The History of Eastside Cafe

When Carla’s restaurant closed in late 1987, Elaine Martin and Dorsey Barger, who had dreamed of opening their own restaurant in an old house, knew they had found their home. They called their restaurant the “Eastside Café” to honor their new neighborhood and opened the doors on March 16th, 1988. The café featured a modest printed menu and Chef’s Chalkboard Specials often highlighting vegetables and herbs grown in its own back yard.

Some people dream of becoming basketball stars; some people want to be doctors or lawyers, singers, actors; others dream of becoming the President of the United States or bringing peace to the Middle East. When Elaine Martin and Dorsey Barger met while working at an Austin restaurant in 1986, they were each dreaming about opening a restaurant. Elaine had cooking in her genes. She had grown up in her mother’s kitchen in Dallas watching her measure precisely every tablespoon of baking powder to make cake or throw ingredients together creating an inspired dish. Dorsey grew up helping feed 250 campers and counselors three meals a day at her family’s summer camp in Pennsylvania. Elaine majored in Psychology at the University of Texas; Dorsey got her degree in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. After college, Elaine cooked in restaurants in Austin; while at another Austin restaurant, Dorsey seated people and bussed their tables. (What else are you going to do with undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Religious Studies?) They both washed a lot of dishes. Dorsey became a “front of the house” (customers and wait staff) manager; Elaine was a “back of the house” manager (cooks, prep, and food). They thought they’d done it all, so they thought they knew it all, it was time to open their own place.

In 1988 Elaine and Dorsey found a restaurant for rent in an old house on an acre of land with its own organic vegetable garden, and they opened the Eastside Café. What a humbling experience. Fifty-hour weeks managing other people’s restaurants became 70 and 80-hour weeks at their own. In the beginning, there were lunches with only ten tables and dinners with just three or four. (Oh, the romance of owning a restaurant.) Then the great reviews hit the papers, which brought hundreds of diners when there were only a couple of cooks and very few wait staff to handle a flood of new diners. (Ah, the romance of owning a restaurant.) Fifteen years later, the restaurant is thriving and looking forward to the next 15 years.