By Richard L. Gaw

Staff Writer

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

• William Faulkner

‘Sheer joy’

At about 5:00 a.m. on the morning of July 15, 2025 – nearly four years removed from a devastating flood that forced the close and eventual demolition of their iconic Chadds Ford restaurant - Hank’s Place owners Katie and Anthony Young started their car in their garage, not knowing what was soon ahead of them.

“We took a moment and said, ‘We did this,” Katie said. “I said to Anthony, ‘We made it through this together, and now we need to take a moment to appreciate our efforts.’”

When they arrived at the reopening of the restaurant a half-hour later, the Youngs saw a long line of customers waiting patiently for the doors to open again, including one family who had arrived in their pajamas and slippers the night before so they could be the first people to christen the next chapter of the iconic meeting place, that had welcomed several generations of locals before them.
“Seeing all of those people ready to begin a new chapter of Hank’s Place was sheer joy,” said Anthony, who has owned Hank’s Place with Katie since 2017. “We had been through so many downs and been kicked so many times over the past four years, but to see that family there and all of those other familiar faces was an amazing feeling.”

Together with their long-time staff, the Youngs opened the door to the new Hank’s Place and the people poured in. At first, everyone soaked in the high-ceiling splendor of the new restaurant - designed by Glen Mills-based architect Tom Dever - that featured exposed beams, large windows that let in the morning sun, a larger front counter complete with Windsor chairs, more seating indoors and a new, 32-seat outdoor patio. Then everything that they had grown up with and remembered was suddenly renewed, like an old friend who has been found again, and before the first cups of coffee were poured at each table, diners scanned the menu and found the familiar names again: the Jimmy Spark’s Special, Norwegian Style scrambled eggs, Hank’s Style Eggs Benedict, the Bull’s Eye Breakfast and the William Barn’s, handcrafted chipped beef over southern style biscuits and home fries.

They reacquainted with the familiar faces of the staff, who had stuck by the Youngs through the devastation of Hurricane Ida that wept through Chadds Ford on Sept. 1, 2021 and took down the original restaurant with it. To them, the new Hank’s Place was in many ways their renewal, too; they spent countless hours cleaning through the remnants of damage that the hurricane had left; and they joined the Youngs during a three-year tenure when Hank’s Place took up temporary residence in Kennett Square.

“If it wasn’t for our staff, I don’t think that Anthony and I would still be together as a couple and have the energy to continue to move forward,” Katie said. “They were behind us with emotional support. They attended township meetings. They got petitions signed. They would help us on their days off from their other jobs and working gratis just to make sure that we were okay. I don’t know of many companies that have that loyalty behind them.”

‘The opportunity to reimagine’

While the impact of destruction the original restaurant experienced cannot be overstated to the Youngs, their staff and the thousands of residents who have enjoyed meals and conversation there, a tiny silver lining emerged through the nightmare of Hurricane Ida: it opened a portal to make the necessary upgrades to assure that the new Hank’s Place would be stable enough to withstand the assault of another severe weather event. In its redesign, the restaurant is now nearly ten feet off the ground, its roof has been reinforced, and the walls at ground level are designed to break away to let flooding flow beneath the restaurant’s main floor. In addition, the Hank’s Place includes new fire protection improvements and safety ramps for customers.

“Hank’s is so much more than a building – it’s its own creature,” Anthony said. “While we loved the beautiful flower planters and the vibe the original restaurant had, it also had a dated interior that needed a lot of love from the moment that we moved in. We had made improvements, but they were more about just keeping the place together.

“While the experience of losing the restaurant was horrible, we got the opportunity reimagine it through our vision. It began with keeping the breakfast counter, broadening the dining area, but as we continued the process, we realized that creating an outdoor dining area would become very important.”

As the design process for the new restaurant got underway, it was the Youngs’ idea that their new restaurant should match the artistic symmetry of nearby restaurants such as Antica and the Chadds Ford Inn and tap into the talents of local contractors.

“We kept everything hyper local and were very intentional in using people who knew what Hank’s Place was about and pooling their resources together,” Katie said. 

“Tom and his team hung on every word that Katie said, and when they showed us their initial rendering, I told them, ‘You guys hit it out of the park on the first go,’” Anthony said. “They nailed the vision the first time around. Their ability to translate Kate’s words to pen and paper was remarkable. He shared his true wisdom for us.”

With each rendition and blueprint, however, so too came several layers of supply shortages, bureaucratic red tape, FEMA requirements, township meetings, insurance setbacks and the disapproving comments from a small number of residents. 

“It tried our patience,” Katie said. “A lot of people kept telling us to put on a good face and keep on smiling, but it was very hard because we suddenly became thrust into the public limelight, which was nothing we were prepared for. We couldn’t even walk into a grocery store without people stopping us and asking what’s going on. While it was touching that so many people cared so much, it was mentally exhausting for us. We were trying to keep our staff upbeat. We were navigating all of the different channels – at the federal, state and local municipality levels. Just trying to corral everything became a heavy lift.

“It was almost as if the two of us felt that the people didn’t want us to survive.”

The Youngs had every opportunity to abandon the concept of a new restaurant. Instead, they chose to dig in.

“Our love for this place has been more than just a job and more than just a restaurant and more than just the people who work here and visit here,” Anthony said. “They are all our family, and they became the fuel for us to continue.”

To celebrate a Monday morning

In 2022, a year after the restaurant closed and one year before it was razed, the Youngs were operating a food ruck in the Hank’s Place parking lot, when they received a phone call from Kennett Square Mayor Matt Fetick, who told them that a restaurant space on Birch Street was available if they wanted it.

“Matt invited us down and told us, ‘I have a spot for you to look at,’ and he came in and helped us unpack,” Katie said. “We retrofitted that entire space in 45 days. We put new flooring in, tore out walls, painted, and did minor renovations. Matt just told us to do what we needed to do in order to survive, and for us, it was our three years in Kennett Square that helped us survive.”

For the next three years, the most common phrase for patrons arriving at the constantly crowded restaurant was, “How long is the wait?” The temporary located became an instant success, and it became customary for the Youngs to see their friends from Chadds Ford mix and mingle among the Kennett Square crowd.

For all of the kindness afforded to them by the people of Kennett Square, the net chapter of Hank’s Place was about to be completed in Chadds Ford, and it was time for the Youngs to come back home, back to a place where they had both come since childhood, and where they would often meet for dinner while they were dating - Anthony coming from West Chester and Katie from Wilmington.

“I want to leave Hank’s Place as a legacy for future generations, such as my niece and nephew and their kids, so that they can come here and have those traditions that we had as a couple,” Katie said. “Anthony and I are just stewards here.”

“I want Hank’s Place to continue to be the neighborhood hub, where the community comes together, if for no other purpose than to celebrate a Monday morning with some eggs and bacon and good coffee and great conversation – that home away from home,” Anthony said. “When I think back to every place I ever lived in, there has always been that neighborhood spot that defines that area. 

“I want Hank’s Place to continue to be that place where friendly people meet and hungry people eat.”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].