Love of community key ingredient to Adele's in Carson City

Few restaurants in Carson City, or Northern Nevada for that matter, have been as successful for as long as Cafe at Adele's has.

What began as a retirement venture for San Francisco Bay Area residents Paul and Adele Abowd in 1978 has evolved into a Nevada fixture with a statewide reputation for dining excellence.

Visitors of every stripe from all corners of the Silver State, within every nook and cranny of its Great Basin landscape, have broken their bread at Adele's tables over the past four decades.

They know what dining at Adele's is all about.

So do Charlie and Karen Abowd, the son and daughter-in-law of the restaurant's founders who have run the business for about the past quarter century.

"From the very beginning it became a social and political centerpiece for Carson City in a lot of ways," Chef and co-owner Charlie Abowd said.

But even before the Abowd family purchased the property, a Comstock-Mansard era Victorian residence located at the corner of West John and North Carson streets, it had been a cultural hub of sorts in Carson City, operating for many years as an antique store and later piano bar, which drew the political and the artistic alike.

Paul and Adele Abowd, son Charlie recalled, saw the business for what it was: a lovable community gathering place with the potential to be more.

"That had a lure about it," he said. "This was a very popular place, so when they took it over, it was already a magnet for arts and politics."

Perhaps the long-time lore behind this property has given it an edge over the years. But the foresight of Adele's owners have produced within it a tenacity needed to weather Nevada's socio-economic and political storms. Forty years is a very long time in the restaurant business, Charlie and Karen Abowd said.

"As a restaurant, it's very significant," they said. "Very few restaurants survive that long."

Whether the venue will add another four decades to its tenure as a restaurant remains to be seen. Charlie and Karen Abowd decided late last month to put their restaurant and its charming Victorian property up for sale. They are looking to retire as Adele's completes its fourth decade in business.

But nothing is going to happen overnight, the Abowds said. They've got celebratory plans for Adele's to mark its 40th anniversary.

"This fall we'll re-enact a dinner we did in New York at the James Beard House," said Charlie Abowd, who likened the culinary venue to the Academy Awards for his trade. "Very few people are lucky enough to cook at the James Beard House, and I was."

Abowd said he will recreate the same meal he prepared in New York City years ago later on this fall along with Tony Fish and Jayme Watts, owners of Sassafras Eclectic Food Joint in Carson City. Fish, Abowd said, had served as his Sous Chef at the Big Apple cooking venue.

The Abowds said they also plan to reproduce the original Adele's Restaurant and Lounge menu at some point this year, paying respects to the establishment's earliest days in business when Paul and Adele Abowd were at the helm.

A third event celebrating Adele's 40th anniversary will be a buffet-style Lebanese dinner, a nod to Charlie's Middle Eastern family heritage and inspired by a trip the couple took to his ancestral homelands. They stayed in the home of a Lebanese family on their sojourn.

"I will never forget being in the kitchen preparing a meal," Karen Abowd said. "Their kitchens are not like our kitchens. There are two couches, a pop-up triangle and a pot-belly stove in the middle of the kitchen."

What struck the couple was that the activities surrounding the meal were social, a place for family to engage with each other.

"Grandmas, aunts, kids, everybody sits on the couches, and everyone's busy helping prepare something for the meal while talking and sharing," Karen said.

Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that the Adele's name in Carson City has been synonymous with social gathering for the past 40 years.

Paul and Adele ran their restaurant like they were inviting friends to their table in their home, Charlie said.

He and Karen have kept the same tradition, nurturing a home-like environment where their guests aren't simply comfortable. They feel at home.

"People feel comfortable here," Charlie said as dryly as he could, supressing a grin. "Sometimes too comfortable."

There's the story of the late Kenny Guinn, former Nevada governor, who once greeted and ushered teenagers coming into the restaurant during Carson High School's senior prom night.

"He would hang out and see kids coming in from the senior prom," Charlie said. "He would seat them."

Other notable Nevada personalities would frequently stop in and simply forgo the dining room just to visit Charlie in the kitchen.

"There's just some wonderful memories like that," Karen said.

Charlie said Adele's has always been endearing to its owners. From Paul and Adele to Charlie and Karen, the Adele's name has meant home, first and foremost. It was a business venture second.

"When people come in here, they are sitting down to eat at our table, and it becomes 'our table at your home,'" he said. "That is a big bridge. When people feel that comfortable with you that they take ownership of their table in your home, that's a big deal. That's what this community means to me."

The Abowds are community-minded people. Paul and Adele were active in Carson City during their years heading the restaurant, helping to support a community they fell in love with from the start.

Charlie and Karen, too, have invested in the community through Cafe at Adele's in their own unique fashion.

"We are social people," Charlie said. "That's just who we are."

Once he and Karen assumed ownership of the business, they began to put their own brand on community sharing to work. Charlie reached out to local area farmers and ranchers, bringing their products into his kitchen and to his table.

