A PIECE OF FONTHILL’S SMALL TOWN PAST FADES AWAY

Keith’s Restaurant closes its doors after more than 60 years

By Steve Henschel, Photo: Staff Photo

[Niagara this Week, 25 May 2017]

PELHAM-Looking out the windows of Keith’s restaurant Vilma Moretti has watched Fonthill’s continuous march through the decades.

She was just 18 when she started serving at the eatery, famed for its pies, on the corner of Highway 20 and Pelham Street. The restaurant has been central to her life, she married Keith Crick in 1962, and has run the restaurant along with her son Tom Crick since Keith’s passing in 1993. Now, at age 73, and with the death of her son Tom, the restaurant has closed. On a Friday evening the restaurant’s guests enjoyed a meal and one last slice of pie, before Moretti closed the doors on the location that has sat at the very heart of Fonthill since 1959. No longer will she look out the windows and witness the ever-changing face of the town.

“I don’t know where I am sometimes,” said Moretti, who has watched big box stores move into the town. She said it seems sometimes the small town she grew up in is long gone. Klager’s Meats, where Keith’s used to get its meats is closed now, so is Keiths.

“It’s time for me to retire,” said Moretti, explaining with the loss of her son and business partner to pancreatic cancer she can’t keep the restaurant open.

“I still see Tom coming through the doors,” said Moretti, speaking from the shuttered restaurant where the chairs now sit upturned on the tables.

“He’ll always be here,” she said, explaining it is hard to close the restaurant. She added, however, that the memories of that place she will carry forever.

“This place is bricks and mortar, the memories are here, and here,” she said, first pointing to her heart, and then her head. On a physical level those memories live in the more than 300 photos of customers Moretti has been picking up over the last week.

“I’ve been on this corner since I was 18, it’s not been only work, but my social life,” said Moretti.

Keith first moved into the location back in 1959, continuing his foray into the restaurant business after operating the Drift In next door for several years. Before he took over the building it had been a confectionary and then a bakery since first being built in 1929. Keith was born on a farm where he learned to cook from his mother. He brought that talent, and her recipes, to the restaurant business where he, and eventually Moretti and Tom, kept a focus on using top-notch ingredients and made-from-scratch recipes cooked daily.

“He certainly could bake pies,” said Moretti, adding, “Tom took after him in that respect.

Moretti met Keith, 26 years her senior, when she took on a serving position after graduating from Pelham High School. He was a friendly man, she recalled, young at heart who loved to golf, play bridge and talk politics.

“He was a charmer,” she said.

Moretti explained it is the people she will miss the most.

“My customers as well as my staff are my family,” she said, adding some of her wit staffers have been working tables for over two decades.”

Moretti said Keith’s is home for many of the staff, patron and herself.

“That is what this place is, everybody comes home to Keith’s,” said Moretti, who is putting the location up for sale. She hopes that perhaps another restauranteur with a focus on home cooking could open up shop.

*Personal note. I cannot stress enough how wonderful this spot was for everyone in the village. Not only the pies were amazing, but the roast beef was worth the trip to Keiths.’