Gas restaurant plans to open in August

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June 26, 2017 - 12:00 AM

Editor’s note: Part of this story was omitted in Saturday’s paper and is being rerun in its entirety today.
 
The building best known to locals as Bonnie’s Corner Cafe is set to make a comeback in August.
Tina Spiares and her husband, Russ Gardner, formerly of Pleasanton, are hustling to complete a number of renovations to the building that has been vacant since 2016. In the interim it was known as Ruth and Earl’s, but for less than a year. 
From painting to tearing out walls, Spiares and Gardner have their plates full. New plumbing throughout the gutted building is being installed and it has no gas lines.
“We don’t know where the gas lines went,” Spiares said. Furniture, grills and kitchen appliances have to be replaced as well.  
As fate would have it, many of the original kitchen appliances will be purchased back from Regina and Loren Lance, owners of the Mildred Store, who purchased them after Ruth and Earl’s closed.
Fate may have a hand in the entire venture. Gardner, a retired law officer, dreamed of living in northern Wisconsin after retiring from law enforcement for the second time. In support of that dream, Spiares elected to close down her restaurant of seven years, “Tina’s Place.”
“It (Wisconsin) was the place to go. Everyone in Pleasanton is mad at me,” she said of her decision to close her restaurant last winter.
The couple set their sights on a house in Spooner, Wis. But before the purchase was finalized, the area where the Spooner house was situated was rezoned as a flood zone, causing the couple to change their minds.
It was then that Spiares found her dream home located near the Allen County Country Club. The couple, their daughter Jasmine, Spiares’s mother Holly and five dogs made the move to Allen County. In hindsight, Spiares said living in Wisconsin would have been hard because of the distance from her two grandchildren in Pleasanton, now just an hour away.
Not too long after moving to Allen County, Spiares, who had no intention of going back to work full-time, was inspired by the old Bonnie’s Corner Cafe.
“The people in Allen County are friendly and supportive and I am glad things worked out the way they did,” she said.
Tina’s Place (number two) will be open Wednesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sundays 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The menu will include a buffet and salad bar and all-you-can-eat and daily specials made homemade, such as chicken and noodles, meatloaf and salisbury steak.
Spiares said she will be hiring, but intends to be picky. 
“It’s not easy work. Everyone thinks it is easy, it’s not. It’s one of the hardest things out there,” she said of restaurant work.

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