2017
Best Restaurant for
Vegetarians/Vegans
FEATURED STORY FROM THE BEST OF BG 2019 ISSUE
Call of the Canyon
New Owner Preserves Call Of The Canyon Heritage
Steve took over ownership of Call of the Canyon in January 2019 from George Strata, who also owns Beckett’s Burger Bar, another local restaurant in downtown Bowling Green. Steve is also owner of Crossroads Café in North Baltimore, Ohio and was also the previous owner of Jimmy John’s in town, another popular food destination for BG students. Although Steve recently found his passion for cooking, he hasn’t always been in the restaurant business.
“I was the youngest licensed broker in our firm at American General Life and Accident,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of things. I was a photographer for eight years before this taking family pictures. But I like to cook.”
“Its been here for 23 years and its an established business that’s been here a long time,” he said. .”I’m just continuing what they’ve done in the past.”
After 23 years in business, this small-town café is a melting pot where college students and local residents alike come together to enjoy freshly-cooked meals that taste like home.
Schinsky has made it a point to keep signature dishes, as well as the atmosphere of the café the same to preserve the history that is valued in the community.
“The mayor eats here. All the lawyers on this strip eat here. But we also get a lot of college students. You can’t buy that kind of advertising. Word of mouth is the best thing ever. It’s such a diverse crowd. I love that about this place,” he said.
With a healthy mix of students and local residents as customers, Call of the Canyon also delivers as carryout as much as they provide in-store on a given day. However, they have never steered away from the home style taste on which the restaurant was built.
“I like that they do home-baked pies. Everything’s made from scratch here. They don’t buy anything out of a box and throw it into a container. They have all these special artisan breads and all of these different cheeses for you to choose from,” he said.
However, one thing he has done was introduce some of the specialty cookies that he sells at Crossroads in Call of the Canyon. With an add-on of two cookies for only 99 cents, there is a tasty desert that is a cheaper alternative to the pies that tend to be a crowd-favorite.
Something that also sets Call of the Canyon apart from other restaurants in town is the home-style variety of vegetarian options.
“We get a lot of vegans. We get a lot of vegetarians because we offer a lot of things without meat,” he said. “We have a soup every single day that is meatless.”
However, while the café isn’t looking to change much on the menu side of things,
they have been developing new ways to reach more people in town through increased catering and exposure on online food delivery sites, such as Grubhub and Eatstreet.
“We’ve been expanding and doing a lot more catering here. We’ve started to cater office parties and graduation parties and stuff like that,” he said.
One of the catering options that is a hit with students is the baked potato bar where people have a buffet-style meal where they can make their own baked potatoes. This is a particular hit with the curling club on campus as well.
But Steve advises students to simply call in their meal instead of ordering from an online service to avoid the large ordering fees that could come from ordering on apps such as Grubhub.
Whenever you want a home-cooked meal when you get to campus in the fall, make sure to stop by Call of the Canyon and Steve will most likely be there, ready to help you.
AN ADDITIONAL FEATURED STORY ABOUT CALL OF THE CANYON CAN BE FOUND IN THE Best of BG – 2014 AND Best of BG – 2012 ISSUE