http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/04/11/stansfire.html
Popular North Side restaurant gutted by fire
By Alayna DeMartini
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH • Friday April 11, 2008 10:04 PM
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A firefighter sprays down hot spots just beyond a doorway at Stan's Restaurant.
Popular North Side restaurant gutted by fire -
Look inside the windows of Stan's Restaurant and you'll see plates of food and a child's menu on one table, remnants of a meal that ended abruptly with the blare of a fire alarm.
Around lunchtime, customers had only memories to savor about the North Side diner today, a day after fire destroyed the building.
Jim Decker was a regular at Stan's for 48 years. The way he describes it, the prime rib and salmon patties were nearly as good as his wife's cooking. And that's high praise.
After she died 11 years ago, Decker would go to Stan's three or four times a week, usually for the prime rib, broiled just the way he liked it. Baked potato with real butter. Salad with Italian dressing. Coffee.
The waitresses called Decker, 79, Grandpa.
He and a handful of other retirees whose wives had died always sat together at the counter. Decker didn't like the booths.
“My belly hit that table just the wrong way,” he said.
He stood today in the parking lot of the restaurant, which was closed for the first time on a Friday, usually its busiest day. Fire tore through the diner yesterday evening, starting in the attic of the back banquet room, then moving into the kitchen. Fire officials said it probably was caused by an electrical problem.
The restaurant was destroyed. The owners haven't decided whether they'll reopen.
Customers drove into the parking lot today, rolling down their windows to tell the owners how hard it was for them to believe Stan's was gone. Some drivers honked their horns as they passed by. Employees paced in the parking lot, dazed.
Stan's Restaurant turned 50 this month. The diner was known for fried haddock on Fridays, which once drew lines of customers that curled around the front of the restaurant.
“If you didn't get in before 4:30 p.m., you didn't get in,” Decker said.
In the early 1990s, business slowed as newer places opened nearby.
Still, old-timers such as Decker and their children showed up at Stan's. And groups still met there regularly, including retirees of Anheuser Busch every Wednesday, a preachers' group every Tuesday and gas-company retirees the last Friday of the month.
Reporters from around the world packed the diner in November 2004, eager to interview voters in a swing state. Presidential nominee John Kerry signed a menu that was framed and put on the wall.
Stan Loscko Jr. opened the restaurant in a rented building at the intersection of Morse and Westerville roads, then built a new place a little north of the intersection. He added a banquet room to the back in 1968, but other than that, the restaurant hasn't changed much.
When Loscko died in February 2007, the funeral procession drove past the front of the restaurant. The employees stood outside to pay their respects.
The business had already passed on to Loscko's son, Bill, who sold it four years ago to Mary Klotz, Bob Jefferson and Kevin Trombley.
Cedric Douglas was a customer for the two decades he lived in Columbus. He was single and owned one pot and few utensils, so he'd go to Stan's every night for dinner. Baked chicken was his favorite meal with German chocolate cake for dessert.
His 10-year-old son who lives in Columbus sent him a text message to tell him about the fire.
“I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, now and I'm having a fit,” he said.
Charred scraps of insulation blew around the parking lot today. Shards of glass lay beside the building.
The sign on the front door still read: Come in We're Open.
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