THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606270203
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD LENGTH: 87 lines
HALF A CENTURY ago, when Bobby Owens' nose had been broken but a couple of times, the future proprietor of Owens Restaurant in Nags Head awoke for the last time in a make-do bed behind stacked beer cases at his parents' Manteo hot dog stand.
``That was 1946, the day my mother and father moved the hot dog stand over to Nags Head,'' Owens recently recalled. ``Fifty years ago, almost to the day.
``That's when Owens Restaurant really began,'' he said. ``The only other Outer Banks eating place I can think of that goes back that far is probably Sam & Omie's.''
That hot dog stand, rebuilt amid the lonely sand dunes of the then-lonely Outer Banks, became the grande luxe dining establishment it is today.
And Bobby Owens himself, a scrappy Hoi-Toider who once thought about boxing professionally for the sheer joy of combat, became a suave restaurateur who is also Gov. Jim Hunt's personal Democratic whip in Eastern North Carolina.
Bobby, busy enough minding the governor's business in eastern North Carolina and chairing the Dare County Board of Commissioners, stepped down from active management of the restaurant three years ago.
The heritage and operation of the restaurant is now in the hands of Clara Mae and and her husband, Lionel Shannon. But that keeps it safely in the Owens family. Clara Mae is Bobby's sister and she, too, grew up in Owens Restaurant.
``I was 13 when we moved the business to Nags Head - at Milepost 16.5 - and I was expected to do a man's work every day, seven days a week,'' Bobby Owens said. ``The first thing I had to do was carry concrete blocks to Nags Head to build the new restaurant.
``The blocks are still there, facing the Beach Road, in the original Owens Restaurant building,'' said Owens.
Owens Restaurant is now spread around separate dining rooms, bars, and banquettes linked by the unlikely ascendancy of a grand stairway.
Furnishings in Owens Restaurant are of museum quality. Elegantly displayed marine artifacts reflect the historic Outer Banks in times of great beauty, and great historic peril.
``My mother Clara was a collector of Outer Banks memorabilia,'' said Owens. ``And many of her friends helped with the decor in the restaurant.
``She was also a wonderfully tough woman. One day when the restaurant first opened, a female patron seemed startled to see a tough old local fisherman walk in barefoot and in a torn shirt and pants,'' Bobby recalled.
`` `Can he come in and eat like that?' the lady asked.
`` `If he has the damn money to pay for it,' said my mother.''
The food served at Owens Restaurant can properly be called Cordon Bleu - though not by Owens.
``I don't like to call them chefs. Down here they're cooks - and very good cooks, too. They enjoy it as much as we enjoy having them. They stay for years.''
Owens and his family ran the restaurant for years.
``We all worked together, bussing tables and doing every thing you have to do in a busy restaurant,'' said R.V. Owens III, Bobby's son, who now runs his own restaurant, ``RV's,'' on the causeway to Manteo.
Seafood, of course, is a house specialty at Owens Restaurant, with Maine lobster flown in, and local catches still flopping out of the nets. Dinner is served seven days a week in season. Serious - and imaginative - cookery is a cult here.
Last week, a young lady at war with her calories asked an Owens' waitress if she could ``make a little entree out of some scallop hors d'oeuvres'' that were on the menu. The scallops were prepared in a bourbon-pecan sauce.
Sure enough, before long the scallops arrived, grown to entree proportions - and the calorie-counter abandoned all hope of staying in a size seven.
Another elegant entree on the menu that day was filet mignon in a seafood sauce. Actually, it was two filet mignons - little medallion steaks, swamped with a white crab and fish sauce.
The young waitresses are in all ways food professionals, who seem to enjoy winging it with altered recipes, custom created for picky customers. Many of these patrons have been coming back for second helpings for decades.
No wonder Owens' has survived storms, culinary competition and a half-century of change on the Outer Banks. MEMO: Carolina Coast dining profiles are based on a single, unannounced
visit by Virginian-Pilot writers. Restaurant managers are often
contacted later for more information. The Virginian-Pilot pays for the
meal. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Clara Mae Shannon, sister of Bobby Owens and a niece of the
founders, operates Owens Restaurant with her husband Lionel Shannon. by CNB