Never been there, but might have to check it out before it closes.
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_ ... ml?sid=101Comfort food
Decades of bargain meals, help for needy end with demise of Nancy's Home Cooking
Saturday, April 11, 2009 3:14 AM
By Dean Narciso
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The news that Nancy's Home Cooking is closing weighed heavy over the restaurant like a double helping of its signature home fries and gravy.
"Are you kidding?"
"Really?"
"That's tragic," said a flow of regulars who learned of the restaurant's fate yesterday as they left the Clintonville landmark at 3133 N. High St.
June 1 will end 38 years of comfort food, flexible pricing and the uncompromising ideals of owner Cindy King.
"It's just the times," said King, 60. "I'm tired, and the restaurant's tired."
Diabetes and several heart procedures have sapped King's strength and finances. Chip King, her nephew, called the mounting debt, rising costs and faltering economy "a restaurant perfect storm."
Meals cost less than $2 when King bought the restaurant from Nancy Kemmerling in 1970. Adjusted for inflation, that meal today should cost about $11. But King charged about half that. And until last year, drinks were included.
King plans to file for bankruptcy. Her niece, Tracy King-McCurry, will continue a catering business featuring Nancy's recipes.
Nancy's moves with the steady rhythm of the workday: fishermen and office workers before dawn, retirees just after 9 a.m., and contractors for lunch. All along, King seasons her regulars with a friendly smile, a hug or a kiss on the cheek.
She offered free dinners to the homeless until neighbors complained. And the poor once bathed and slept in a kitchen bathroom, which today needs to be replaced to comply with the city's health code.
A few years ago, she took in an elderly couple after St. Raphael's Home for the Aged closed.
King's approach is more social service than corporation.
The restaurant used to have four menus, but someone stole them, she quips.
Unless you're a regular, you'll need to be told about Ed King's Texas Toast, the Garbage Omelet, chicken and noodles and the lunch specials.
"People have too many decisions to make during the day. I make them for them."
King was part of a 120-woman office pool at Ohio Bell 38 years ago when she was drawn to the company of men, she said.
"It was a man's world, and I could cuss and drink with the best of them in my day."
Both her parents had dabbled in catering, so she borrowed $10,000 and took a chance.
Raymond Gaines is glad she did. A regular for 15 years, the 90-year-old said King's home cooking "gives me a boost."
And John Eaton, who visits three times a week with his wife, Roxanne, and daughter, Shannon Saunders-Eaton, 10, said, "It's like having Mom cook for you. It's hard to come across a $5 meal anymore, without a catch."
Shannon agrees: "It's the greatest place I've ever eaten at: the workers, the food, everything." And children always leave with a quarter.
Now it's time to let it go.
King said she doesn't want to saddle her family with her debt.
"I ran my restaurant with my heart and not my brain," she said. "I will go on record with probably being the worst businessperson in the world."
dnarciso@dispatch.com
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