Opinion : New restaurant: A reason to smile

Jon Tafa looks up from the grill, where steaks are sizzling over an open fire, and smiles.

He's been cooking -- and smiling -- in a restaurant kitchen in Vinton since the summer of 2005.

But since Wednesday, he has had a lot more to smile about. Tafa and his 15-member crew of Café 218 have moved into their new location (the old Viking Galley building). Freshly-remodeled and brightly lit, the building had customers exclaiming how beautiful the place looks.

"I can't wait to bring Bill," says Connie Wacht, referring to her husband as she sits in a corner both with some other ladies.

People who had been in that building before -- in one of nearly a half-dozen other businesses -- agree that it looks much better than it has for many years.

Me, too.

Six years ago, I met Jon just after he re-opened the Café 218 (which had closed after its previous operator was sent to prison on immigration violations, an all-too familiar issue with Vinton restaurants).

Jon told me his story: His family fled the former Yugoslavia when the advancing Serbian Army was just a block away. They ended up in the Quad Cities, where Jon began working in restaurants, hoping one day to run his own. On a trip to Cedar Falls, he passed through Vinton one day and saw and empty building with the same name as the Highway he was on. Soon, he was making plans.

In the summer of 2005, I wrote a column, urging Vinton area residents to support our community by doing one of our favorite things: Eating.

And eat you did. Most of the times we went to Café 218, the dining area was mostly full. Jon and his family, despite the challenges of living and running a business in a new country, succeeded.

On Wednesday, Jon's customers and friends helped him celebrate the next step in his successful venture; the business moved out of the old 218 building and opened in its spacious, beautiful new home.

By now hundreds of you already know exactly what I mean, because you've eaten at the new Vinton Family Restaurant. That's where I was at noon, having a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and chicken dumpling soup. The food is just as good as it was when Jon and his crew were cooking and serving it a mile north, but the ambiance now matches the food. I don't need, at this point, to tell you that the best way you can support our community is to eat, and to eat there. You're already doing that.

I just hope you remember Jon and his success story because there are a lot of other places in our area that would improve greatly if more guys like him showed up and worked as hard and as long and as well as he has. And if we honor their efforts by supporting their businesses.

Yeah, most of us remember the not-so-successful restaurant ventures that other people attempted at that same building, with no success. But this time, the opening of a new restaurant in that old building gives us all a reason to smile.