Point Reyes Light - August 26, 1999
Station House Cafe celebrates 25th anniversary
The Station House Cafe is without question the most-popular, gourmet-quality restaurant in the Tomales Bay area, and this year it is celebrating its 25th anniversary under the ownership of Pat Healy of Point Reyes Station.
From the wainscoted-walls of the dining room to the flower-bedecked gazebos that shade garden tables, the Station House is cozy. More importantly, the Station House provides unsurpassed California cuisine.
Chef Dennis Bold of Inverness, whose modesty belies the glowing reviews his cooking has received from national magazines, has run the cafe's kitchen since 1978.
At that time, the cafe was located where Taqueria la Quinta (also owned by Healy) is today. It had been owned by the late historian Jack Mason who sold it to Claudia Woodward. In those days, the main fare was hamburgers. In fact, a sign over the entrance said simply, "Hamburg."
Woodward eventually put the cafe up for sale, and on Feb. 19, 1974, Healy and her short-term partner Jackie Chase bought it for $5,000 and pooled another $3,000 for "startup money."
As the restaurateur recalled this week, "We served good food. Our idea was simple, country fare." However, she added, "the oldtimers didn't take to us right away. They stayed away. [To them], it was a hippie place."
Everything began to change, however, when Bold became chef in 1978. "It was a paradigm shift," said Healy. "We had someone interest in creative cooking. Dennis approached it heart and soul."
Bold had attended UC Berkeley where he graduated with a major in philosophy. During his time at Cal, he opened a breakfast and lunch restaurant across the street from the YWCA. After graduation, he sold the restaurant and went to Europe.
When Bold came back, he went to work for Chez Madeleine (where the Wildcat Grill is now located) as the sous chef before moving on to the Station House.
Today, Bold, along with controller/office manager Diane Fradkin of Point Reyes Station, are shareholders with Healy in the Station House. "Among the three of us," noted Healy, "we have 61 years' experience in this restaurant."
But "this restaurant" has gone through several incarnations. Its original site at Highway 1 and Third Street housed an automobile dealership in the 1920s. It later was a gift shop and then a radio-repair shop.
In 1978, Healy nearly doubled the size of the original cafe to allow for more seating. But even the enlarged restaurant proved too small, and in 1988, she decided to buy the Two Ball Inn bar and restaurant from George and Shirley Ball. She remodeled the building and moved down the street in 1989.
"We had to expand or become a hamburger joint," Healy explained this week. Our kitchen was too small, and we were maxing out the septic system with all our business. My premise was that if we didn't take this [property], somebody else would."
The cafe was already named the Station House when Healy and Chase bought it in 1974. Ironically, its new location (the Two Ball Inn site) is located where the original Northwestern Pacific's two-story depot had originally stood.
Although the depot did not fall down in the 1906 earthquake, it was sufficiently damaged that it was torn down and replaced with a one-story depot where Toby's Feed Barn is today. Around 1920, it was moved still further north to its present location, where it serves as Point Reyes Station's postoffice.
To the casual observer, the Station House now appears to be such a smooth operation it almost runs itself, but appearances can be deceiving. While being interviewed for this article, Healy was unable to sit still for long.
Whenever a customer seemed to need service, Healy would immediately excuse herself to find a waitress or bartender. If a customer appeared confused about something, the restaurateur was ready with an answer. "Sorry, but I can't stand it when things are amiss," she would explain afterward.
Healy clearly loves running a restaurant but acknowledged there can be frustrations. "When it's good, it's very good," she said. "But when it's bad, you can't imagine how bad."
Nonetheless, the restaurateur no longer has to oversee all the details. "Dennis does all the food ordering and is also the wine buyer," she noted. Hostess Michelle Harris orders the beer and spirits. And Healy's stepsister Melinda Benedict is now the manager.
The Station House provides a medical and dental insurance plan for its employees, along with paid vacations. "I woke up one morning," Healy recalled, "and realized I am responsible for a lot of people [including their families, cars, and homes]."
And also the restaurant is obviously prospering, it suffers from the same problems that effect most small businesses, she added. "Every year our gross increases a little bit, but it's a struggle to keep the same profit margin. Everytime you turn around, there's a new fee or new regulation."
To keep costs under control, every meal and every drink is recorded by the same computer that prints customers' tabs. Besides helping with ordering supplies, she said, "the computer every month tells us how much we've sold of each item."
This allows the restaurant to determine which dishes are popular and which need to be replaced on the menu.
"All the perishables come in all week long," Healy said. "The staples come in once a week." Many of the vegetables served in the Station House are organically grown in a garden behind the restaurant, she added, and each entree comes with a different selection.
From the presentation of meals to the decor of the restaurant, there is obviously a fair amount of performance in operating the Station House, which Healy, 71, comes by honestly, having been a singer and an actress.
Healy's mother "was a nightclub singer ahead of me and didn't want me singing at all," she noted. "I started singing in my teens when I came to Southern California.
"I was a jazz singer. In the 1950s, I sang on records; I sang in nightclubs; I sang in restaurants. I sang in concerts. The musicians liked me, and that was the highest compliment you could ever receive.
"I was also an actress, but at the time I was going to take off, I quit. It was 1963. I lost a baby. My manager died. John Kennedy was shot. It was an awful year, 1963."
For six years, Healy was a housewife before she divorced her periodontist husband and moved to West Marin.
In some ways, she added, performing and operating a restaurant are similar. "Everything you perform...you have to do it at least as well as you did before - or better."
Healy looks back on her 25 years of operating the Station House Cafe fondly. "I deeply appreciate all the good things that have come my way and the good friends, along with the blessings of living in this community."
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Station House has published a cookbook of its 25 most-popular dishes. "We're going to take a percentage of the profits and at the end of the year divide it up among the service organizations [of West Marin]," Healy said.