New bar and restaurant being built in Palouse

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Nov 06, 20140

A town without a bar is about to return to being a town with a bar.

Palouse resident Will Hume and several partners began construction on what will be a new “Palouse Caboose” bar and grill.

The wooden structure going up at the corner of Beech and Main Street will be a new version of a onetime tavern in Palouse.

Hume, a furniture maker who grew up in Moscow and spent years working in restaurants in Portland, Ore., and Pullman, bought 8,500 square feet of land from a consortium of families to place the new restaurant.

It’s located away from the street, on the southern half of the property, in order to accommodate the local flood plain.

“It’s elevated to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) specifications,” Hume said. “For example, in the flood of ‘96 it would’ve stayed dry.”

The space in front will also allow for a large patio area.

The endeavor to build the restaurant grew from Hume’s original premise last spring to have a food truck and a patio. However, his application with the state Liquor Control Board was denied – they wouldn’t allow beer and wine sales from a non-permanent structure.

Hume’s partners in the venture now include his mother, Mary DuPree, a retired professor in the music department of University of Idaho, and his father, Mark Hume, a Moscow architect and builder who designed the building.

Hume’s partners in the restaurant also include Eric Wilkerson and Kim Rundle, who is the Front End Manager of the Breakfast Club restaurant in Moscow.

All are working to complete the building, including Will making the furniture for the space.

“We’re doing everything, we’re doing it all,” Will said. “Except for electrical, HVAC, etcetera.”

In the end, Hume indicated that the building’s galvanized metal roof and dark red metal siding will evoke what the Palouse Caboose was.

“With not very much imagination, it’s going to look a little like a caboose,” he said. “We’re going for the subtle – the lines of the building and the color.”

Open

Once open, the new Palouse Caboose will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days per week.

“We want people to know that it’s open, for there to be no question that it’s open every day,” he said.

On the menu will be basics and a few twists: burgers and fries, chili verde, gumbo, locally made bread and local produce.

“We based it off of bar food,” Hume said. “We’re not going to fancy it up, just do what we do well. For the most part, made from scratch.”

In addition, there are plans for a steak night on Fridays and barbecue nights.

Drinks will include local beer and Washington wine.

“And it’s going to be totally reasonable,” Hume said.

A regulation horseshoe pit is being built too.

“This is the first time in Palouse history, from the people I’ve talked to, that Palouse didn’t have a bar,” Hume said. “Every small town worth its salt has a church, a school and a bar. That’s a quote from somebody. It’s been my business plan for a while.”

The group of families which owned the 64x84-foot lot originally bought it 10 years ago for this purpose.

It was a group of five couples, who called the corner the “PEP lot,” for Palouse Economic Partners, LLC. It’s the former site of the old Williamson Department Store, which was torn down at the turn of the millennium.

One of the five couples was Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove and his wife Paula.

“What we wanted to do was help Palouse economically,” Echanove said. “We’re going to get a beautiful building out of this. This is exactly why everyone got involved with it at the start. And I like beer and fries.”

Moscow to Portland to Palouse

Hume has lived in Palouse for the past five years, after moving back to the area from Portland where he eventually was a partner in a failed restaurant and bar downtown called Subterra.

In Palouse, after the Brick Wall Bar and Grill burned down the night of its soft opening in April, Hume noticed the lack.

“As much as anything, I want a place to get a beer and a burger,” said Hume, a customer of the former Palouse Tavern, which was the previous tenant in the space where the Brick Wall was going to be.

Moving to two acres in Palouse in 2009, Hume never expected to get back into owning a restaurant, although he worked at Black Cypress in Pullman as a bartender and server.

“I planned to grow vegetables for restaurants and do my own thing, not have a 9-to-5,” he said.

Now he works to have the Palouse Caboose open some time this winter.

“Almost certainly into next year sometime,” he said.

The structure is weather-proofed and the inside work is underway.

As far as equipment, it’s lining up to Hume’s surprise.

He has arranged to buy a used commercial stove and griddle from people who have approached him to say they had one not being used.

“We’ve got a verbal sale,” he said.

Around the corner from the kitchen, Hume is building a 20-foot long bar out of a walnut tree he bought from Lewiston two years ago. He had it milled into whole-width three-inch planks which require drying.

Stacked in his garage, they are now ready to be used.

Hume originally planned to build furniture out of the wood.

“I had no premonition of using it to build a bar,” he said.

On the walls will be local art of some kind.

“Invariably there will be some sort of nod to railroads,” Hume said.

This week, work continues on interior walls and plumbing. The roof and siding will start next week, Hume indicated, along with finishing the concrete slab floor, building furniture and assembling the kitchen.