as good. 

“A lot of your just good old country folk would go to it … you know, the workers, and they could afford to go have a nice meal with their family or their spouse,” said Hunt, a retired teacher.

Mike’s Grill: Memories of the upside-down burger

Holli Drewery has spent almost all of her life in Blacksburg, and she’s never had a burger as good as the ones they used to serve at Mike’s Grill. The restaurant that sat on South Main Street for 40 years closed in 2016.

“It was [served] upside-down and it was a hefty meal, too,” said Drewery, one of four who took to Facebook to remember the place. “Like it wasn’t a small burger. It was a good-size burger, and when you got the side of fries, that was enough to share. No one needed their own side of fries.” 

She and a friend used to go there at every winter’s first snow, to have a burger and look out the front windows at the scenic accumulation. 

“The windows were well positioned right there, looking out on Main Street, towards campus,” she said. “It was a tradition of ours.”

The Homeplace: A tradition, about to be reborn

This Catawba icon closed in 2020, a COVID-era dining casualty.

“That was one of our biggest losses from COVID, in my opinion, that and [singer/songwriter] John Prine,” Jill Carter-Cobb said.

“I mean that was a huge hit. That’s just like losing the [Mill Mountain] Star. That’s like losing the Texas Tavern, you know.”

The long wait in line, whether on the porch or on the stairs inside, was worth it for the family-size portions of fried chicken, ham, roast beef, vegetables, biscuits and desserts served at the restaurant since 1982, she said.

It gave Carter-Cobb and plenty of others great hope to hear that a new owner plans to open again about Easter 2026. Real estate agent Noah Beckley’s Oct. 17 post announcing the transaction on Facebook was shared about 1,300 times. Five people commented on the Cardinal News post, with most of those threads mentioning the pending reopening.

“But I don’t think anybody’s going to be happy with anything less than exactly what it used to be,” Carter-Cobb said. 

That remains to be seen. According to Beckley’s post, the new owners plan to keep “the name, recipes, and majority of the original menu.”

Gereaux is particularly excited about the prospects, seeing as she lives in Catawba.

“You know, it’s been terrible not to have it,” she said.