I assume this article is from the Spectator, no date but it should be from sometime in 1975.
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Around & About
with Stan McNeill
He was from the Peterborough area. Name of Carpenter, he said. George Carpenter, a barrel of a man who's obviously fond of food, making one of his periodic trips to Hamilton and sitting in his car outside Hutch's restaurant washing down a double hamburger with a cup of coffee.
"A bit out of your way down here," I ventured, waving a hand at Van Wagner's Beach and Confederation Park.
"Maybe", he said, lighting up a fat cigar. "But you want to know something? . . This place makes the best darn' hamburger I ever tasted."
That won't come as any surprise to hundreds of Hamiltonians who have grown up with a kind of reverence for Hutch's Dingley Dell restaurant, the haphazard collection of frame buildings that have lorded it over the Beach Strip for the past 26 years and that appear to be settling down for another 26.
People who visit the place regularly say it's more than a restaurant . . . it's a sportsmen's club, a community hall, a neighborly place where even strangers talk to each other.
Nest-egg
It's been that way since the day Bill Hutchinson left the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1946 and with his wife Margaret decided to invest his nest-egg in a Beach Strip snack bar a little way from his present location. In 1949 the three-year lease on the original place ran out ... at the same time Dingley Dell went up for sale, and Bill and Margaret took a chance.
It's 'Friday lunchtime and cars are lined up in front of the restaurant and have spilled over into the adjoining beaches and park areas . . . the little take-out shack is doing a roaring trade with french fries and pop, and the small restaurant, barely big enough to seat half a dozen couples, is jammed to capacity.
"How d'you manage to serve them all?" I ask Jim, the son of the house, born just six days after the first restaurant opened.
"Well, we keep a pretty big staff," he says. At least six servers were crowded behind the tiny counter. "And we guarantee a hamburger, hot dog, cheeseburger, or whatever you want, in one minute flat . . . just watch." He-wasn't just boasting, either.
It's this speedy service that accounts for their being able to average 10,000 meals every week during the summer , . . "And that's not counting the French fries trade."
Festooned
THE HUTCHINSONS still remember one memorable July 1 weekend when in one day they emptied 73 10 gallon tanks of Pepsi into thirsty customers . . . "The Pepsi dealers wondered what had hit them," Jim says. "We had them running backwards and forwards all day long."
Bill takes me into the small living quarters adjoining the restaurant and feeds me a cheeseburger filled with strips of crisp bacon. It's probably the best I've ever had.
One wall is festooned with rosettes and ribbons . . . Bill's souvenirs of several years when he was one of Canada's top men in the Labrador retriever show ring. "Yes, I got a few prizes," he says casually. Jim broke in: "Huh! That's only half of them."
Bill shows me photographs harking back to his days in the air force when he played hockey with many players who later joined the ranks of the NHL. He was a pilot then with the Coastal Command in British Columbia . . . "Sure, I was a big hero . . . served the war in B.C. ... A good hockey player! Oh sure, during the war they'd take anyone ... My only claim to fame is that I played with the Grimsby Peach Kings after the war, the year we won the Ontario title"
Modesty can be a becoming trait but sometimes it can be overdone . . . Until I looked in the Spec files I didn't know that Bill had been awarded a silver medal for bravery a few years back for trying to save a woman who drowned in Lake Ontario.
Clientele
The only thing he isn't modest about is his fishing . . . and he doesn't have to be ... he has scads of pictures to substantiate the claims of the big ones he's caught, both in Canada and in Florida where he and Margaret go for a couple of months every winter.
In winter Jim stays home -. "I kinda relax . . . play a little hockey, do some bowling." The restaurant used to be open 12 months a year but for the past few years they've closed it up for December, January and February . . . but if ever Confederation Park develops winter facilities they'll go back to the 365 days a year with opening hours as at present ... 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next day.
At first glance, Dingley Dell isn't the place you'd suspect of having a classy clientele, but among its patrons count Mayor Vic Copps ("Maybe two or three times a year," says Jim), Angelo Mosca and other Tiger-Cats, Gerry Cheevers of NHL fame, and the vice-presidents of two of Hamilton's bigger companies.
"We get them all here," says Jim. "Kids in jeans, guys in business suits and sometimes, later in the evening, customers in tuxedos."
It's almost 2 p.m. when I leave . . . the hectic lunch trade is over but the old cast iron hot plate is still going strong. It's been working constantly for 26 years, ever since Bill took over the place, but it can still spit out a pretty mean hamburger.
Photo- Bill Hutchinson (nearest camera), owner of Hutch's restaurant on Van Wagner's Beach, is a friend and adviser to dog-owners who regularly visit his restaurant.
