Pat and Steve officially hand over the spatula to new hosts

It’s official, last week Pat Lenox put down her spatula. The denim cap she wore when she worked the grill at Pat & Steve’s Family Restaurant looks like a forlorn, deflated balloon, puddled on the dashboard of her car. And husband Steve, the other half of the “Pat & Steve” dynamic duo, hung up his white apron. For well over a decade the pair provided their customers with hearty, home-style cooking and they will be the first to tell you, they are so done with that.

They’ve been together for breakfast for the past 13 years, Steve joked last Friday, about halfway into his second day of retirement from Pat & Steve’s, but it’s the first time they’ve been able to sit down at their kitchen table and eat breakfast together.

Sitting down at that kitchen table by a window with a view of sweeping lawns and Congdon‘s Creek, Pat and Steve talked about what the restaurant business was like for them.

It’s been fun, they both agreed, but a lot of work, too.

Not that their previous careers hadn’t prepared them for hard work. Steve had been a captain at North Ferry and Pat worked at and then supervised the school’s cafeteria for more than two decades. Handling food and dealing with people just came naturally to them.

“I was more the up-front person,” Steve said, “and Patty worked the grill,” rising at 5 a.m. so that she was ready for early-bird customers who would show up at 6 a.m., six days a week.

Much has happened on the Island and in their lives since they first opened in 1998 (which, by coincidence, tuned out to be their phone number, too — 749-1998). They had two grandkids back then, now they have six.

Pat smiles when she talks about her grandchildren. “I tell people we have a basketball team and a sub, or a basketball team and a cheerleader,” depending on how you look at it, she said.

Long-time customers will remember when their older daughter, Tammy, helped out in the early years and then during the summers, because her sons, Daniel and Shane, were often around, sometimes sitting at the counter or playing outside in the woods behind the restaurant. Eventually Tammy and her family would move to Pennsylvania where she’s a teacher, but Tammy came back and helped out during vacations. And Daniel, who used to sit at the counter and color, graduates from high school this year.

Their son, Steve, 35, is a sportscaster and lives in Connecticut. He has two other members of Pat’s basketball team, Alex and Matthew. And their younger daughter, Beth, 32, also worked at her folks’ restaurant, and has the fifth member of the basketball team, Nicholas, and the team’s sub/cheerleader, McKenna.

Opening Pat and Steve’s was the realization of a dream for the couple. In their ad last week, Pat wrote, “… people thought we were crazy” to open the restaurant, with two of their three kids grown and out of college. But that restaurant was their dream, and with the help of family, friends and loyal customers, that dream came true.

Pat said, “in the long haul, we enjoyed it,” but she doesn’t think she could do it another summer. Steve’s heart attack a few years back was sort of a wake-up call. “It shook me pretty bad.” After that, she said she “just didn’t have the heart for it anymore,” and they knew it was time to put down the spatula and hang up that apron.

But it was fun, they both agreed, from the beginning, because the whole family was involved. They even chose the name, Pat & Steve’s, by family vote. They put possible names into a hat. “Someone came up with the Captain and the Cook,” and I kind of liked that, Steve said, but the name that came out of the hat was “Pat & Steve’s.”

The Pat & Steve’s sign, by the way, is a picture of Pat with grandsons Daniel and Shane. The Fire Department Auxiliary, for which Pat has served as treasurer for about 40 years, commissioned local artist and sign painter, Lisa Hashagan, to create the Pat & Steve sign as a gift for the couple as they started their new venture.

Reminiscing, Pat said there were some hard times, but there were more good times. One of those hard times came early on when she and Steve planned to take daughter, Beth, to college for the first time. The person they hired to cover for them didn’t show up and Pat couldn’t go because they were short on help. “That about broke my heart,” she remembered.

When asked if running the restaurant lived up to their expectations, they agreed, enthusiastically, that it did, and by far the best part, they also agreed, was “the people.” They said that repeatedly, referring to their customers and the many employees who have worked for them over the years.

“That’s what we’re going to miss,” Steve said, talking about Clarissa, who’s been with them steadily since the beginning, and so many others. “We had a lot of turnover,” Pat said, “kids who worked their way through college,” and people who stepped forward to fill the gap when they were short on help.

There’s a delightful story that’s circulated for 10 years about an alleged encounter Pat had with a nasty customer; an encounter that’s turned into a local legend of sorts. It was said that the customer, a woman, was not satisfied with something and had made the waitress cry. As the story goes, Pat comes charging from behind the counter, spatula in hand, and in her best Lunch Lady voice says: “Ma’am, it is pretty obvious that nothing we do is going to make you happy, and you’re not making us happy, so maybe you should leave.”

