Foodservice industry veteran now runs Noah’s Inn

By Colleen Isherwood, Editor

NEUSTADT, ON—So what’s a guy who worked in the restaurant equipment industry for 40 years doing in Neustadt, Ontario, population less than 500?  Bryan Schenk, who has worked for Cassidy’s, Vollrath and Oneida, is now the proud owner of Noah’s Inn, a 150-year-old restaurant and hostelry, located not far from the farm where he grew up.

Schenk was visiting a sister in nearby Hanover in 2001, when he saw the for sale sign on the inn and thought, “that looks like an opportunity”. He bought the building and continued working at Oneida for three more years until his retirement in 2004.

It still took two more years before he could open the 50-seat casual fine dining restaurant, a bar and overnight accommodation on the second floor.

“The previous owner had lost it to the bank and stripped it of anything of any value.  The only thing left was the bones,” Schenk told CLN.  “There were no light fixtures or anything.”  In some ways that was fortunate, because Schenk could open things up and refurbish it the way he wanted.  And they hadn’t destroyed the integrity of the structure—for example, the woodwork was more or less intact.

“We had to give it a major cleaning because there was almost 150 years of dirt!” Schenk added. The building had been operated as a commercial hotel since it was built in 1860.

Noah’s Inn was named after Schenk’s grandfather, who used to come to the inn to pay his mortgage to Mr. Himmler, whose family owned it from 1890 to 1930.  In fact, Schenk’s business card labels him “Noah’s favourite grandson”. At that point, the front part of the inn was a men’s beverage room. Women and children had to wait for the men in a little room outside the bar.

Once he left Oneida, Schenk hired a carpenter and started work on the project in earnest.  “I wanted to do it slowly, because I didn’t want to destroy the history here,” he said.  “It probably would have been cheaper [to have just installed drywall] but it wouldn’t have given me the end product I was looking for."

“Our advantage is that we are one of the very few fine dining establishments north of Kitchener, to the point that most wine companies don’t have a representative in the area.”

Dinner specialties include the 8 oz. Award Winning West Grey Strip Loin for $22.99, and Sunday brunch features Rosti made with grated potato, Emmenthal and Gruyère cheese and herbs. The wine list includes more than 50 wines including two from Pfalz, Germany, which is close to the German town of Neustadt.  Beers include offerings from the nearby Neustadt Springs Brewery and Steelback from nearby Tiverton.

Most restaurant patrons come from towns a maximum of a half hour drive from Neustadt, including Kincardine, Port Elgin, Hanover, Walkerton, Mount Forest, Palmerston and Durham. They also get a lot of people from Guelph because of a very positive article that appeared in the Guelph Mercury when they opened in 2006.

Peak restaurant times are July/August, November/December and Mother’s Day weekend.

Noah’s Inn’s chef is Carey McLellan, who has complete autonomy in the kitchen, planning menus, doing purchasing and hiring back of the house staff.

Ann Heggie, who was originally a partner in the venture, individually decorated the three upstairs guestrooms. On weekends, most patrons are vacationers, but an increasing trend is to accommodate families who are visiting relatives in the area, and can’t stay at Grandma’s because Grandma is in a nursing home.  During the week, they get business people who are dealing with companies like Telesat and Energizer, which have warehouses in the area. Guests have come from as far away as Colorado.

In an attempt to be as green as possible, Noah’s Inn purchases as much local product as is available, dealing with suppliers like West Grey Premium Meats, Filsinger’s Organic Farm, Mildmay Cheese House, Pitt Produce, Barrie’s Asparagus, Cameron’s Potatoes and of course, Neustadt Springs Brewery.

The inn has a composting and recycling program, which limits their landfill garbage to less than two bags per week.  “We used to have a 60 cubic yard dumpster that was emptied every two weeks,” Schenk said.

“I hadn’t planned to be hands on, but I found we weren’t being successful until I got involved in the business. Because I live in the building, I can make sure the gas is off, the switches are off.”  In fact, Schenk once averted a near-disaster by identifying a pinhole leak in a compressor that sounded strange.  If he hadn’t been on premise, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the sound.

His advice to would-be innkeepers?  “Be prepared to work hard, but the rewards are there.”  

In particular, Schenk enjoys hosting guests in the restaurant in the evenings.  He also does a lot of work behind the scenes, building shelving for the kitchen, laundry, plumbing and repairing equipment.

Bryan Schenk, right, with Christine Clark, Andrea Jahrig and Andrea Barbuto at Noah’s Inn