BOB GWALTNEY / Courier & Press The grand opening for Cookie´s Cookin restaurant is Saturday, but customers from all over the city are finding their way to the restaurant located in the former Evans Cafe at 1010 S. Kentucky Ave. Marcus Black serves Bob Green and Ed Gardner during the lunch hour Thursday.
Rosalee Barnes remembers standing in line to get inside the popular Evans Cafe, which served food that was so good it was well worth the wait.
“The Evans Cafe had great customer service. The food was like home-cooked. It was wonderful. And the cafe was centrally located, so we could walk there,” said Barnes.
The business operated in what is now a landmark building on the southeast corner of Washington and South Kentucky avenues.
Rosalee Barnes shows off her world-famous hot water cornbread in the kitchen of Cookie’s Cookin restaurant Thursday. She owns the restaurant with her husband, the Rev. Richard Barnes.
Henry Evans opened the cafe in 1943 with the jukebox playing “Pistol Packing Momma” and 12 local shipyard workers waiting for service.
Evans’ brother, Harold, later ran the cafe for many years until it closed.
In recent years, several people have tried unsuccessfully to make a go of a restaurant operation in the former Evans Cafe.
The old cafe also once was a senior nutrition site, popular with older customers.
Now, Barnes, well known for her soul-food cooking expertise, and her husband, the Rev. Richard Barnes, pastor of Eastview Baptist Church, hope to re-create Evans Cafe.
“We’re trying to bring this back to where it used to be,” said Rosalee Barnes, referring to the couple’s new Cookie’s Cookin restaurant, which has opened in the renovated former cafe building.
Cookie’s Cookin claims to serve “the best country cookin’ soul food in town.”
“We want all denominations here. We love people, and that’s what they will get here,” Barnes said.
“In coming to Miss Cookie’s, you’re going to have a great experience of good food, great service and godly fellowship. … We thank God for what he has brought us thus far. …
“God gave us this vision some years ago. Finally, the opportunity recently presented itself.”
The Barneses believe their new adventure is off to a fine start.
Cookie’s Cookin is attracting residents from the surrounding neighborhood and from across the city, thanks largely to word spread by other spiritual leaders and churchgoers in the community who want to help support the Barneses.
“A couple from Akin Park, around the corner, sat and had dinner the other day and gave the waiter a $20 tip. Then, around seven members from Christian Fellowship Church (on the city’s far North Side) came,” Rosalee Barnes said.
Pastors and their spouses receive dinner on Sunday at half the price, and churchgoers who bring a church bulletin get $1 off dinner.
Cookie’s Cookin also has other things going for it, including Barnes’ mouthwatering recipes from which she makes the restaurant entrees and desserts, including pork steak smothered in onions and gravy, and beef and onion liver gravy, fried or baked catfish and chicken, fried apples, beef liver, corn pudding, yams, chess pie, cheesecake and fruit cobblers.
Barnes, who turns 61 today, built her reputation as a superb cook and baker over the years, turning out dinners served at anniversary banquets and for other occasions at Eastview Church.
The Barneses — wed 40 years — also have the support of their large family, including their daughters, Ritchele Barnes and Pamela Hay; their son, Richard Jr.; and grandchildren, Dyreka Gulley, Dykeka Holmes and Derion and Michael Holmes, all of whom help out in the restaurant along with numerous volunteers.
Marcus Black is the dining supervisor.
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Rosalee Barnes has been known all her life as “Cookie,” ever since an uncle at her birth said, “That’s going to be my cookie,” she explained.
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