LaCrosse café set to open again

LaCrosse has three new residents, and with them, new café operators.

William “Ty” and Kristl Tyler arrived in LaCrosse April 3 with their daughter Leah and are now in the process of re-opening the café on Main Street which has sat vacant for more than a year.

“We are so excited!” Kristl told the Gazette. “We're still unpacking, but we're very, very excited.”

The Route 26 Café closed in LaCrosse in March of 2015 after opening Sept. 10, 2014. Proprietor Barbara Curtiss stepped down due to health issues. LaCrosse Community Pride, owners of the building, have been looking for a new operator ever since.

The Tylers have decided to name to café “Hazel's Place.”

“We purposefully left out café or diner in the name because we want to have a lot going on here,” Kristl said.

The name also has special meaning for both Ty and Kristl. Ty's mother was named “Hazel Diane Tyler,” and the name honors her. The couple's daughter, Leah, is also named for her grandmother, with her middle name being Diane. Leah, who is in fourth grade at the LaCrosse school, is also named after her great-grandmother. Kristl's aunt was “Hazel Camp Cauley,” who was born in LaCrosse and lived there for part of her life.

“To create a place called Hazel's Place, we feel like that honors both of our families,” said Kristl.

Kristl said she grew up spending many of her summers and Christmases in LaCrosse.

“My mother Kay Camp grew up here, and I visited here as a kid,” she said. “To me this was the most perfect place in the world.”

Ty and Kristl recently made the decision to move from where they were living in Denver.

“We left Denver because the cost of living was just out of control,” Kristl said. “When we left Denver, we thought we would end up in LaCrosse.”

That was not the case, though.

“We ended up stopping in Sheridan, Wyoming, and we said maybe we'll go a year here,” Kristl said.

That was in October. The Tylers had the idea that they wanted to create a business that was a “maker space” with food. Maker spaces are do-it-yourself spaces where people can create, learn and invent. Kristl had been working with computers and kids, and Ty had been working in food service.

Though they had planned to stay in Sheridan for about a year, Kristl contacted Carol Cauley at LaCrosse Community Pride in March and got the ball rolling on the restaurant. The couple plans to incorporate both of their trades into the business.

“We're going to have lots of kits that you can just come in and take off the wall and play with,” Kristl said, referencing her maker space ideas. She said these kits will include things which will help those who use them to learn about electronic prototyping and conductivity, among other things.

“Kids who are out of school can come play with it,” Ty said. “We'll give them something to do when they have nothing to do.”

Ty added that there will also be board games and things such as legos and an Xbox, as well as checkers and chess.

As for the food, that will be a mixed adventure.

“We'll sort of have Kristl's super food section and Ty's greasy spoon,” Kristl said.

Ty's section will have more of the burgers, fries, hashbrowns, bacon and sausage foods, while Kristl's section will focus more on a back to basics approach.

“I'm doing the restaurant I would want to eat at, and he's doing the restaurant he would want to eat at,” Kristl said.

Kristl's food will include things such as oatmeal, cranberries, nuts, raisins, eggs and veggies.

“I just like really basic ingredients,” she said. “There will be no hidden ingredients, and each dish can be special ordered. I will try to make every dish flexible.”

The two combinations will make it so that any dietary option is available, Kristl said.

“It could be worth the drive for someone who is out of town,” she said.

Kristl said they will also offer a notebook which includes the ingredients of the food they make.

“So people can look up exactly what's in there,” she said.

One thing both are excited about is ice cream.

“We are going to make our own ice cream,” Kristl said.

“It can be made with any kind of fruit,” Ty added. “Bananas, apples, blueberries.”

The ice cream will have Tillamook's vanilla ice cream as a base and be mixed with crushed frozen fruit.

“It will be as few ingredients as we can get,” Kristl said. “Some we'll mix in advance, and some we'll make to order.”

Another thing both are excited for is the wall of cups.

“This will be the wall of cups,” Ty said he pointed to the wall directly behind the counter.

“At some point, you can bring a cup you like to drink out of and hang it there,” Kristl said. “It will be your cup when you come in.”

They added that they are also thinking about having a “my cup” discount, with the discount being applied to someone bringing their own cup or using their own cup from the wall.

Kristl added that the sub-slogan for the restaurant will be “where the past meets the future.”

“We want it to be this kind of old '40s-style diner, but it's going to have robotics stuff,” she said. “And the food is where the past meets the future.”

The Tylers are currently getting the restaurant ready and going through permitting processes. With all the ideas spinning, they said the biggest priority is to focus on opening the restaurant and then adding new things as that moves along.

“We are trying to get up and running, that's our first priority,” Kristl said.

“It will be open as soon as the health inspector comes and says it's okay,” Ty said.

Once open, they said they plan to be open for the breakfast, lunch and dinner hours Wednesday-Sunday, and possibly for breakfast Mondays and Tuesdays. Ty predicted the opening will be around May 15, possibly sooner.

“Our goal is to work hard and not end up losing money,” Kristl said. “We're not trying to get rich. We want to make a nice living and be able to spend time with our daughter.”