Jan. 28, 2022

A longtime food truck owner has opened a restaurant in Montrose featuring her “old-fashioned” cooking and an ice cream counter.

My Place Montrose Cafe is in the town’s historic bank building that still includes the vault – now serving as the backroom for the servers, owner Maxine Montreal said.

She and her husband, Ray, are buying the building, which has been vacant since the restaurant CJ’s at the Wellington closed in 2018. They started remodeling it in 2020, and “we took our time,” she said.

“We put in a few booths and a long banquet seat and some big tables,” with enough seating for 60 to 75 people, she said.

The menu will expand as her staff becomes trained, she said, but diners will find plenty of her made-from-scratch offerings.

The breakfast menu includes one of the favorites from My Place Mobile Cafe: the naan bread breakfast sandwich. It’s bacon, eggs, peppers and cheese, sauteed spinach and “Wilbur’s Comeback Sauce.” Wilbur is her nickname for the old converted RV that she started operating as the food truck in 2014.

In addition to standard egg, bacon, pancake and biscuits-and-gravy offerings, she makes The Montrose Silage Pile. “Hope you wore your comfy pants,” the menu reads before the description of “four eggs scrambled with hash browns, bacon, ham and sausage pieces, diced peppers, onion and tomato then topped with shredded cheese, jalapeno and salsa. Comes with toast.” It’s $13 for a full order and $9 for a half-order.

For lunch, there are sandwiches, burgers and a soup of the day. Another food truck favorite, goulash, also is available.

Montreal offers occasional specials like her pancake lasagna, which will be available this Sunday morning. It’s layers of pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese and a maple bacon bechamel sauce.

The cafe is open Friday and Saturday nights for dinner.

In addition to homemade desserts, the cafe serves hard-dip ice cream, with shakes, malts, sundaes and banana splits.

“That’s going pretty well even as cold as it has been,” Montreal said.

Customers are coming from Montrose, which also has a bar and grill, and from surrounding towns and Sioux Falls, she said. Montrose is a 25-minute drive west along Interstate 90 from the northwest side of the city.

“Quite a few of them are food truck fans, which is nice,” she said.

Montreal plans to continue operating “Wilbur,” mostly doing auctions and booking a few other events, depending on staffing.

For now, hours at the cafe are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday and 5 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Breakfast is served until 10:30 a.m.

“Everybody’s welcome,” she said. “Come on out. Our family would like to take care of your family.”