To the far left of downtown, along the Woodstock Road, past the ritzy Delta and beyond two graveyards sits a locally run diner.
The Cabin Restaurant is a simple off-white building with a thick steel door and unpresuming windows. On this desolate stretch of road, it would be easy to increase your vehicle’s speed and and jaunt on by. If it weren’t for the broad Cabin Restaurant sign sitting upon the roof or the swaying 7-up sign protruding out of the ground, this establishment could easily pass for a quiet home on the outskirts of town.
“I bought it off a man who owned for 30 some years and the rumour is that he acquired it from a hand in a poker game,” said diner owner David Halfyard. “I can’t confirm that, but it’s an awfully heavy rumour.”
Halfyard says some form of the Cabin has been around for over half of a century. It originally started out as a meager sandwich shack on the side of the road.
The gravel parking lot always has at least one or two cars and the front door has a handwritten note asking customers to please use the back door. Once inside, chatter and clanking dishes are filling up the place and an upbeat song plays softly in the background. The smell of bubbling coffee and home-cooked breakfast are inviting to the senses and the only query is whether you should take your shoes off or not.
Immediately to the left is two or three open grills where chefs in little black hats are flipping bacon and shaking up homefries. You can usually find one cook by the name of Paulie Wallie cracking jokes or juggling eggs while a smiling waitress circulates the square room.
“It’s built so that the customers can interact with the cooks. They can just walk right into the kitchen, there are no doors or walls. So, they come back and bring their dishes or grab their own tea or just come back to chat,” said Halfyard.
The yellow walls are decorated with vinyls, license plates from the 70s, vintage Pepsi posters and an abundance of quirky signs with laughable sayings.
“The signage and all the stuff on the walls right now has all been brought in by our regular customers over time. A lot of the time people just bring in stuff and say ‘here I want that on the wall,’” said Halfyard. “I have no idea who some of these people are, but that’s how a lot of this stuff gets here.”
Accompanying each table, right in between the salt and pepper shakers are miniature jukeboxes. For just a quarter customers can listen to songs from the last few decades.
“When I first started coming here, one of the jukeboxes was broken and you could play any song you wanted without putting a quarter in, so we’d always try and get that table,” said Drew Wallace, a regular at the diner. “I’ve lived in Fredericton my whole life, but it was just over the last few years started I coming here and it’s really a hidden gem of the city. It’s like the best diner feeling that you can get in Fredericton, it’s very traditional.”
Fourteen years ago, Halfyard bought this place as a side project. He soon realized this diner’s atmosphere and the dedicated customers would become his main priority.
“There’s nothing comparable to this and I’ve realized I’ll never leave this place.”
With files from Aly MacIsaac.
