HICKORY, N.C.,None — It’s a place where people go and linger over a meal and conversation. Some meet there to talk football and politics, or meet up to play bridge or just to eat some Southern comfort food.
Now people will have to find a new place to fill the emptiness that will be left when Jessie’s Diner closes its doors on Saturday. There has been a restaurant at 2145 North Center Street in Viewmont for 33 years, said Harold Curtis, owner of Jessie’s Diner. It was Joel’s Kitchen for 27 years before Curtis bought it and named it after his daughter Jessica.
Jessie’s Diner is moving to Granite Falls where the old Wise Guys Pizza and Grill was located, he said. He expects to open it in two or three weeks.
Curtis and his crew started telling customers about the diner closing two weeks ago. Since that time, they’ve collected names, phone numbers and e-mails of customers who want to know when the restaurant will reopen in its new location.
But even though it’s moving just a piece down the road, that’s little comfort to some of the eatery’s regulars.
Clara Mathe, a daily patron of the diner, said, “Well, we’re pretty upset about it.”
Mathe was having lunch at the “liars’ table” on Wednesday. Many hometown diners and eateries have one.
Mathe said there are other places to eat, but those other places just don’t have the same special something that Jessie’s Diner has.
“These other places just aren’t the same,” Mathe said.
She figures that with the diner moving to Granite Falls, she’ll likely only be able to eat there maybe once a week.
“We are very upset about this place closing,” Mathe said. “We don’t know where we’re going to eat.”
Mathe was having lunch with Steve Carter on Wednesday. The two belong to the same woodcarving group.
Carter eats at Jessie’s Diner at least two meals a day, and sometimes even three. He’s been eating there for around 15 years, he figures, starting with when it was Joel’s Kitchen. Even his grandkids like to go to the diner and eat with grandpa.
“They learned to eat in a restaurant and behave in here,” Carter said.
The diner is a place where the employees treat the customers like family. Mathe and Carter talk to the staff not like customers would but more like members of the same family.
And to Curtis and his employees, that’s what their customers have become.
“A lot of regulars are heartbroken,” said Julie Deal, the cashier at Jessie’s Diner.
It’s not much different for Curtis when he starts thinking about all the people he’s come to know.
“I’m really dreading Saturday,” Curtis said. He talked about all of the long-time, loyal customers like Jim Cartwright. Curtis said Cartwright, who lives near the diner, walks to the restaurant every day to eat and has become one of his best friends.
Lions and Kiwanis clubs meet there, as well as retired firefighters and teachers clubs, retired employees of Duke Power and General Electric and men’s prayer groups, Curtis said. He doesn’t know where the groups will go now.
While it’s hard to leave, it’s something Curtis said was inevitable. It has become too costly to keep his restaurant in Hickory, he said.
Curtis said his overhead expenses keep increasing. Parking also is a problem in the Hickory location. Curtis said many of the diner’s customers are senior citizens, and if they can’t find a parking spot near the diner they will just leave because walking is difficult for them.
The new location in Granite Falls has its own parking lot and room to expand if needed, Curtis said.
“We just feel like that’s where the Lord wants us to go,” Curtis said.
He said about 11 of his 14 full- and part-time employees will be working at the new location. The name will stay the same, and customers will be able to get the same country cooking they’ve come to expect, he said.
Curtis hopes to take the liars’ table to the new location but he’s promised Odell Moose the executive table, where many of the world’s problems are argued and mulled over.
It’s the friendship of the loyal customer base that has kept the restaurant going over the years, and that’s something Curtis hopes he can have at its new location.
WSOC
