One day several years ago, Mark Lynde was taking contractor estimates to replace the leaky roof on the century-old wooden building in Osseo that housed his family’s business, Lynde’s Restaurant and Catering. “One guy said it would cost $5,000,” Lynde recalls. “I asked him: ‘Don’t you have to measure the building?’ He said that’s what it would cost to bulldoze the place.”

The century-old wooden building on Highway 81—originally a combination grocery store and chicken coop—had housed the Munchkin Eatery when Mark’s parents, Chuck and Jan Lynde, bought the business in 1981. (Before that, it had been called the Brown Derby). They ran Lynde’s Restaurant and Catering until they retired in 1995, and Mark and his wife, Cathy, bought the business.

For a restaurant with a hallowed tradition of cooking most dishes from scratch, starting from scratch with a new building sounded like a good idea. The Lyndes wound up purchasing adjacent land from a neighboring business, doing a land-swap with the county, and building a new 7,200-square foot facility on 2.5 acres. The bulldozing finally happened last May, when the new place was ready to open.

The new structure houses the restaurant, catering business, and a landscape maintenance side business the family started back in the 1980s. The new place doubled seating from 78 to 160 seats, with a meeting room available for overflow diners.

The project took three years to complete, from start to finish. It was a $4.2 million investment, which the majority of Lynde’s loyal customer-base would probably consider money well-spent. The new place has some features that weren’t in the original restaurant, such as a full-service bar for dinner guests. New design touches include the dining room’s stamped concrete floor and a granite bar/countertop. The dining area is also equipped with eight 52-inch TVs. One unusual feature helps give the place a homey feel, while also giving the people waiting to be seated something to look at: Mark Lynde’s beer can collection, which fills the entryway in a floor-to-ceiling display.

While the building has changed, most of the faces remain the same on both sides of the counter, Mark Lynde says. “In the old restaurant, we probably knew 80 to 85 percent of our clientele on a first-name bases. Now we know about 50 percent.” They also know some of their regulars’ habits REALLY well. “We know George is going to come in and sit at Counter 2, stool one, at five after 6 a.m. and order the pancakes with eggs on the side. They call it ‘their’ place.”

Home-cooked daily specials are the secret behind the restaurant’s popularity, Mark says. For example, a full rack of ribs that would sell for $19.95 most places is only $11.95 at Lynde’s. “We’ll try something once, and if people like it, do it again. One of our dinner specials is sunfish—you can’t find that on a menu anywhere else.”

For the past 13 years, the man behind the menu and the grill has been Larry Poltiske, a 30-year veteran of the restaurant business. The variety and challenge of preparing specials that change daily makes his 60-hour work week palatable, he says. The restaurant’s “cooking from scratch” ethos means that Poltiske spends a number of hours on Mondays and Thursdays shopping for those fresh ingredients. “We don’t buy much prepared stuff,” says Poltiske, who has a staff of five assistant cooks.

He considers prime rib, barbecued ribs and rotisserie chicken among his specialties, with slow-cooking the common denominator among those three customer favorites. He’s also proud of the pancakes, which have helped build Lynde’s breakfast business; on Sundays, they serve 525 to 575 customers breakfast. “Twenty years ago, the Osseo newspaper’s front page called it ‘the biggest pancake this side of the Mississippi,’” he explains. “By making them from scratch, we can give people a huge pancake that costs less than one you would buy.”