The grand-opening menu from 1916: “Patrons will be entertained with music.”
LAUREL—Next to the cash register at the Owl Café, there is a framed menu from the restaurant’s grand opening on Aug. 13, 1916. At the bottom of the menu it says: “Patrons will be entertained with music.”
Now, just shy of 100 years later, new owner Kathy Boyd can make the same promise, at least on Saturday mornings. She has revived the “bluegrass Saturday breakfast” tradition that made the Prairie Winds Café in tiny Molt, 25 miles northwest of Billings, so popular from 2001 until it closed in 2013.
Kathy Boyd
Bringing in the bluegrass was suggested by John Letcher, a Laurel resident who has been a fan of Boyd’s cooking for years.
“She has quite the following,” Letcher said. “She’s a pretty famous cooking person around Laurel.”
Letcher was also friends with Larry and LaLonnie Larson, residents of Molt who cooked up the idea of playing music at the Prairie Winds. Letcher figured the Larsons’ band, Highway 302, would be perfect for the Owl.
He suggested it to Boyd, and she was game. As Letcher put it, “I knew her and I knew Larry and those guys, so it just kind of clicked.”
Highway 302 kicked off the new tradition on Jan. 10, then played again this Saturday. As in Molt, the music will run every Saturday from 9 to noon. The first week there was a good crowd, but this Saturday, the day after the Billings Gazette ran a small blurb on the Owl in the Enjoy section, the place was packed.
Spur of the Moment is scheduled to play this coming Saturday, and other bluegrass bands from the area are making arrangements to get a performance rotation going. Boyd said Larry Larson “got me hooked up with all kinds of other bluegrass bands.”
Among the crowd Saturday were Lynn and Bill Solberg of Laurel, who showed up with their granddaughter, Ember. Ember got up at one point and plucked along on LaLonnie Larson’s upright bass as the band played “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Lynn Solberg said they don’t normally venture out quite so early, and her husband added, “But we got up for this.”
Boyd said her first job in Laurel, when she moved there from Nebraska 20 years ago, was cooking at the Owl. The café has been through several owners over the years, and Boyd started working on calling it her own more than a year ago.
She worked at other restaurants in Laurel before buying the Owl, and lots of people who followed her from restaurant to restaurant are excited that she’s found a home.
“I’m pretty proud because I feel like I have groupies,” she said.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Ember Solberg plucks on LaLonnie Laron’s bass during a rendition of “Old MacDonald.”
She said she’s taken the menu back to basic ’50s and ’60s offerings, and “just about everything we do here is homemade,” including bread pudding and cabbage rolls. She serves lots of side pork at breakfast and lots of burgers and fries at lunch. Dinner standards include chicken-fried steak, pork chops, liver and onions and “wonderful cod for fish and fries.”
The Owl is about three times bigger than the Prairie Winds, with seating for 130, not counting seats in the banquet room behind the main dining area.
The café is open seven days a week at 203 E. Main St., next door to the old Sonny O’Day’s bar. It opens every day at 6 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m., except on Sunday, when it closes at 3. Starting in February, Boyd plans to stay open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays.
Boyd said the Owl has been “a mainstay around here forever. I’m very proud of the tradition, and that’s what I’m trying to bring back.”
LaLonnie Larson knows about that tradition.
“My mom was born in 1923,” she said, “born and raised in Belfry, Montana, and she said she remembered riding the bus to music festivals in Billings and stopping at the Owl Café to eat. The Owl Café—it’s just been there.”
As at the Prairie Winds, musicians get a free breakfast and whatever tips are thrown their way, usually into an open mandolin or guitar case. LaLonnie said Highway 302 had a fine time at the Owl and is looking forward to more Saturdays there.
“Musicians need a place to play,” she said. “They just only want to be warm and dry. And if it’ll help that little gal get her place off the ground, that’ll be great.”
