After 35 years, a downtown Victoria dining institution will close not with the blast of an oompah band or the loud smacking of a hand on leather shorts, but with a whimper — a very welcome whimper.
Andrea Sims, owner of the Rathskeller restaurant, said after an unexpected and extended farewell tour, she is ready to bolt the door on the German restaurant for the final time after this weekend.
“We’ve been Octoberfesting for eight months now, saying goodbye took a little longer than expected,” said Sims, who announced she was putting the restaurant up for sale last spring and expected to close down in the fall. “Closing was supposed to be September, then November and now [it’s this weekend] and thank goodness everyone went along with it. People kept coming in. They had four last meals here instead of one.”
The Rathskeller will serve its last meal Sunday night at the corner of Quadra and View streets, but the meal will be shared only with close friends and family.
“Last weekend we opened the doors to everyone as we have since [announcing the closure last year], but this weekend it’s different,” she said.
“We are a little family restaurant with a big heart and we want to please, but in the end it comes down to dear friends and family, and that’s who we will celebrate it with.”
It will also give Sims a chance to sit down and raise a glass and toast the end of an era.
“Well, I’m ready now, I’m definitely ready,” she said, though she noted the extended run was only made possible by a staff that has “gone above and beyond” over the last few months. “I’ve been tearfully impressed by them.”
Monday the staff will gather to wrap up the administrative side of things and have a small private feast, before returning later in the week to clean the restaurant for the new owners.
Sims said a property conglomerate from Toronto purchased the Rathskeller, with the intention of leasing it out as a restaurant for the time being.
No details of the sale have been released. The restaurant had been listed for sale at $995,000.
The new owners will also take possession of the hundreds of pieces of bric-a-brac that have adorned every inch of shelf and wall space for the last 35 years.
Sims said she has kept some of the more sentimental pieces, but the rest is staying put.
“The place is still full,” she said.
The Rathskeller started as a true rathskeller, which is a beer hall or restaurant in a basement, in the basement of a hotel on lower Douglas Street in the 1960s.
It was moved by Sims’ father, Franz Krieger, in 1982 to its current location at the corner of Quadra and View streets.
