Restaurant, market focuses on customer service, local products

View larger image Dennis Grundman/Daily Jimmy Parks, one of the owners of The Butcher Station, carves beef at The Butcher Station. Recommend This Print This Get E-mail News Alerts Buy Photos/Page Reprints * Breaking News If local news is breaking and you know about it: * Call Us: 800-296-5137 * E-mail Us * Upload Your Photos View larger image Gallagher puts the finishing touches on a banana/Nutella crepe. View larger image From left, Sandy Gallagher and her brother, Jimmy Parks, and aunt, Patricia “Trish” Tharp, sit in The Butcher Station at Creekside Station in Winchester. Dennis Grundman/Daily

By Josette Keelor -- jkeelor@nvdaily.com
WINCHESTER -- The Butcher Station, on Valley Avenue in Winchester, is part restaurant, part market, but its owners want to stress their customer service.

The restaurant, run by brother and sister team Jimmy Parks and Sandy Gallagher, opened in May.

"We're trying to get back to good old-fashioned customer service. It's important to us to be good to our customers," Gallagher says. "I'm cooking for you how guests would come into my house."

Though new to restaurant management, both Gallagher, 40, and Parks, 37, bring years of knowledge to the table at The Butcher Station.

They hired their aunt, former Realtor Patricia "Trish" Tharp, of Stephens City, to help them run the business, and their parents in Delaware help out when needed.

"So yeah, it's very much a family business, 'cause we call them if we need help," Gallagher says.

They also use local vendors as often as possible, like Yael Ben-Daat, an Israeli farmer at Adama Farm.

"She's right here in Winchester; this is her first year out," Gallagher says. "It's nice to start out with someone who's just starting out."

The restaurant also orders from Briars Farmstead in Clarke County, primarily fresh chickens for chicken salad.

"That is one of our big, big sellers," Gallagher says.

Local produce, beef, hogs, lamb and chicken factor into many of their dishes, and they also sell local produce from bins in front of a display case.

"It falls in line with the concept we've got here," Gallagher says. "We're very much a local foods market."

Most of the food, made from scratch in the restaurant, comes from farms in Clarke and Frederick counties. Parks and Gallagher use organic when possible.

"Farm to table fresh" is what Gallagher calls the restaurant's style. Parks calls it eclectic.
"There are no rules," he says, "so we can end with the best possible products we can put on the plate."

The restaurant has 18 seats for dining inside and 12 seats outside, but Parks and Gallagher say what people will like best is the easy take-out possibilities as well as access to recipes, which Parks posts on the restaurant's Facebook page.

"I'm very transparent about what we do," he says. "Not trying to hide anything."

He usually offers at least three specials a day, sometimes up to eight.

"The menu stays the same, for the most part," he says; however, it will depend upon the season's offerings.

He and Gallagher use seasonal foods when they can, and they're looking forward to autumn especially.

"For me, that's my favorite time of year for cooking," Parks says.

"We're looking at what looks good and what we can do with it," Gallagher says.

One of Parks' most popular dishes so far has been the crabcake, which became a big hit when he made it into a platter.

One of Gallagher's favorites, inspired by her catering business Sandy Cooks, is a braided sandwich stuffed with ground beef and Swiss cheese.

"You can fill it with just about anything," she says, and it easily feeds 10-15 people as a meal, or even more as an appetizer.

"If you want to feed a crowd, here's a way you can do it," she says.

Other dishes include breakfast wraps like Lorraine with bacon, egg, onions and baby Swiss cheese; country crepes that come in hearty greens, banana or Nutella; and sandwiches, burgers, seafood and desserts.

The Station Cuban is one of the favorites so far, with house-roasted pork, diced dill pickles, prosciutto, melted baby Swiss cheese and Creole mustard.

Kids items and vegetarian options are available, and Gallagher says she tries to work with customers who have food sensitivities.

The restaurant is open for breakfast and lunch, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Gallagher says they will stay open late, though, for customers calling in orders for their drive home for dinner.

Neither has classical training as a chef -- Parks has been pursuing an accounting degree and Gallagher has a degree in biochemistry -- but both are passionate about food, having started in the business as teenagers living in Delaware.

"It's just something that beach kids start real early in life, which is great. I'm glad that we had that opportunity," Gallagher says.

"I've had every job from dishwasher on up," says her brother, who has worked as a chef since he was a teenager, most recently as a sous chef at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.
Gallagher hopes that the reputation she built through her Clarke-based catering business will bring business to the restaurant.

She became interested in being a personal chef after having her first of three children and deciding her commute to Rockville, Md., was too far.

"I retired and became a preschool teacher," she says, but became interested in the food business again when considering her own family's nutrition needs.

"I wanted good food, but it takes so long," she says. She figured many people would be willing to pay for healthy food that takes little of their own preparation.

"We love to do it and we love good food," she says.

After spending a couple of years building her catering business, based out of the Blue Ridge Fire Department in Berryville, and selling food at the Berryville farmers market, Gallagher teamed up with friend Carl DeHaven, of White Post, who wanted to open a restaurant at Creekside Station in Winchester.

"We were asked to partner and run the kitchen side of it," Gallagher says. When the plan fell through, she and Parks decided to open their own place in the same location. They already had invested their time and energy into the restaurant prospect, and Parks had quit his job and moved to Stephens City.

"So it was a big leap of faith that we've taken here," Gallagher says, but they still take advice from DeHaven, a local butcher.

"He's our chief beef consultant," Parks says.

Gallagher plans to keep her catering business, now based at The Butcher Station.

Their biggest motivation, though, is promoting local food prepared in easy, good-tasting ways.

"Stop having our food travel thousands of miles," Gallagher says. "That's our passion."

"We want you to be able to cook for yourselves."

The Butcher Station is at Creekside Station, at 3107 Valley Avenue, Suite 106, in Winchester. For more information, call 662-2433 or go online to thebutcherstation.com.