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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 1, 2001
Get ready for some really bad news.
Come 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 21, Gabriella Banks will serve her last crunchy salad, her last bowl of homemade minestrone soup, her last slice of quiche Lorraine, and her last piece of chocolate caramel pecan pie with whipped cream.
After 24 years in the round building with the screened-in dining porch, Ms. Banks is calling an end to lunch service at the charming little Whole Note Acres on Massachusetts Avenue in New Port Richey.
Wait, now. Don't jump off the bridge just yet. Ms. Banks still plans to be open from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. weekdays for a continental breakfast of fruit, sweet rolls, muffins, coffee and juice for $5. And she'll sell her famous brown bread, white bread, sweet rolls, cookies and, if you call the night before, a fresh quiche or pie as takeout, so there's no chance we'll starve.
And we have 15 days to get a few last lunches before they come to an end.
Still, after Dec. 21, we won't be able to get our mushroom cheese soup on Monday, French onion soup on Tuesday, vegetable soup on Wednesday, potato cheese soup on Thursday or minestrone soup on Friday. No more warm, homemade oat bread, apple butter, raspberry tea and eating until we can barely waddle out the door or stay awake after lunch.
There's a reason, said Ms. Banks, who celebrated her 70th birthday in April.
"I'm hoping this will get me down to eight-hour days instead of 17-hour days," she said.
Those 17-hour days happen because the Whole Note Acres owner is also the Whole Note Acres cook, baker, server, dishwasher, floor mopper and cashier. Every weekday, she rises before dawn to chop fresh vegetables for the salads and soups, make her yogurt-based salad dressing from scratch, whip up fresh eggs for the day's quiche and bake a raft of pies and other goodies to top it all off.
From 11:30 a.m. opening to 1:30 p.m. closing -- earlier if the food runs out, which it often does -- Ms. Banks does the work of a dozen people, filling scores of bowls and plates and then going table to table to see who wants a salad, who wants a soup, who wants a quiche and who has room for one of those irresistible desserts.
It's not just the work that's causing her to stop the lunches. There's also a problem with workers' compensation insurance premiums after three sizable claims.
With the breakfast venture, "I'm just going to employ myself," Ms. Banks said. "Then I won't have to worry about that."
For years, people have said Whole Note Acres is the best place in the area for a hot, healthy lunch and the best bargain in the whole state. If you get either salad, soup, quiche or dessert, you also get two kinds of bread, apple butter and the drink of your choice, all for just $4. If you get two items, it's $5. Three items are $6, and four items make it $7.
I'm usually a one or two, but I've pulled a three in my day. Actually, I've only seen one person do a four, a tall fellow who weighed in at more than 300 pounds even before he spied Gabriella's rhubarb pie.
Whole Note Acres has been a favorite of the courthouse crowd, as well as the ladies who lunch and the men who are lonesome for mama's cooking.
It's been one of my favorites since former Pasco-Hernando-Citrus Times publisher Roy Bain took me there shortly after I transferred to Pasco County 10 years ago. It was one of his favorites, too. We ate at the big, round communal table under the skylight by the counter where Ms. Banks chopped, sliced, diced, scooped and poured with the dexterity of the many-armed Hindu god Shiva.
It's also the rare place that not only forbids smoking, but also forbids cellular telephones, two banes of peaceful repast.
Good news from Richey Suncoast Theatre for people who sometimes can't hear all the dialogue coming from the stage, especially when their seats are in the balcony.
Richey Suncoast has installed a big, new speaker over the stage, and Grant W. Becker of BCI Becker Communications Inc. of Tampa has loaned the theater a sound board and four body mikes just in time for the Christmas Show, which opened Friday and continues tonight, Sunday, Thursday, Friday and Dec. 9.