Owners of popular Chesapeake cafe work to rebuild after fire

CHESAPEAKE

Mark Hill cleared tables at the Court House Cafe as a teenager. He watched cooks prepare food and got to know the faces of regulars – the judges, lawyers, police officers and school officials.

Hill said he knew then that the restaurant business was for him.

Some 15 years later, Hill and his bride , Katie Hill, and longtime friend John Paul Saintsing, bought the Court House Cafe. They spruced up the place with new paisley-print tablecloths, installed new toilets and replaced the scratched and peeling partitions in the women’s restroom. The trio greeted customers and cooked meals and washed dishes alongside employees, some of whom had been there since the cafe opened in 1985.

Not quite 10 months later, on Aug. 18, a fire destroyed just about everything.

Katie Hill remembers the middle-of-the-night call from the alarm company. The Fire Department was on the scene, the woman had said. And Katie remembers seeing the smoke and the fire trucks when she arrived at the Wilson Village Shopping Center, where the restaurant is wedged between two other businesses in Great Bridge.

“I’ve never had that feeling before,” she said. “It was horrible.”

Fire officials say they still don’t know what caused the blaze.

Thirty-seven employees were suddenly out of work. What wasn’t broken or melted or burned inside the restaurant was damaged by smoke. The paneled and stucco walls had to come down, the carpet pulled up, the bar and the tables removed. Nearly a month later, a shell is all that’s left.

Court House regular Dana Overman heard about the fire on the news. He’d eaten there twice a week – his favorite was the prime rib – and he knew the owners and just about everybody else who frequented the place. It was kind of like the Cheers of Great Bridge, he said.

Bryan Miles went more often – three or four times a week for the fish of the day and the she-crab soup. He called up Overman just after the fire, and the two decided on a charity golf tournament to help out. He and Overman wanted to do it for the owners. But the Hills and Saintsing wanted it to benefit the employees.

They are at the Court House Cafe almost every day, rebuilding.

It’s hard, Mark Hill said, seeing the gutted restaurant.

“Even right now … it’s kind of an empty feeling,” he said.

He sat at a picnic table with Katie and Saintsing while plumbers worked inside. A big printed sign hung over the brick-and-wood restaurant front: “Court House Cafe has experienced a substantial loss due to fire. We are diligently working to reopen as soon as possible …”

They never considered shutting down.

“We’ve been in the restaurant business forever,” Katie said. “It’s all we know.”

They hope for a Thanksgiving reopening, which is what Katie told a white-haired man who pulled up in front of the restaurant one recent afternoon.

“I’ll be there the day after,” the man said.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com