Katie’s namesake, Catherine Yurko, is the 84-year-old matriarch of the Yurko clan. Katie, as her late husband Mike liked to call her, grew up in the small town of Two Hills, Alberta. Mike grew up in nearby Hairy Hill, Alberta, but they did not date, fall in love, and get married until each had moved to the big city, Edmonton, during the last days of World War II. Katie was a war bride, who married Mike after just a one week engagement, just before he was sent overseas. When he returned home from Europe, they began building their family, eventually having six children, including Donna (the eldest) and Richard (the fourth).
Despite humble roots in the Albertan farmlands, Mike and Katie’s life took them far. Mike got his first engineering degree from the University of Alberta and then a Master’s degree from McGill University in Montreal. His first job after graduation took him to Ottawa, where Rich was born. While Mike was busy being educated and working as a young engineer, Katie ran the home for their growing, tumultuous brood of children. Then, in 1960, Mike and Katie emigrated to the United States, first New York and then New Jersey. By 1964, Mike, with Katie’s help, started his own successful electronics manufacturing company. Later that same decade, right at the time of the first women’s movement, Katie turned the tables on Mike and started her own company, which also prospered.
Their children learned a great deal about good food and hospitality from Mike and Katie. Their home was the place to be, whether it was for a New Year’s Eve Party or just a Sunday night dinner, everyone around a sumptuous table arguing politics and business. Like her husband Mike, Katie had unbounded energy. Whether it was in rearing six children or in making home-cooked meals or in balancing the books of a woman-owned business, she was always on the go. Whatever she does, she does well, or, as she says, what’s the point?
Later in life, Katie took up golf, ostensibly to keep Mike company. It may have started that way, at least. But she got better and better. Many years later, after Mike was gone, at the age of 80 she won the President’s Cup at the renowned Bay Hill Country Club, Arnold Palmer’s course in Orlando Florida, besting many women half her age in grueling match play.
Katie, Donna, and Rich have been in the hospitality business before. In 1999, they purchased Breakfast on the Connecticut, a large, luxurious Bed & Breakfast that sits on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River in Lyme, NH. www.breakfastonthect.com
Life has taken Katie far from Alberta, around the world, and through many business ventures. But she was overheard to say that the opening of Katie’s Café on Shore Road was one of her proudest moments. She welcomes you.
Jason P. Grant
Jason P. Grant is a young, talented and creative chef with over 12 years of professional culinary experience. Born in York County, Maine, he graduated from local schools and then studied at the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon. He has worked at several successful and critically acclaimed restaurants, including the Ritz Carlton, Central Park in New York City and the Pier House in Key West.
Several years ago, Jason traveled to Liberia in West Africa where he founded a Consulting Enterprise – Grigsby Grant Consulting – and served as a Consultant and Trainer for several prominent restaurants, resorts and boutique hotels in the Liberian capital.
He returned to Maine in 2009 where he came to Katie's. Jason's high standards and calm demeanor in the kitchen made his menu and the Katie's cuisine a dramatic success in 2009. For 2010, Jason has created a boldly different spring menu that combines the best tastes nationally with an emphasis on locally grown and sourced ingredients. Nightly, Jason plans specials which take advantage of what is fresh and unusual. The menu at Katie's is rarely entirely the same two nights in a row.
Jason obviously enjoys traveling in the off-season (having just returned from another three-month stint in West Africa), making music and preparing exotic chocolate truffles in his spare time.
