WEST PARIS – The doors at the landmark Trap Corner Restaurant opened for the first time in years Wednesday, drawing a quick early-morning crowd.
“At 7 a.m., the place was full,” said busy restaurateur Pam Payne as she prepared to set up the lunchtime salad bar.
Payne and her husband, Randy Payne, purchased the restaurant in February, she said.
Just months before, she had sold the Mole Hole Knoll on Skeetfield Road in Oxford. Payne said she’d worked at that restaurant 15 years, spending the last 10 years as owner. She decided to retire in September, but her husband had other plans.
“My husband thought I needed a job,” Payne said with a laugh Wednesday. “We just decided to come up and look at (the restaurant), and we bought it.”
The new business is a family affair. The couple’s daughter Manda donned an apron to help out Wednesday morning, and their daughter Miranda and son Rodney were expected on site later as well.
Her husband does most of the cooking, Pam Payne said. “We do quite a bit of homemade food.”
The restaurant will be open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday for starters, Payne said. It will be closed Monday.
Homemade corned beef hash is a highlight for breakfast, while burgers, fries, onion rings and lobster seafood salad are among the basics on the lunch menu.
Payne expects to add breakfast and lunch buffets by mid-May.
The Trap Corner Restaurant was vacant for about two years, Payne said. It was sold at auction to a West Paris woman last May, but her plans to open a convenience store with local crafts, antiques and a bakery fell through.
The building was purchased by the Growth Council of Oxford Hills in an attempt to recover a 1996 loan on the property. The growth council marketed the site through Mainely Properties, with an asking price of $119,000.
Payne feels a special affinity for the spot. Her parents ran the restaurant there from 1985 to 1989.
While the restaurant was closed, she said, “a lot of people have missed it because, you know, it’s the main thing in West Paris.”
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