Couple hopes to restore MN's 'Restaurant Capital of the World'
It's been a year since lightning strikes burned two Dorset, Minn., restaurants to the ground. Now, Beth and Levi Durgin have a plan to resurrect them.
The couple secured funding last week to buy the names and charred downtown lots from the original owners of Companeros and the Dorset House. They plan to build a single structure split between both restaurants.
If all goes well, they'll open next spring, with the same recipes and as much of the original decor as possible.
"We're hoping the community will support us" and "that it will be as great as it was," Beth Durgin said.
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The Sept. 4, 2014, fire was a huge loss for Dorset, a tiny town just east of Park Rapids, Minn.
Aside from electing a 3-year-old mayor last year, Dorset's claim to fame was a group of four well-known restaurants. The community of 22 billed itself as the "Restaurant Capital of the World," and pulled in a busy, seasonal tourist trade.
Former restaurant owners Rick and Laura Kempnich spent six months clearing debris from the fire. For a time, the couple considered rebuilding. But it took Rick 30 years to build the original businesses, and he's 65 now. Back in March he said he didn't feel like he had the time to do it all again.
Losing half its restaurants in one fire was a major blow to the town, but Beth Durgin said it hit her just as hard.
She and Levi met while they worked summers at Companeros and the Dorset House years ago. Levi washed dishes. Beth tended bar. They had their first date after the Taste of Dorset festival in 2004.
The restaurants' destruction, she said, "was like a death in the family."
The Durgins moved to Big Lake, Minn., after their wedding and still worked the occasional summer at Companeros. They're in their early 30s now, and have six children, but still count the Companeros and Dorset House crew as family.
Without the physical restaurants, Beth worried that family would dissipate.
The new building won't be an eclectic maze of additions and tilting floors like the old ones. It might not have the same charm, but Beth says it will have what made the restaurants so well loved.
"I've been calling the old crew," she said. "Just about all of them are coming back."