Hungry for nostalgia, P.E.I. customers are once more lining up for Peter Pan hamburgers
CBC
When the popular Peter Pan Drive-In takeout in Charlottetown closed its doors in 2013, customers likely figured they'd never again taste the burgers and fries they'd been accustomed to getting there.
But now there's interest in reviving the nostalgic brand and its food.
"I remember going in and trying it back in the day," says Adam Loo, chef-owner of Ada Culinary Studio in Charlottetown, speaking with CBC's Mitch Cormier for the This is P.E.I. podcast.
"We said, if we're going to do a simple burger, let's do one of the ones that everybody really knew and loved. So we started the journey of connecting with the family to see if we could bring back the Peter Pan for a day."
A few weeks back, Ada saw customers line up for 45 minutes on a freezing night to taste its interpretation of the classic burger. Staff ended up cooking 750 of them.
Despite the raging success of the pop-up Peter Pan burger basket, Loo said Ada Culinary won't be repeating the experiment.
"We're on to the next thing. We think there's lots of stories out there, and yes, it was successful, but it was about sharing the story and having that opportunity," he said.
"There's a lot of other stories out there, so we're going to chase the next one."
The Peter Pan was born in 1958 under owners Doug Hill and Bill Beer before being purchased in 1975 by Kenny Jones, a regular who ate at the restaurant frequently.
"I basically grew up at the Peter Pan," Jones's daughter Carla remembers with a laugh. "Every weekend I'd be working, as a teenager, and I used to say to my dad, 'I'll never work in a restaurant.'"
When she was 12, she recalls her father paying her five cents to fill up little paper cups with coleslaw, to go in each burger basket.
"Back then, that was a lot of money," she said. "I saved for the first year when I was 12 and I bought my first bike."
For peak freshness, she said her father always ordered the ground beef for the burgers in bulk from a local butcher.
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