Pat laughed. Not true, she said. However, she did tell the story about the woman who was at the restaurant with her daughter and her granddaughter who made a colossal mess. “I’m not talking about a few things. You expect kids to be a little messy,“ but this was beyond that, Pat said, describing a floor littered with straws and wrappers, open sugar packets, smashed butters and smeared jellies. “This kid made a sandbox out of the sugar,” Pat said. It was all over the table and half the floor. When Pat learned about the mess the diners had left in their wake, she came from behind the counter and followed them outside, where she let them know, politely, that she didn’t appreciate the massive clean-up project they’d left for her.

“I wasn’t rude, but I let them have it,” Pat said. The daughter acted offended, but Pat could tell the grandmother was embarrassed. “The daughter’s never been back, but the grandmother has,” she said.

And Pat told another story about her daughter, Beth, when she was waiting tables. “Beth had a bit of an attitude, I guess,” Pat said, and when the customers informed her that they knew Pat and Steve personally, Beth said, “’I do too, but I call them Mom and Dad.’”

More than anything they’re going to miss their customers, they both said. It was fun watching people have mini reunions there, planned and otherwise. Seeing people who’d been away for the winter, how they would make it a point to say hello.

They miss the regulars who have died. That’s the bad part of it, Steve said. You get attached to people who come in every day, you get used to seeing them, you see them more than you see family, then all of a sudden they’re gone. And sometimes when regular customers who are snowbirds leave, but then they don’t come back in the spring, you can’t help but worry. “You always wonder what happened to them,” he added.

The changing of the guard at Pat & Steve’s happened overnight, literally — Pat and Steve walked out on Tuesday, and that evening the new owners, Chris Chobor and Ashley Knight and a crew of helpers, were there past midnight painting and putting up fresh curtains. “We didn’t want to skip a beat,” Ashley said. “Our goal was a smooth transition,” so that customers weren’t inconvenienced. So that they hardly noticed a change.

On Sunday afternoon, during a lull between the early lunch rush and the late lunch rush, they talked about their plans and the expectations they have for their restaurant.

Chris, the son of Islanders John and Mary Chobor, is a builder and owns an Island construction business. “I have three guys who work for me and we build everything, from the ground up,” he said. He also works at Mashomack as its buildings and grounds steward. Chris grew up in Poughkeepsie, went to high school in Connecticut and then the Portland School of Art majoring in sculpture and ceramics. But he has restaurant experience, having worked as a sous chef and a short order cook in restaurants “from New York to Florida and Sitka, Alaska,” he said. His partner, in life and in the business, Ashley, who is from Philadelphia, has restaurant experience, too. She came out of James Madison College in Virginia with degrees in business and dance. Her industry background comes from managing a bar and restaurant, she said.

Ashley and Chris met three years ago when she was hired as a nanny by Chris’s sister. They’ve been together ever since.

Ashley is confident that working closely with Chris in the restaurant is going to be a positive experience. “The good thing is that we’re best friends,” she said.

While they intend to keep some things unchanged, they have already expanded the number of days a week they’re open from six to seven; they hope to be open for dinners soon and to eventually serve wine and beer. But they want to hang on to what made the restaurant successful for the Lenoxes. They’re keeping the staff and intend to provide the same good service, Ashley said. “And good food,” Chris added

That is why they made the cosmetic changes virtually overnight. Eventually they will come up with a new name for their restaurant and Pat and Steve will get their sign back.

As they sat side-by-side, behind the restaurant, Chris wearing an apron and Ashley clutching an order pad, talking about their plans for the future, Pat and Steve were far away from their dream restaurant, making plans to attend their grandson’s graduation.

Now that they’ve retired, they want to spend more time with their kids and grandkids, travel more and, at home, enjoy the beautiful view of the creek from their kitchen window.

“People think we’re moving but we’re not,” Steve said. “This is the best place. We’re going to stay right here and enjoy it.”

Steve says he’ll keep busy with the lawns he has, now. Maybe he’ll take on a few more. Pat says that when she runs out of closets to clean, she’ll find something to do. She hasn’t been to the new Pat & Steve’s to eat. Not yet. But there’s no rush. She has plenty of time, now. And that’s a good thing, because if she wants to see more of her grandson, Daniel, he’s working on Shelter Island this year.

At Pat & Steve’s.