Old faces, new dishes greet diners and staff at revived Peaks of Otter Lodge

BEDFORD — Brenda Dudley and Raye Rice dined at the Peaks of Otter Lodge and Restaurant the day it closed.

That was in November, back when no one was sure if the classic Blue Ridge Parkway attraction in Bedford County would ever reopen. That was a sad day for the two friends from Buchanan and former lodge employees.

“We were hoping and praying it would open,” Dudley said. “We weren’t confident, though. If were younger, we might’ve reopened it ourselves.”

Their prayers were answered Friday, when the women were among the first customers seated when the restaurant opened at lunchtime under a new manager.

Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts won a 10-year contract from the National Park Service to run the lodge and restaurant in April, five months after longtime operator Peaks of Otter of Virginia opted not to renew its contract.

More than 40 people ate lunch in the dining room within the first hour after its noon opening. They were treated to a revamped menu that included lobster rolls, hamburgers, wraps and salads.

Much about the lodge looked as it did when it closed the weekend after Thanksgiving. The furnishings were mostly the same, the views of Abbott Lake were still beautiful and the same deer head hung over the stairs to the first floor. The only thing missing was the view of the peaks themselves, as clouds hid the twin mountains of Sharp Top and Flat Top.

About half of the lodge’s 72 employees worked at the lodge when it closed, said Pam Wightman, human relations director.

Servers Jackie Maher, who has worked at the lodge for 20 years, and Meridith Clark, who has been there for seven, were happy to be back.

“It feels good just to be working again,” Maher said. “Everything is fresh and new. Everybody’s excited about starting up again.”

That goes double for Calvin and Mary Jane Rice, a married couple who had more than 100 years of combined service at the Peaks.

Calvin started with the Peaks of Otter Virginia company in 1958, pumping gas at the Otter Creek store and driving the Sharp Top bus for longtime boss Bryce Wagoner, who built the lodge in 1964 and put in the lake a year later.

Mary Jane started with Wagoner around the time the lodge opened. The Rices stayed with the company after Tidewater Hotels & Resorts took over in 1989 and after Crestline Hotels & Resorts absorbed Tidewater in the 2000s.

Calvin Rice will manage the restaurant, overseeing a wait staff of eight people. About a half-hour before the restaurant opened, he was giving instructions, including ordering a young waiter to go downstairs and iron his shirt.

“This is a good company to work for,” Calvin Rice said of Delaware North. “I think I’m going to be really happy with them, I really am.”

Delaware North will be rolling out changes during the next few months, though. The 63-room lodge, which billed itself as a place to get away from telephones and televisions, will soon be adding widescreen high-definition televisions equipped with DirecTV satellite service, high-speed Internet and Keurig coffee makers to rooms. Room packages start about $100 a night.

The lodge will reopen its bar and lounge when it receives its alcoholic beverage license from the state, which it expected to get by this weekend. The lounge will have at least three televisions, which will show mostly sports.

Eric Frantz, who has been acting manager during the lodge’s opening preparations the past three weeks, said he knows that some people won’t like the new amenities, but that many travelers will enjoy the digital and satellite access.

“It’s obvious that the community loves this building,” said Frantz, who works for Delaware North as the manager of the Lodge at Geneva on the Lake in Ohio.

He said that the lodge will be about half-full during its first week and a half. Even though the Wi-Fi won’t be ready for several weeks, guests should see TVs in their rooms within a week or so and they will notice changes in the bathroom, where bar soaps and shampoo bottles are being replaced with dispensers, all part of the company’s mission to cut down on waste.

“The National Park Service wants a lot less in the landfill and a lot more recycling,” Frantz said.

Staffers have been working for weeks to get the lodge ready for opening day, from mowing waist-high grass last month to putting down new carpet. Many improvements were still happening at the last minute, however.

The lunch menus arrived barely an hour before the opening. Wait staff quickly inserted the paper menus into folders, then reported to the kitchen for an introduction to the dishes prepared by chefs Pascal Beaute, Itza Henderson and Christian De Vos, all of whom work at other Delaware North resorts.

Beaute, his head topped with a chef’s toque, described the plates of prepared meals to the staff — plates topped with wraps, salads, burgers and more.

“The classic BLT right here has triple cheddar, and I added a rice salad,” Beaute said. “The classic burger is made with our own patties, not frozen but made from scratch.”

By noon, nearly a dozen people were waiting for tables by the windows, which afford the lake views. The first couple seated was Dianne and Dick Gracie of Daytona, Fla., who had no idea it was the lodge’s opening day.

“We’re driving the parkway and we said, ‘Look at all the cars; looks like it’s open,’ ” Dick Gracie said. “Then, the people behind us in line let us know it was reopening and told us all the history.”

The restaurant will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and will feature a breakfast buffet and a brunch on Sundays. The Friday seafood buffet will resume within a few weeks.

Even though Delaware North manages concessions, retail and lodging for numerous companies, from baseball stadiums to airports to national parks, Frantz said interest in the Peaks of Otter’s reopening has eclipsed all of Delaware’s other interests.

The Peaks of Otter Lodge and Restaurant’s “Facebook page is busier than any Facebook page in our company,” he said. “And we’re talking Kennedy Space Center and Yosemite National Park.”

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