Dallin
Dinah's Sold at Auction, Set to Reopen as Second Helpings
DALLIN. Dinah's, the Main Street bistro that's fed this town through every wedding, wake, and Tuesday-night nothing-else-was-open for as long as most residents can remember, sold at auction Saturday for $450,000. The buyers, Mags and Melanie Dyson, confirmed they'll reopen the space next month under a new name: Second Helpings.
"We're trying to earn the right to carry Dinah's forward," Mags said, standing behind a bar that was, as of this printing, still half-finished. "The name's about that. You don't get a second serving unless the first one meant something."
The kitchen stays, the regulars' booth by the window stays, and Dinah herself will be at the reopening, by invitation and by her own insistence. "I sold the building. I didn't sell the thirty years," she said. "I wanted it to go to people who'd understand the difference."
What's new is the stage. Second Helpings is being built out as a piano bar, with live music several nights a week once the doors open. Melanie Dyson, known to readers of this paper's own guest column for a career that's kept her mostly out of town, will guest at the piano once a month, a standing commitment she says she's not giving up for any shooting schedule. "This is the one stage I actually get to want to be on," she said. "No cameras. Just people who already know me."
The rest of the lineup is still filling in, but Dak Dawson and Hunter have already been booked for a night of their own later in the season, the first time the two have played a set together in public, according to both. Second Helpings is targeting a grand reopening the first Friday in November; the Chronicle will carry the exact date and hours as soon as they're locked.