When we first came across this Abandoned Grand Bend Restaurant it as locked up tight. But on a recent road trip, Zenning with Zay & I decided to check it again & it was wide open!
I was surprised to see the place had been mostly emptied. I guess it makes sense as restaurant equipment isn't cheap! It's nice to see that rather than letting it all rot, the equipment & furniture was repurposed!
From what I was able to find out about this place was that there were two different restaurants here over the years! The most recent seemed to have been called Bernie Green's Restaurant. Before that it was the Thirsty Fox! There had been an auction done to sell off the equipment. I had found a sign in sheet as well, there were auction stickers on some of the items. Aside from that I was unable to really find anything else about it.
I was actually surprised that this place was sitting there rotting away. It was obvious that it wasn't being watched anymore. There was now a window & door wide open. Previously we could only get a glimpse through the window. Sitting along the main drag it would definitely be profitable. Especially in the summer when cottagers & beach lovers flock there!
The Abandoned Grand Bend Restaurant also has something unexpected. There was an apartment on the second floor. I didn't think there actually was a second floor. I just assumed it was part of the design. There was some significant water damage up there. Especially by the skylights! Then down int he basement this got bad. It was pretty nasty down there. Plenty of decay, mold & other grossness. We didn't spend much time there for obvious reasons!
Great childhood memories in the ’80s/90s eating at the Fox. It used to have gorgeous built-in wooden booths. My brother and I would always order virgin Shirley Temples, which came with plastic sword skewers and maraschino cherries. We would basically fight to the death with those swords (after we ate the cherries, of course). After the Fox (and all its delightful traditional pub food) shut down, the place was bought by a seafood restaurant and our family lost interest until Bernie’s moved in.
As a teen, I spent the 1998-2000 seasons working at J-Dee’s restaurant on the strip, then the 2001-2002 seasons in the kitchen at Bernie’s (same owners as J-Dee’s). Fun fact: we were told that Bernie Greene was a real person (uncle of one of the owners), unlike Aunt Gussie (previous name of the restaurant across the street, now The Lakehound), who from my understanding was made up. Which, obviously, made us the superior restaurant.
I never got tired of the food at Bernie’s (I still dream of the pesto pizza), and have some great memories in that basement prep kitchen! We had 2 radios set up, one at each end of the kitchen, and depending where you walked one or the other would lose signal (hence the need for 2). Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” had a chokehold on the radio and if I never hear that song again, it will be too soon. There were strict rules on where you were allowed to stand in the basement kitchen (unless Avril was playing–obviously) so as not to disrupt the signal.
It hurts my heart to see that beautiful building rot and recognize that it is likely beyond repair. A few years back I paddleboarded up the river to the dock entrance and saw the dock rotted as badly as the building–boaters from the marina could dinghy straight up to the restaurant in eras past.
Thank you for documenting this bittersweet history.