AUGUST 2, 1995
“Ham dinner and a tuna sandwich with soup,” Ruth hollers at the kitchen door.
“More coffee?” Cherie asks a customer, as she pours from a thermal pot.
Ruth stops to play with a baby in a high chair at a long table near the back of the restaurant. Cherie moves over to the cash register as three downtown lawyers get ready to leave. This is the “Ruth and Cherie Show.” It goes on every weekday morning at the downtown Dacotah Restaurant. The two waitresses work side by side. Only a few of the customers realize they are mother and daughter.
Ruth Schnebel has been a waitress in Grand Forks for almost 40 years—ever since she started working for Mrs. Oliver, at the Golden Hour, in 1958. From there, she went to the Palace Cafe, the Elks Club and on to Miller’s Super Fair on South Washington, where she proudly served up the popular pancakes and homemade syrup.
After a brief interlude at Gordy’s on Gateway Drive, Ruth landed at the Dacotah eight years ago.
Here, she is almost an institution. She knows the customers and what they will order. She works well with her daughter, Cherie Kennedy, who started in the restaurant business when she was 14. She washed dishes first at the Palace, and then moved on to be a waitress.
Ruth starts the day at 7 A.M. and finishes at 1:30 P.M. Cherie comes in at 8:30 A.M. and finishes at 2 P.M., in time to rest up for her evening job in maintenance at UND.
Ruth and Cherie are so established and so comfortable in their routine at the Dacotah that work doesn’t seem hard to them. Ruth usually presides at the rear of the coffee shop, and Cherie’s post is up front. They know their tables and their customers.
“Sometimes, I go back and punch down the toast when I see certain customers come in,” Ruth says. “We know what they will order.”
“Most of the time, we just ask if they want the usual,” Cherie says. “They say ‘the usual,’ and it makes it easy.”
The regulars who come to the Dacotah have their regular tables. There’s a round one toward the front, where you might see John Shaft, Ed Fuehrer or Larry McEnroe. Larry Rux holds down another setting toward the back of the restaurant. Then there’s a big round table at the rear, where you find a cross section of Grand Forks men. You might see Dennis Page, Barry Behlhoff, Walt Mikkelson, Tom Jelliff or Jerry Haley. It varies from day to day.
Occasionally, there will a be a woman or two at the round table at the front. The tables at the rear of the restaurant seem to be a male bastion. Always, there is the bantering back and forth with Ruth and Cherie.
“I have to give my customers a bad time,” Ruth says. “The customers tell me it’s just like home.”
Their customers at the Dacotah include downtown residents and people who live in the Dacotah Place apartments. “You miss them if they move away or die,” Ruth says.
Cherie is still bummed out over the death of Mabel Jack, who lived downtown and came in for coffee and something chocolate. “If we didn’t have chocolate, she would ask for a bowl of soup,” Cherie says.
Breakfast items at the Dacotah include a full run of eggs, hash browns, toast, cereal and better-than-average pancakes. Customers help themselves from a pastry bar that features homemade rolls for 95 cents and a wide array of doughnuts, cookies and pie.
Ruth’s people order a lot of chef salads ($3.95). Cherie’s customers are partial to soup and sandwiches. Each day, the list of noon specials is written on a board. They include items such as a cup of soup and codfish dinner for $4.25. Soup could be old-fashioned tomato or turkey dumpling.
There’s usually a footlong hot dog for $1.60. You can get a mini chef salad for $2.95 and a regular chef salad for $3.95. A cup of soup with a tuna salad sandwich and fries is featured at $3.50. You can get a three-piece chicken dinner for $4.25 some days.
Cherie says she and her mother have grown close working together, although she says, “About every seven weeks, we have a little tiff.” Working with her mother has given her a chance to see Ruth in a different light than at home.
“She’s pretty cool,” Cherie says. “I never realized how much fun my mother could be.”
The Dacotah succumbed to the Red River flood of 1997. The space has been the home of a number of post-flood businesses, and is currently Shing Ya, a Japanese restaurant.