With a heavy heart, Curt Taylor had no choice but to lock the doors of Juanita's oldest restaurant on Feb. 28. After serving how many hundreds of its famed homemade pies, after employing the same four people for 30 years and after a gallant effort of breathing life into the historic family-owned restaurant ... "there just aren't enough people coming through the front door," says Taylor.
Talking at one of the corner tables near the end of February, Taylor points across the street to the new Chelsea condominium and retail complex on 100th Avenue N.E. and shakes his head. He just couldn't keep up.
He estimates there are at least five new restaurants that have opened in the area over the past couple of years. "If you have a 10-inch chocolate pie," he says, "you can only slice it a few different ways. All you've got left are crumbs."
Owned by Phyllis Hoenhouse and Virginia Kissinger and named for Phyllis' husband, Frosty's first opened in August 1955 on the corner of N.E. 116th Street and 100th Avenue N.E., where the Columbia Athletic Club currently stands.
The restaurant moved two blocks north to its present location in 1963 - a move that almost broke them. They successfully revved up the business and built a presence. In 1965, Kissinger sold her share to Ethel Ellegaard, Frosty's cook.
Fifteen years and a major remodel later, Hoenhouse and Ellegaard sold to Max Taylor (Curt's dad), who had previously owned Maxie's in Bellevue. Curt bought the restaurant outright in 1999, keeping it all in the family, including the four original employees - Mary, Alvena, Patti and Diane.
About four months ago, after giving in to a trend he felt would not reverse, Taylor and his wife Judy decided to sell the building and land. He had an eager buyer in real estate developer Colin Radford. "He's been bugging me for four or five years to develop it," Taylor says. Radford also owns the automotive property just south of Frosty's.
So begins the dissolution of the business. The tables and chairs will be sold. Most of the historic pictures adorning the walls - many purchased from the Marymoor Museum - have been sold to customers. The big red sign needs to come down sometime in March, as per city orders. There are T-shirts hanging up behind the cash register that are emblazoned with "Frosty's last call."
During the interview, Taylor fields a phone call from his wife Judy. She asks her husband to relay a message: "I think the customers at Frosty's have been incredibly wonderful. We're really going to miss them."
Taylor then offhandedly mentions how he "died" nearly eight years ago and credits the Seattle Mariners with saving his life. "We were watching the Mariners and I was home recovering from back surgery. I wasn't feeling well so I went upstairs to take a pill." That's all he remembers.
Thanks to an abysmal performance by the Ms, Judy abandoned the game and went upstairs to discover her husband, sprawled out on the bed, not breathing. "I was out for four, four and a half minutes," Taylor says. "One or two more minutes and you start to drool. I missed the drooling stage - which I'm very thankful for."
What's next for a 50-something ex-Army guy who went to culinary school and once cooked for five-star generals? "I'll do something in food and beverage - it's what I've done since I was 8, making ice cream cones, mopping floors, doing dishes," he says. "But," he adds, "you couldn't pay me to open another restaurant anywhere."[[In-content Ad]]