"That to this day differentiates my way of thinking from my dad's way of thinking," Charlie said. "That was a big part of our plan then, and it's a big part of our plan today."

The Abowds also spearheaded a community-wide local gardening effort through what they called the Greenhouse Project, spawned one day after Karen and Charlie realized that hunger was a very present problem in Carson City.

"I used to mentor kids for St. Teresa's," Karen said. "One young girl spoke about the fact that her mother had just had a new baby, dad was in jail, and mom got deported. She stole formula from Walmart to feed her baby brother."

The child's story was an eye-opener for Karen, who shared it with Charlie, and the couple decided to take action.

"At that point, I looked at Charlie and said, 'We have to do something. This cannot work,'" she said. "So that was the seed that started the Greenhouse Project."

Individuals throughout the Carson City community who shared the same mission as the Abowds banded together to construct and maintain a 2,100 square-foot greenhouse on the Carson High School campus.

They had no footprint to build from. This was a locally-grown concept that literally sprouted from the ground up.

"It was a grassroots project," Karen said. "It has succeeded in trying to fill the food insecurity aspect."

The Greenhouse Project has proven so locally inventive that ground was broken last July for a second hoop house, called Foothill Garden, on the Carson-Tahoe Hospital campus. This year will mark the first full season of production for the new greenhouse extension, Karen said.

Crops harvested from Foothill Garden go to support "Meals On Wheels" for needy seniors as well as the Eagle Valley Children's Home, she said.

"Being in the garden is healing, and gardening is healing in and of itself," Karen said. "For us that's a natural extension of what we do."

The Abowds have invested a lot of their time, energy and resources into the Greenhouse Project, which has proven over time to be both the area's community pride and its best kept secret.

"People remember it when the Concert Under the Stars comes around every year, and when the flower baskets go up downtown," Karen said. "Other times, it's a secret. That's a constant effort we are working on to get the word out."

And yet, its blueprint is generating interest from beyond Carson City, too.

"People from outside the area are curious about how we did it," Karen said. "I've had many people contact me about doing the same thing."

One characteristic that distinguishes Charlie and Karen Abowd is that the couple has been more than willing over the years to sew a lot of effort into their community, trying to make it better for everyone.

The Greenhouse Project is one of these testaments.

"Not everyone wants to put in the work," Karen said, "That makes a difference, because it really does take a village to build something like that."

The community garden project has taken on its own identity over the past ten years, but it remains a direct extension of the Abowds themselves and a reflection of the way business has been done at Adele's over four decades.

"Us sharing the bounties of our area, this is a synergy. People build things, have goals, and want to be part of a synergy," Charlie said. "We have it here. It's not something we set out to do. It just happened. We connected with people."

One would be mistaken to assume that the Abowds are done building on the eve of their retirement. Just because their business is up for sale doesn't mean this is their swan song.

On the contrary, the Abowds insist they aren't going anywhere. They expect to be just as present and visible in Carson City during their retirement as they have as a business owner in the community.

"We're not selling our house, we're not moving," Charlie said. "We're going to be involved, and more involved at a lot of different levels than people probably want us to be."

Still, retirement comes with its own set of challenges for active community members like the Abowds.

Karen said they may have to change the dynamics of how they contribute once they've officially retired. But they will continue giving to the community that has given so much to them and their family over the years.

"The hardest part about retirement is that community connection, because as Charlie and I have discussed long ago, I firmly believe we were put in this position to do exactly what we've done. And that is to reach out," she said. "We had the ability to do it. We aren't in the restaurant business for it to be a cash cow for us. The idea is to give back and that's who we are."

Karen, who is finishing her second four-year term this year as Ward 1 Supervisor on the Carson City Board of Supervisors, announced last fall that she would not seek re-election to a third term in 2018. The couple's retirement plans were part of that decision, they said.

The transition into retirement is expected to take some time, the Abowds said, and they are in no particular rush to sell Adele's right away, either. Especially as they invite the community to share in celebrating a 40-year milestone in 2018.

Now that the announcements have been made, though, the approach of their next life transition is coming more into focus.

Friends, neighbors, employees and patrons are beginning to share their memories of Adele's and of the Abowds in everyday conversations.

"Just getting to know your customers on a personal level of such that you know what they are doing, what their kids are doing," Karen said. "It's not this way everywhere, and I say that with a lump in my chest."

But it is in Carson City.

"We have some wonderful, dear friends," Karen said, pausing to gather her emotions. "We live in a great community where everyone's willing to participate. To me, to be a part of that..."

To say that Adele's is a labor of love for the Abowds is both an understatement and an overstatement all at once.

There has been nothing laborious to them about opening their restaurant, their home to people. Yet the enterprise has been all about love of their community.

"At the end of the day, all I want to do is celebrate the contributions of my mom and dad, Karen and I, and to tell everybody how much we love them," Charlie said. "We love everybody, and we'll still be here loving everybody."

Charlie and Karen, Paul and Adele: Carson City loves you, too.