Au revoir 15 Barry Drive

Not really food related. Not really drink related. But very Dana related.

I spent my formative years frequenting the home-style establishment of 15 Barry Drive.  Night after night, day after day there was an assortment of meals, birthday cakes, chocolate whipped cream cake when the head chef was tired and needed a night off 'baking from scratch', cottage cheese pancakes,  cream cheese french toast, stuffed chicken, brisket, and of course, toffee squares, brown sugar brownies, rice custard and an assortment of other delights such as 'broken glass' - an assortment of fruit flavoured jello and cool whip cut into little pieces and put into a 1950's jello mould. Equal parts bizarre and tasty.

We has instant hot cocoa with mini marshmallows in winter, an endless supply of ice pops in summer, and of course Cape Cod potato chips year round.

15 Barry Drive was a wonderful place to eat, develop my love for cooking, and generally spend the majority of my time when not in school, dance, drama or soccer. There were the occasional misbehaved ‘guests’ (aka, my siblings) who in retaliation of my endlessly endearing trait of being an annoying little sister would lock me in rooms, dunk my head in paste (yes, true) or sit on me whilst letting off a maelstrom of extremely toxic gas.  And of course, there is the night that will live in the history books for generations to come, the infamous wall punching, spaghetti throwing, ice water and Reebok high top sneaker chucking night.  It's a nugget of a story folks.

Last week, 15 Barry Drive closed it's doors after having been open for 35 years.  It saw it's fair share of  laughter and tears, was privy to some absolutely stunning pieces of canine brilliance...Dakota tricking MB into getting up out of his favourite seat, eating the entire smoked fish platter and sneakily hiding the evidence, and of course…. who can forget when he ate the entire bag of Hershey’s kisses?  Chocolate may be lethal for dogs, but not when you grow up at 15 Barry Drive.

There was a little blood, a fair amount of sweat, and a whole lot of tears over the past few weeks.  But mostly, lots of wonderful memories to keep us going for quite a few more years to come.