About a year and a half after opening, the popular Cold Spring Lane eatery Miss Shirley's Cafe has shut its doors. Not to worry. It's opened new doors catty-corner across the street.
Eddie Dopkin, who owns the restaurant with son David, says the two found they had a "good problem" with the original location.
"At lunch, and all day Saturday and Sunday, the demand exceeded the capacity we could handle," Dopkin says. He says there were often people waiting for tables crowded inside the front door and out onto the parking lot.
So when Big Sky Bakery closed across the street, the Dopkins saw the larger space as a perfect new home for Miss Shirley. Now, instead of 63 seats, there are 95. And a nice comfortable waiting area. Inside.
Dopkin says those aren't the only changes.
"We didn't want to change it a whole lot, but we wanted to make it nicer. The old Shirley was cute. But we wanted to make it warmer and feel more comfortable."
The new Shirley is decked out in reds, purples and golds, with a dark hardwood floor. The large dining room is divided by a half wall. On the left side of that wall are a few tables and a lot of booths, over which hang "cool" yellow and red pendant lights, Dopkin says.
On the right, a long banquette runs the wall's length. There's another banquette along the window and a few big high-top tables. If you can't immediately snag one of those seats, Dopkin says you'll find comfy seating in the front waiting room and entertainment courtesy of the Food Network on a large plasma TV.
In the dining room, if there isn't enough to entertain you at your table, you can always watch the goings-on in the open kitchen at the back of the room.
One area that did not undergo a makeover: the menu. You'll still find the "breakfast served all day" section, featuring goodies like "Oysters Shirley-feller" -- creamed chipped beef, cornmeal-encrusted fried oysters and egg round on potato-and-onion hash browns, topped with white cheddar ($11.99); sweet corn cake eggs Benedict ($9.99); and grilled breakfast kebab of turkey sausage, red bliss potato, applewood-smoked bacon, Granny Smith apple, tomato, cremini mushroom and bell pepper with mango glaze ($10.99). There are also several breakfast sandwiches ($5.99-$10.99), almost a dozen pancake choices ($5.99-$10) and a variety of omelets ($9.99 and up, depending on how many fillings you choose).
