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The Daily Illini, December 1991

A Taste of the Past

The Courier Cafe and Silvercreek offers tasty dishes and a glimpse of Champaign-Urbana's history

By Lonnie Renda

Allen Strong left his hometown of Chicago to come to Champaign-Urbana with the intention of working his way through college but things did not turn out that way.

Strong never attended college. Instead, he opened two Urbana restaurants, the Courier Cafe and the Silver Creek Restaurant.

The Courier Cafe, located at 111 N. Race St., can be characterized as a soup-and-sandwich restaurant.

"At the Courier we have a simple-type menu," Strong said, "with just sort of the American traditional favorites, such as hamburgers, fries and other sandwiches with just a few specialty items also."

Filled with antiques, the cafe has an old-fashioned motif.

"I'm attracted to the older themes," Strong said, "I guess that's just my personal preference."

The most striking of the antiques is the huge brass cash register hat sits right next to the cafe's entrance.

"I've used that old register for 15 years," Strong said, "and it has never let us down."

"I could fill my pickup truck full of the calculators and computers we've trashed that just don't hold up, and that thing just keeps cranking away."

Ruth Michaelis, junior in LAS, cuts mushrooms for the salad bar at the Courier Cafe, 111 N. Race St., Urbana. (photo by Steve Handwerker)

Strong said he feels that the Courier offers better food and prices than any of the fast-food chains on campus.

"The Courier's customers leave with the feeling that they got a good deal since they got a great meal at a great price," Strong said. "And that's why we're busy all the time."

The cafe is open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to midnight and caters to a variety of customers.

"For some reason the Courier has a wide cross section of customers," Strong said. "It's very cross-cultural and socioeconomic."

"In the morning there are a lot of older people eating breakfast. If you come during the lunch hour, it's mostly business people. At dinner, people bring their whole families to eat. Then in the later hours, it's mostly students who study and eat. It's really incredible."

The Courier Cafe also offers a lot of ice cream desserts that create an atmosphere of an old-time ice cream parlor.

"We sell more ice cream than any other restaurant and it's not even a main part of our business -- almost a hundred gallons a week," Strong said.

Ten years after The Courier Cafe opened in 1980, Strong opened a different type of restaurant just two blocks north.

"I like to think that the Courier stops where Silver Creek begins," Strong said. "We felt like we were at a point where we needed to offer more than the Courier was able to."

"Silver Creek is more of a special-occasion restaurant. People come here to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries or when they want to go on a special date."

Silver Creek Restaurant, located at 402 N. Race St., offers food ranging from steak to Chinese dishes. Silver Creek also offers out-of-the-ordinary dishes, such as Turkey Piccata Parmesan and Coconut Fried Shrimp.

"Basically what we wanted to do at Silver Creek was create a place that was special and really unique," Strong said. "I wanted to be able to offer something you can't get other places."

Like the food at Silver Creek, there are a lot of unique things about the restaurant.

It is the only completely non-smoking restaurant in Illinois, according to Strong.

"It may be the only time in your life that you walk into a restaurant and not smell the stale, smoky odor," Strong said. "Nobody has ever smoked in this building."

Another unusual fact about the Silvercreek is that Strong, along with his crew, built the entire restarant and almost all the furnishings themselves.

"It took 15-hour days, seven days a week, for almost two years to build this place," Strong said. "The only thing we didn't build is the chairs."

Silver Creek has an extensive list of wines, all of which are displayed in an enormous case next to the bar.

"If you're into wines and you want to pick a wine that compliments your meal, it's necessary (to have a lot of wines)," Strong said. "Whether it's red, white or Chardonnay, we like to have two or three selections."

The restaurant also features bits of history throughout the establishment and historical information on the back of menus, as does the Courier. Perhaps the most significant is the reproduction of the first-known student map, from 1877, which helps explain where Silver Creek got its name.

"Through the years people got used to calling the creek the 'Boneyard Creek,'" Strong said. "But the creek was originally called 'Silver Creek' and the map shows that.

Strong continuously stressed the quality of the food at Silver Creek and the Courier.

"Here (at Silver Creek), all our fries are cut fresh from Idaho potatoes each day," Strong said. "Everything we make is fresh."

All of the bread and pastries are baked "fresh from scratch," every day, Strong said. "To do all of this every day takes real commitment."

This goes along with Strong's general theory about running a restaurant.

"You can have all the atmosphere in the world but if you don't have good food and good service, people aren't going to come back."