As the Seaboard Station gets redeveloped, longtime fans celebrate Rick Perales’ restaurant in Logan’s Garden Shop.
by Meg Hardesty

Norwood Pritchett eats the same old fashioned chicken salad on whole wheat, with Lays potato chips and a blueberry muffin on the side, for lunch almost every day while he sits in the same white plastic chair on the outdoor patio.

The staff at Seaboard Cafe know his order by heart.

Pritchett’s wife ate lunch at Seaboard Cafe multiple times a week for seven years. He had accompanied her only a couple of times before she passed away in 2007.

Her sacred lunch place became his favorite spot to socialize and get out of the house.

“That was my therapy: to be around other people. While I’m retired and live by myself, it helps quite a lot, quite a bit,” Pritchett said.

Seaboard Cafe became Pritchett’s second family. They always greet him by name, and they celebrate with cupcakes and sing to him on his birthday every year.

For many customers, Seaboard Cafe is more than a place to eat lunch. It is a gathering place, an adopted family or a second home.

As the news broke that Seaboard Cafe is closing at the end of September, Pritchett and other regulars may not have another alternative.

“Go crazy and go starve to death is what I’ll do,” Pritchett said. “That’s what our concern is: that we’re all going to starve. I really just might.”

When Richard “Rick” Perales first opened Seaboard Cafe in 1991 in the historic Seaboard railroad station with Logan’s Garden Shop, he did not anticipate his impact.

Along the way, Perales made sacrifices to keep his Seaboard Cafe family afloat. He didn’t pay himself for three years during the 1990s, and at one point, he was $30,000 dollars in personal debt.

“All I wanted to do was look people in the eye and make them feel comfortable,” Perales said.

Now, he greets the majority of his customers by name.

“Rick loves people and he makes it evident when you come in the door,” Lewis said. “Everybody thinks they’re his favorite customer.”

If a customer loses a spouse, Perales takes lunch over to his customer’s house. If he finds out a customer is in the hospital, he calls to check in and ask how he or she is doing.

Perales built a family by making people feel special. He kept his family by making Seaboard Cafe a home.

“People say I’m the brand,” Perales said. “And they can’t sell me.”

Many customers have been coming to Seaboard Cafe since they were children, and they now bring their children. It has become part of their life in Raleigh.

Candy Lewis remembered how she and her mother would shop for flowers at Logan’s in the spring. It was their ritual to stop for one of Seaboard’s made-from-scratch muffins.

When Lewis’s mother, Polly Horton, began struggling with dementia 20 years ago, Lewis would take her mother to their favorite place.

“She felt so safe there because everybody was so friendly,” Lewis said. “My mother never forgot that.”

Seaboard Cafe and its customers became like a big family for Lewis and her mother. Lewis called it a home away from home.

Over the years, people who frequently visit Seaboard Cafe drop off family pictures and tack up Christmas cards for the bulletin board.

“Rick still has the picture of my mother’s 88th birthday we had there up on the bulletin board, and I look up there every time I go in,” Lewis said.

When Lewis’s mother passed away, Lewis found herself in her second home to seek comfort, familiarity and her sense of community.

“The thing I like most about it is you feel like you’re sitting on your own home patio,” Lewis said. “Every view out of Rick’s where you’re looking into the greenhouse or you’re looking out where they have the pots for gardening or whether you’re looking at the plants, you feel like you’re comfortable there.”

Lewis said she tries to limit herself and not eat there more than 4 days a week.

“There’s nothing in the world better than that veggies on sunflower sandwich,” Lewis said. “It really is like being at home except you don’t have to make it yourself.”

For Lewis, it is hard to stay away from the place that feels like home.

Seaboard Cafe is fortunate to have customers who return. If it is not for the food, maybe it is something about no air conditioning.

“For thirty-one years, there’s been no AC,” said Michael Evans, another Seaboard Cafe regular. “Ambience – that’s the most important.”

Surrounded by eclectic knickknacks and original paintings from North Carolina artists, Evans reconnected with an old friend over a Greek salad and chicken salad at their favorite lunch spot.

Evans had not seen his former co-worker, Corliss Wilson, in over two years. They spent hours catching up over lost time.

“He’s gotten to know people who come here daily,” Wilson said about Evans. “I would have never come if not for him.”

Evans said he eats lunch at Seaboard Cafe 3 to 4 times a week and always on a Saturday. “I love the fact that it is not new and very Southern,” Evans said.

For some regulars like Evans, they are guaranteed to go and see someone they know. They learn each other’s names when they connect and become friends over time.

Evans said he has been ushered out to the patio numerous times when they start to close the big greenhouse doors. It is like he never wants to leave.

The peace, relaxation and familiarity Seaboard Cafe offers its customers keeps this family and second home alive. The news of Logan’s relocation means that Rick and Seaboard Cafe will not be relocating with it.

“Every day is my favorite day over there,” Lewis said. “It’s going to break my heart.”

This article was originally published on September 4, 2024.