Whitey's Café and Lounge

Whitey’s Café and Lounge served food, drinks, and entertainment to the local East Grand Forks community for over eighty years. The restaurant and bar survived Prohibition, several local floods, and multiple changes in ownership for nearly nine decades, but permanently closed its doors in 2010. The building is currently home to a new local restaurant, but distinct architectural pieces from the Art Deco movement, including the original stainless steel horseshoe bar, remains a focal point of the property. Serving as a visual reminder of the city’s foundation and its scandalous economic successes, as well as its resilience against adversity, Whitey’s Café and Lounge represents both the history of East Grand Forks and the possibility of its future.

Edwin “Whitey” Larson opened the Coney Island Lunchroom in 1925 at 108 Second Avenue North in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Across the border, North Dakota state Prohibition, which began on July 1, 1890, had been effective for over thirty years and caused several saloons and bars located along the state border to relocate and continue operations in Minnesota alongside Larson’s business. Several border cities benefitted from the strategic business relocations, including Hallock, Oslo, Warren, and East Grand Forks, which hosted the immediate relocation of fourteen saloons after North Dakota’s simultaneous union admission and Prohibition. From 1880 to 1915, East Grand Forks received a majority of its revenues from three disreputable industries: gambling, liquor, and prostitution. Larson’s Coney Island Lunchroom was one of over forty saloons and gambling establishments in downtown East Grand Forks, a statistic that would draw attention from international newspapers and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Despite Minnesota ratifying the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and officially enforcing national Prohibition on January 17, 1920, Larson continued outlawed operations to earn lucrative profits from illicit sales throughout the Prohibition Era.

The Coney Island Lunchroom became Whitey’s Wonderbar in 1932. Larson commissioned Samuel DeRemer, a local architect, to redesign the building in the art deco style of the times and to construct the first stainless steel horseshoe bar in the United States. Not only did Whitey’s Wonderbar visually embody the architectural trends of the Prohibition Era, but it also offered the reprehensible cultural pastimes, such as gambling, slot machines, or various card games, to the local populace. A kitchen fire forced Larson to rebuild as Whitey’s Café and Lounge a decade later, and the shutdown of the gambling industry in 1947 dealt a significant blow to Larson’s traditional operations. Upon such events, Larson concentrated on the culinary operations of his business and developed a strong reputation as a local restaurant with unique architecture, excellent customer service, and sensational dishes.

Greg Stennes purchased Whitey’s Café and Lounge in 1973 and continued operations from 108 DeMers Avenue until the 1997 Red River Flood hit East Grand Forks. The Red River of the North forms the boundary between Minnesota and North Dakota, and separates several border cities in each state, such as Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. During the catastrophic natural disaster, the Red River crested just over fifty-four feet in April 1997 and slowly receded over the next month. Several properties in downtown East Grand Forks and Grand Forks were damaged in the flood, but subsequent fires completely destroyed buildings. Stennes relocated Whitey’s and its art deco architecture, including the original horseshoe bar, up the block to 121 DeMers Avenue during the city recovery and resumed operations until selling his business to a local investment group in 2010. In 2011, new owner Tim Bjerk completed a cosmetic remodel of the space, preserving the original stainless steel horseshoe bar from the Prohibition Era, and reopened 121 DeMers Avenue as Sickies Garage Burgers and Brews.

Despite ending its operations permanently in 2010, the property in which Whitey’s Café and Lounge was located in is still in use today. Food Network television personality Molly Yeh purchased 121 DeMers Avenue in 2022 and opened a new combination bakery, café, and marketplace called Bernie’s. Yeh’s show, aptly titled Girl Meets Farm, chronicles how the Manhattanite-turned-farmwife combines her upscale, ethnically diverse dishes with traditional Midwestern cuisine to create new recipes for the amateur chef at home. In a similar fashion, Bernie’s offers customers familiar favorites, such as traditional Scandinavian fare or beverages from local breweries, with unique twists inspired by Yeh’s culinary experience on the East Coast and her urban upbringing. The space still utilizes the original horseshoe bar as a takeout counter, and seats over two hundred guests in areas inside and on the western patio. Yeh envisions Bernie’s to be a place for customers to “slow down and enjoy time with the people that they’re with, and really love the food."^[1] Although the new eatery is a marked departure from the Prohibition-Era business first established by Edwin “Whitey” Larson, Bernie’s represents the long-standing tradition of the Midwestern communities supporting their local small businesses, as well as the aspirations of East Grand Forks for prosperity in the future.

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^[1] Knudson, Pamela. "Molly Yeh’s New Restaurant, Bernie’s, Set to Open Soon in East Grand Forks," Grand Forks Herald. September 9th, 2022. Accessed April 18th, 2023. https://www.grandforksherald.com/business/molly-yehs-new-restaurant-bernies-set-to-open-soon-in-east-grand-forks.

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Schuster, Ryan. “Reconstructing Whitey’s: Restaurant, With A New Look, on Schedule to Reopen Next Month," Grand Forks Herald. August 12th, 2011. Accessed April 18th, 2023. https://www.grandforksherald.com/newsmd/reconstructing-whiteys-restaurant-with-a-new-look-on-schedule-to-reopen-next-month.

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