_______________________________________________________
Around & About
with Stan McNeill
He was from the Peterborough area. Name of Carpenter, he said. George Carpenter, a barrel of a man who's obviously fond of food, making one of his periodic trips to Hamilton and sitting in his car outside Hutch's restaurant washing down a double hamburger with a cup of coffee.
"A bit out of your way down here," I ventured, waving a hand at Van Wagner's Beach and Confederation Park.
"Maybe", he said, lighting up a fat cigar. "But you want to know something? . . This place makes the best darn' hamburger I ever tasted."
That won't come as any surprise to hundreds of Hamiltonians who have grown up with a kind of reverence for Hutch's Dingley Dell restaurant, the haphazard collection of frame buildings that have lorded it over the Beach Strip for the past 26 years and that appear to be settling down for another 26.
People who visit the place regularly say it's more than a restaurant . . . it's a sportsmen's club, a community hall, a neighborly place where even strangers talk to each other.
Nest-egg
It's been that way since the day Bill Hutchinson left the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1946 and with his wife Margaret decided to invest his nest-egg in a Beach Strip snack bar a little way from his present location. In 1949 the three-year lease on the original place ran out ... at the same time Dingley Dell went up for sale, and Bill and Margaret took a chance.
It's 'Friday lunchtime and cars are lined up in front of the restaurant and have spilled over into the adjoining beaches and park areas . . . the little take-out shack is doing a roaring trade with french fries and pop, and the small restaurant, barely big enough to seat half a dozen couples, is jammed to capacity.
"How d'you manage to serve them all?" I ask Jim, the son of the house, born just six days after the first restaurant opened.
"Well, we keep a pretty big staff," he says. At least six servers were crowded behind the tiny counter. "And we guarantee a hamburger, hot dog, cheeseburger, or whatever you want, in one minute flat . . . just watch." He-wasn't just boasting, either.
It's this speedy service that accounts for their being able to average 10,000 meals every week during the summer , . . "And that's not counting the French fries trade."
Festooned
THE HUTCHINSONS still remember one memorable July 1 weekend when in one day they emptied 73 10 gallon tanks of Pepsi into thirsty customers . . . "The Pepsi dealers wondered what had hit them," Jim says. "We had them running backwards and forwards all day long."
Bill takes me into the small living quarters adjoining the restaurant and feeds me a cheeseburger filled with strips of crisp bacon. It's probably the best I've ever had.
One wall is festooned with rosettes and ribbons . . . Bill's souvenirs of several years when he was one of Canada's top men in the Labrador retriever show ring. "Yes, I got a few prizes," he says casually. Jim broke in: "Huh! That's only half of them."
Bill shows me photographs harking back to his days in the air force when he played hockey with many players who later joined the ranks of the NHL. He was a pilot then with the Coastal Command in British Columbia . . . "Sure, I was a big hero . . . served the war in B.C. ... A good hockey player! Oh sure, during the war they'd take anyone ... My only claim to fame is that I played with the Grimsby Peach Kings after the war, the year we won the Ontario title"
Modesty can be a becoming trait but sometimes it can be overdone . . . Until I looked in the Spec files I didn't know that Bill had been awarded a silver medal for bravery a few years back for trying to save a woman who drowned in Lake Ontario.
Clientele
The only thing he isn't modest about is his fishing . . . and he doesn't have to be ... he has scads of pictures to substantiate the claims of the big ones he's caught, both in Canada and in Florida where he and Margaret go for a couple of months every winter.
In winter Jim stays home -. "I kinda relax . . . play a little hockey, do some bowling." The restaurant used to be open 12 months a year but for the past few years they've closed it up for December, January and February . . . but if ever Confederation Park develops winter facilities they'll go back to the 365 days a year with opening hours as at present ... 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next day.
At first glance, Dingley Dell isn't the place you'd suspect of having a classy clientele, but among its patrons count Mayor Vic Copps ("Maybe two or three times a year," says Jim), Angelo Mosca and other Tiger-Cats, Gerry Cheevers of NHL fame, and the vice-presidents of two of Hamilton's bigger companies.
"We get them all here," says Jim. "Kids in jeans, guys in business suits and sometimes, later in the evening, customers in tuxedos."
It's almost 2 p.m. when I leave . . . the hectic lunch trade is over but the old cast iron hot plate is still going strong. It's been working constantly for 26 years, ever since Bill took over the place, but it can still spit out a pretty mean hamburger.
Photo- Bill Hutchinson (nearest camera), owner of Hutch's restaurant on Van Wagner's Beach, is a friend and adviser to dog-owners who regularly visit his restaurant.