Diaz Cafe Reopens - History Story

 

By Dave Kiffer

For the Daily News

A Ketchikan institution is turning its rice cookers back on after one of the longest closures in its nearly 60-year history.

Diaz Cafe, a Stedman Street landmark since the early 1960s, will reopen on May 12 after being closed since last Fall. The venerable eatery normally closes for a couple of months each year between Thanksgiving and mid-January but this year health issues necessitated a longer closure.

Three generations of locals have eaten at the longtime restaurant with its "Filipino and American " seemingly frozen-in-time menu, and its distinctive red (ketchup colored) yellow (mustard colored) and black (soy sauce colored) interior walls. Some locals have eaten there every day for decades and the longer closer had them missing a diner that has been a part of their lives since childhood.

While it is not clear if Diaz Cafe is the longest operating restaurant in Ketchikan history, it is certainly one of the longest currently operating ones, having opened in 1964 at the spot it still occupies, 335 Stedman Street, which is next door to the location of the first Ketchikan Filipino Club which formed in the 1920s. The Diaz family previously operated a restaurant in Newtown in the 1950s.

Interestingly enough, there was a previous Diaz Cafe in Ketchikan, back in 1901. An edition of the Ketchikan Mining Journal refers briefly to Manuel Diaz' "Diaz Cafe in Indiantown" as the Stedman Street area was called back them, But there is no known connection between that Cafe and the family that has been in the Ketchikan restaurant business since the mid 1950s.

Bernalda Tago Diaz Arce was the driving force behind the restaurant. She was born in Cebu in the Philippines in 1904 and was still living there when she met Manuel Alo Diaz, who was working in the United States and had returned to his home in Cebu for a vacation. They were married in 1928, They soon moved to the United States and were living in Juneau by 1934. Manuel Diaz worked at the Alaska-Juneau Mine and Bernalda ran a boarding house for Filipino workers at the mine. In 1941, she opened the Diaz Cafe in Juneau. According to the Juneau Empire, Bernalda Diaz was the first Filipino woman to live full time in Juneau.

In 1951, the family moved to Seattle, but by 1955, they had returned to Alaska, settling in Ketchikan. Initially, Bernalda went to work at a restaurant in Newtown, next to the Marine Bar. It was called the Short Stop .Then she went to work at the Lucky Spot Cafe, which was located at 335 Stedman and had been operating since the early 1940s. It was owned by Manuel Macaguima,

In 1956, an ad in the Ketchikan phone book proudly proclaimed the Lucky Spot featured "Chop Suey, Chow Mein, Sweet and Sour, Mama Diaz's famous Chinese food."

"Mama" Diaz and Macaguima were soon partners in the Lucky Spot, but that didn't last. Macaguima died in 1960, the same year that Manuel Diaz also passed away. Ming Toy, another local restauranteur, operated the Lucky Spot until 1963 but then it closed. "Mama" Diaz bought the property from one of the local banks in 1963 and Ketchikan's "Diaz Cafe" was born, on May 28, 1964, according to an article the next day in the Ketchikan Daily News

"Mama" Diaz managed the restaurant for the next year before she was seriously injured when she was struck by a car while crossing the street. The Ketchikan Daily News reported she was in "satisfactory" condition suffering a fractured skull, broken collar bones and several broken ribs. The paper said she was on her way to the hairdressers when she was hit at the corner of Main and Dock streets even though she was in the crosswalk.

Bernalda's sister-in-law, Bonifacio Arce, ran the cafe for two years, then Bernelda came back to work from 1967 to 1972, when she "retired." Her daughter, Juanita Camilon, managed it from 1972 to 1977 before she left to work for the state ferry system.

Bernalda "Mama" Diaz had married Jose Arce in 1966. She split her time between Ketchikan and Cebu. She would die in Seattle in 1980.

In 1978, the current owner, Clara Nobel Diaz, took over.

Clara Nobel was born in the Mindanao in the Philippines in the early 1930s, studied nursing in the early 1950s and came to Ketchikan in 1958 to work as a nurse at the Ketchikan Hospital on Bawden Street. Nobel was sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph who operated the Ketchikan hospital. A cousin of hers was already working at the hospital and suggested she apply to the Sisters.

Like many arrivees she was shocked when the amphibian plane she flew from Annette Island to Ketchikan landed in the water in front of town.

"I thought we had crashed," she told her niece Nita Noveno many years later.. Noveno wrote a blog post about taking a trip to the Philippines with her aunt in 2007.

"Aunt Clara ran the family restaurant, the Diaz Café, where my father played cards in the backroom well into the night with his old-time cigar-smoking compadres from the Philippines, " Noveno wrote in 2007. "It was her second career. After twenty-five years as a nurse, she put away her white uniform for good and donned a shoulder to knee-length floral print apron, replacing her mother-in-law in the business. She became the new “Mama Diaz”, the perfect job...Clara doled out advice to friends and family members alike. No need to ask. It came free with the meal."

In the early 1960s, Clara Nobel went back east to Johns Hopkins University to study surgery nursing and returned to Ketchikan. She met and married Manuel Diaz Jr, who worked at the Ketchikan Post Office

In 1978, she retired as the chief surgery nurse and head of the operating room at the Ketchikan General Hospital - by then in its current Tongass Avenue location - and took over running the Cafe, where she has remained for the past 43 years. Her husband, Manuel Diaz Jr. died in 2006.

In 2010, she was honored by Women in Safe Homes (WISH) as one of their Women of Distinction for her service to the community. She also co-wrote "Pioneer Nursing in Ketchikan, Alaska," a book that chronicled her years of nursing in Ketchikan.

In 1980, Rudy Manabat came to work at the Cafe and eventually became the manager. He has worked at Diaz Cafe for 41 years.

A 1995 article in the Ketchikan Daily News summed up the restaurant.

"More than a neighborhood restaurant, the Diaz Cafe is an institution and a tradition," the paper noted. "Regular customers who move away from town insist that family members or friends who come to visit them bring sweet and sour ribs or chicken adobo from the Diaz Cafe. Villages in Southeast Alaska order food special celebrations. Governors, beginning with Governor Egan, have come to eat here. It has been written up in travel guides and columns of out-of-town newspapers. One Florida travel writer puzzled over the fact that the place had a Spanish name, he entered to be greeted by smiling Filipino faces, and was handed a Chinese menu."

It was often a challenge for local diners when the restaurant closed between Thanksgiving and mid-January each year, primarily to allow family members to visit their relatives in the Philippines. After New Year's, they would begin passing by the restaurant, eagerly looking for the handwritten re-opening announcement.

The vibe of the restaurant was such that time seemed to standstill inside it.

"One customer, coming back after 20 years, not knowing that 'Mama Diaz' was gone, greeted Clara with 'You look younger, Mama,' it was as if nothing yard changed," the Daily News reported in 1995.

The recent longer closure had some long-time patrons concerned that the restaurant would not reopen. But family members say that May 12 is the new reopening date.