Hamilton's Geoff McTaggart was adamant that Keith's Kitchen was in Hunter Street.
As we reported on Saturday, Geoff asked Topics readers to settle a difference of opinion.
He thought Keith's Kitchen was in Hunter Street in the early 1950s, but others thought it was in Pacific Street.
Could there have been two Keith's Kitchens?
Stockton's Pam Hartigan, 81, said she worked at the MLC building more than 60 years ago, which was opposite Keith's Kitchen and near Civic Theatre in Hunter Street.
"There definitely was a Keith's Kitchen in Hunter Street. I remember it vividly. We used to go there in our lunch break," Pam said.
"I was a telephonist. I sat right at the window. I could look straight out onto Hunter Street."
She said the Keith's Kitchen in Hunter Street was "the same as the one in Pacific Street".
"They cooked in the front window and did it exactly the same," she said.
She said it had been there for years.
"I think it was next door to Wilson's Hat Shop," she said.
When we told this to Geoff McTaggart, who is 83, he was glad the mystery had been solved.
"Everyone knew it was in Pacific Street, but no one could tell me it wasn't in Hunter Street," Geoff said.
Geoff said he was "real pleased" Pam had shared her memories.
The Owners
Joe and Thora Wellings operated Keith's Kitchen in Pacific Street after she bought it from Keith, who had been her employer.
Phillip Turner said Thora was his auntie and Joe was her second husband.
"In the 1950s when I was a teenager, I would often stop in for a burger on the house when I went to Newcastle Beach," Phillip said.
"When my wife and I were courting in the early '60s, we would go there for a meal of burger patties and eggs for tea."
A neon sign outside on the awning said "Eat at Joe's", but the sign on the window was Keith's Kitchen.
Joe and Thora passed away some years ago.
"They lived in Lockyer Street, Adamstown," Phillip said.
"Joe was at one time the vice commodore of Lake Macquarie Yacht Club."
Pacific Street
As for Keith's Kitchen in Pacific Street, Mount Hutton's Wal Remington said he lived with his grandparents in "number 16a Hunter Street, Newcastle, from 1946 until 1950".
"We could look out our back windows down to the lane up the side of Keith's Kitchen - the front door of which faced Pacific Park and the parked buses awaiting to start their rostered runs across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie," Wal said.
- topics@newcastleherald.com.au
IN THE NEWS:
- Royal Commission case studies into the Catholic and Anglican churches tabled in the senate
- Link Airways announces Newcastle to Canberra service from November 20 2020
- 11th hour approach to councillors reminding them council staff recommend approval of towers
- Disqualified motorbike rider clocked at double the speed limit in Nelson Bay
- NSW Health warns state is 'at a critical point' for testing, as five new cases found
