PK Cafe returns to feed the need of its neighbors at Saint Michael’s
By Caroline Crawford
Photo by Andy Duback

An army marches on its stomach, and a college learns best when well fed. Since 2001, Purple Knights Pizza, with its convenient location across from the main campus in a former bagel shop/flower shop, was feeding students, faculty, staff, visitors, and even, in the summertime, the professional actors from Saint Michael’s Playhouse with sandwiches, salads, pizzas, fresh cookies, soup, free delivery and warm, friendly service.

So late in the fall semester, when owners Rick Hubbard and Leslie Wells announced that Purple Knights was closing, due to a combination of economic and personal reasons, reaction on campus was swift and heartfelt, “positive, but sad, and overwhelmingly supportive,” says Wells.

Wells and Hubbard opened Purple Knights Pizza eight years ago. “We weren’t pizza people,” says Wells, who met Hubbard while working at the gone-but-not-forgotten Winooski restaurant Waterworks 17 years ago. “But we saw the business was for sale at a time when we were looking for an opportunity, and so we decided to take a chance.” Their menu included the Vermonster, a gratifying two-hander made with fresh foccacia, sliced turkey, cheese, cranberry mayonnaise and apple slices, and pizzas such as the Saint Michael’s pie, which boasted pepperoni, bacon, meatballs, and sausage, mushrooms, onion, green pepper, tomato, black olives, mozzarella and red sauce. In addition to standard college fare like cheesesteaks and turkey sandwiches, they served up homemade roasted red pepper hummus; sesame noodles; sundried tomato pasta salad; and salads tossed with spicy ranch dressing made with spices Wells bought in Guatemala.

Over the years, Purple Knights, or “PK” as customers began to call it, became a de facto extension of campus. Before it closed in late fall, Wells had 21 students as employees and approximately 50 percent of its business came from Saint Michael’s.

After rethinking the restaurant’s concept and deciding, for labor costs, to eliminate pizza from the menu, Wells and Hubbard reopened the renamed PK Café in late January. “Business is good,” she says, despite difficult economic times. “Saint Michael’s community has been amazing; so supportive in every way. I’ve never been in a restaurant where the following was so strong.”

PK Café is back serving chicken Caesar salad wraps, sesame noodles, bagels and the beloved Vermonster.