Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 15, 1993 TAG: 9306150163
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Now it will have two.
Daynell's Delite, which opened this year on Main Street, was slated for closing last month. Dave and Gaynelle Spangler said the restaurant was taking too much time from their family's other business ventures.
The closing would have come May 29 - the very day Pulaski Main Street was holding a daylong celebration spotlighting all the new antiques, arts and other businesses that have opened downtown in recent months.
Nancy Gibson operates one of those new stores, Gibson Girl Antiques, on Main Street. She heard about the closing and told her husband, Sonny, about it.
His wife and other merchants were concerned about the effect of the closing, Gibson said, "with all the positive efforts of these new shops opening. . . . So I kind of got egged into looking into leasing the restaurant from the Spanglers and keeping it open."
Gibson, 52, decided to go for it.
Despite the new management, some things are the same. The restaurant's chief cook, Estelle Crouse, remains.
"I tell people she's world-renowned in the Pulaski area," Gibson said. "People follow her wherever she goes."
But during his first day of running Daynell's, he found that the rest the daytime staff had left.
He called on his wife and daughter, Nancy Kate Gibson.
"Somehow we managed to get through that day. It's great on-the-job training," he said. "If I'd had more than 24 hours to think about it, I'd have probably changed my mind."
Gibson said he once owned a motel with a restaurant, but the restaurant had its own manager.
"We've been getting people everyday who say, `Gee, we didn't know there was a restaurant downtown,' " he said. "Even though it was a very impulsive move on my part, we've got the good-food problem licked and I feel confident we'll solve the good-service problem."
The evening staff remains, and now Gibson is restaffing for daytime. His daughter is a trained paralegal and some lawyers she waited on expressed interest in hiring her.
"If they offer you a job, you be sure and give me a two-week notice," he told her.
On the other side of Main Street, Paul and Donna Etzel of Christiansburg are planning to reopen the Renaissance Restaurant, which closed last year.
It may be open again by the end of June.
Etzel - who is from New York - has worked at other restaurants, including Shoney's and Pargo's, and decided to open his own.
He plans to renovate the upper floor of the two-story building and add a bar and lounge. He has applied for a license to serve alcoholic beverages.
"I don't view it as competition," Gibson said of the renewed Renaissance. "The more, the merrier. . . . It's like the antique shops and the boutiques we've got now. If we had only one, we wouldn't draw what we're able to draw now."
While the Renaissance will keep its old name, Gibson said he will change Daynell's to Sonny's or Sonny's Cafe.
The hours now are 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday; but Gibson plans to expand those and probably add Sunday hours, because the downtown shops are open Sundays.
The Renaissance will be open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
by CNB