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Luke's café honors family history

By Adam Testa, The Southern

Saturday, August 2, 2008 11:34 PM CDT

Luke's Shade Tree café

Address: 314 W. Water St. in Pinckneyville

Phone: 357-2408

Hours: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday thru Thursday; 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday

Popular Menu Items: French Toast (made with homemade cinnamon swirl bread and candied pecans), Ham and Cheddar Panini (made with apple butter) and the TBP (made with oven-roaster turkey, blue cheese and pear)

Reservations accepted Friday and Saturday nights

PINCKNEYVILLE - In a February 1959 article, Sports Illustrated reporter Gerald Holland intertwined stories of basketball and apple pie after visiting Luke's Café to chat with owner Olin Luke, a dedicated sports fan, about Pinckneyville's record-setting hoops team.

Today, almost five decades later, a framed copy of that magazine article hangs in a new restaurant with an oh-so-familiar name. Ryan Luke, Olin's great-grandson, has returned to Pinckneyville to open a new restaurant, Luke's Shade Tree Café, in the same neighborhood as his relative's two former restaurant locales.

"We always wanted to open our own place, and we thought it would be easier with the help of friends and family," said Ryan, who owns the new restaurant with his wife, Zoe.

Before renovating the old gas station building on Water Street into the vibrantly colored eatery it has become, Ryan spent several years working various seasonal jobs on the East Coast, from summers in Maine to winters in Florida. After that, he worked full-time positions in both of those states before moving to Chicago, where he'd spend six months working at a private country club.

Ryan and Zoe decided to move south to Pinckneyville, where they tried to purchase the former Carns Pizza building, which was formerly one of Olin's restaurants. When the Lukes found out another buyer had closed on the building, they sought out a different location and found their new home at 314 W. Water St. To commemorate his family's heritage, menus and photos of the old Luke businesses hang on the wall next to Holland's Sports Illustrated story.

"We get a lot of people that come by offering to bring old menus and pictures," Ryan said. "It's nice to see people who remember that and come in to see what I'm doing now."

Though Luke's Shade Tree Café has been open less than a month, business has been better than expected, Ryan said, and the owners are already thinking bigger. They are contemplating adding open mic nights and other entertainment to the restaurant's schedule. The building itself also offers some restraints because of its relatively small size, and the owners are already talking about a possible move to a larger facility at some point in the future.

"We're kind of small right now, and we're doing really well filling the place," Ryan said.

adam.testa@thesouthern.com

351-5031