Café owner hangs up her apron after 15 years

It all started with a minor fire, but out of the flames emerged a thriving Tavistock restaurant which is now serving its last customers.

Business owner Karen Kestell is closing her restaurant Karen’s on Brook Street after 15 years of offering traditional English fare with a dazzling array of tempting cakes.

The last day is tomorrow, Saturday, October 10, when there will be special deals on meals and cakes.

Where numerous restaurants have come and gone, Karen’s has just kept on going, having struck a gold mine of custom. And Karen herself has been the secret of its success, busy in the kitchen baking and cooking.

After surviving an electrical fire in her first week, the only way was up and Karen has certainly learned what her customers like.

“The favourite is coffee sponge, followed by Victoria sponge and Bakewell tart,” she said. “We do Christmas cake all the year round. I make 400 a year. Roasts and cottage pies and soups are the top mains and there’s constant demand for birthday cakes.

“I don’t really want to stop,” she added. “I’d like to keep going. I really love all my customers, especially the regulars. One of my favourites is a girl who’s been coming here with her dad for a bacon roll every day since she was about five and is now 14.”

Karen is retiring, reluctantly, for health reasons. She is planning to spend more time with husband Trevor at their home in St Ann’s Chapel where he has kept busy in retirement growing a lot of the vegetables for the restaurant. The couple will be taking holidays abroad and spending more time with their eight grandchildren.

Karen’s apprenticeship in Tavistock eateries, before opening her own establishment, to the days after she left school.

These included WE Bakery (the Original Pasty House site), Stephen’s Coffee Shop, near the church, Loaves & Fishes chip shop, the Cornish Arms and Tavistock Golf Club. She also worked at the pannier market café and Jack and Jills (later TJ’s and LJ’s on Brook Street) for 25 years. Here she learned bookmaking, which stood her in good stead when opening Karen’s. She even worked at a café on the same site as what became Karen’s, many years ago.

Karen was born in Reading and her dad George was a Coldstream Guard. She and her mum used to visit him on duty outside Buckingham Palace and her mum slipped love letters into his uniform pocket. Karen learned how to make pies and scotch eggs from her dad when he later became a butcher.

But is was her aunt Doris who was her true inspiration when it came to a career.

“I opened Karen’s in Doris’s memory,” she said. “She ran five restaurants, including Selfridges, and taught me baking. She even left me her house when she died, but to me the most valuable part was all her cookery books. She wrote lots of notes on the recipes and methods, letting me know the best way for the best outcome.”

Karen marked her final day, Saturday, October 10, by treating her customers to cheaper meals and cakes and thanked her staff: her grandson Haiden Roberts, Anne Barrett, Louise Greenaway-Crispin and Megan Balsdon.