Sunday brunch at the Hempfield Township Dingbats is on hold this weekend while workers clean up and repair damage done to the restaurant in a Friday morning fire.
The establishment along Route 30, east of Greensburg, will be closed at least until Tuesday because of the accidental fire, which began in a wall between the kitchen and a food preparation room.
No one was injured in the fire, which was noticed just after the restaurant opened for business at 11 a.m.
Kitchen manager Kevin Salvio said the restaurant's fire alarm sounded, but workers couldn't locate any smoke or fire. They called emergency authorities to say it must have been a false alarm.
After the alarm sounded again, Salvio said employees searched for any sign of fire but found none. Five minutes later, the alarm sounded for a third time.
That's when workers started to smell something burning. They started to see smoke near an employee restroom. And when some workers walked outside, they saw smoke coming from the roof.
"(The restaurant) started to slowly fill up with smoke; we just couldn't tell where it was coming from," Salvio said.
Workers and the few customers inside the restaurant were able to make it out unharmed.
"(The fire) must have been pretty big before it was seen," Salvio said.
Firefighters had to work to get at the fire in the wall and on the roof. Later, they had to ventilate smoke from the building where plates of uneaten food still sat on one table in a patio room.
The adjoining Barnes and Noble Booksellers was not affected and continued to operate normally yesterday.
The fire left workers waiting out in the parking lot to find out how extensive the damage is and when they might return to work.
Brad Matanin lay on the hood of a car watching firefighters clean up after the fire. He should have been inside preparing food on only his third day at the establishment.
Matanin said the fire smelled like a campfire with minimal smoke at first. "It just got worse and worse," he said.
"You could see the smoke," hostess Carol Campbell said. "You couldn't see the flames."
Hempfield Township fire investigator Doug Fordyce said the fire began inside a wall at the rear of the restaurant between a food preparation area and the kitchen.
Fordyce said while the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation, it has been ruled accidental.
He said very little damage was done to the building, but the roof will have to be repaired. He estimated the restaurant would have to be closed for at least a week because of the damage done to the food preparation area.
However, a woman answering the phone at Dingbat's later in the afternoon said the restaurant expected to reopen on Tuesday.
Even so, the loss of business on the weekend will hit the restaurant hard, Salvio said. The southwestern Pennsylvania chain operates six restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. Sundays are a popular day with an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet.
A truck had just delivered food for the weekend yesterday morning.
"It just couldn't have happened at a worse time," Salvio said.
