PORT ANGELES — When they bought the building at 536 Marine Drive in 2006, Malik Atwater and his wife, Vivian Wai, had planned to eventually open an English-language school for foreign students.
Then people started flooding them with memories about the site, which for many years had been Smitty’s restaurant and for a short time after that was Brickie’s restaurant, which moved there from another Marine Drive site after being inundated by a mudslide.
In its last incarnation, Atwater and Wai’s new purchase was Mickey’s, a mini-casino that later moved to Front Street before closing.
The couple, former teachers of English in Taiwan who met in that country, sharply changed course.
After testing recipes and concocting them for their own fry batter, sauces and buns — they grind their own beef for hamburgers and hand-cut their fries — they opened Colonel Hudson’s Famous Kitchen, serving homemade fare through a walk-up window to customers standing on the sidewalk.
Sit-down dining
Now, in taking the building further back to its roots, Atwater and Wai are making $60,000 in renovations for sit-down dining inside about half the structure, doing so with help from a matching $10,000 facade grant from the city of Port Angeles.
The couple hopes to be up and running by the end of January in a more conventional setting, with inside seating for 50 and a conference-meeting room.
An outside deck for summer dining is in the works, too, and maybe a beer and wine license as well.
“Everyone kept saying what good memories people had of this place as a restaurant,” Wai, 39, an Idaho native, said Friday as she stood in the seating area, red booth seats bought on Craigslist arrayed in neat rows next to still-naked walls.
Atwater, from Illinois, recalled one man who, as a boy, collected beer bottles from under the building for refunds.
Another person recalled how servers roller-skated food to customers, Atwater said.
The building, as nondescript as it is historic, was built in 1923, but all that history came at a price.
Layers of history
Atwater peeled off three different roofs when he replaced the roof.
He peeled off about five layers of floor, including carpet and tile, before getting to the base.
Out of the basement he lugged a car axle and toilets, and disposed of a mummified cat.
“Every time I would start in one direction, I would find something else to fix and fix and fix,” Atwater said, adding he’s received stitches twice for his efforts.
Atwater and Wai have added an awning to the outside of the building, are replacing siding and have added large windows to the Cedar Street side of the building.
“The awning really adds the dimension it needed for that building to look less industrial,” city Planning Manager Sue Roberds said.
Roberds added that $88,246 in facade grants, which are funded by lodging taxes, have been distributed to city businesses to spruce up their exteriors.
But Smitty’s nondescript look did not make it less of a draw, Roberds suggested, calling it “quite the place to go.”
Atwater and Wai have three children, including a girl born June 18.
The couple may have been destined to carry on the restaurant tradition.
Married in 1996, they said in their wedding vows that they like to eat and cook.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
