06/25/2019
FACES OF THE FIDDLE: IHNATS BID GOODBYE TO BACKSTAGE
Throughout the Pub’s nearly 13-year tenure in the Burkholder Woods building, we’ve endeavored to bring classic good times to your afternoons and evenings. Still, we’d have to concede that for much of the day, a great deal of the fun actually happens backstage.
For about seven years now, Cottage Grove has been certain to find at least one member of the larger-than-life Ihnat family holding court at the Backstage Bakery and Cafe, where a tasty breakfast or lunch and the coffee that keeps many of us going are often paired with generous laughs, local gossip and classic community togetherness.
At the close of this week, however, the Ihnats – led backstage for the better part of three years by brothers Alex and Dominic – will bid farewell to the bakery and strike out toward new endeavors, which we’re told at this time remain deliciously undecided.
“We’ll just be letting opportunities happen,” older brother Alex says. “We’re excited to see what might come our way.”
The story of the Backstage Bakery begins with B.J. Jones, who opened the business as the Burkholder Woods building took life following extensive renovation efforts back in 2006. Jones built a solid following, and early in the Pub’s story, the bakery baked up the pizzas that comprised much of the Fiddle’s food offerings.
Years later, with Jones seeking to retire from the day-to-day grind of running a bakery, she approached Nancy Affinito-Semenov, who had built a loyal following at Café Amor inside Cottage Grove Community Hospital following a productive partnership with Jones at Backstage.
Nancy, a beloved figure to so many in the Cottage Grove area and beyond, then called up her sons, who had found themselves in close proximity since oldest brother Jeff moved to Oregon from Hawaii.
“We were both working at Meiji in Eugene,” Dominic Ihnat says of himself and Alex. “BJ contacted Mom to see if she was interested in buying the bakery. A month later, I moved down here.”
For nearly four years, the four Ihnats worked together in close quarters backstage, which certainly couldn’t work for just any family. By and large, however, the Ihnats made it work for them.
“The timing was so amazing,” Alex said. “Of course, there were lots of family dynamics, but we got together as a team and took time to put egos aside.”
Over time, Nancy worked a bit less at the Bakery and let the brothers handle more, a process that only hastened when she got sick from the cancer that eventually took her from us all too soon.
In April, the Ihnats marked two years since her passing, after which Alex and Dominic have soldiered on despite the grind and commitment that running such a business requires. Still, they say that there have been plenty of unforgettable times since then.
“There were days where we’d serve a nice busy breakfast, come back later to watch an amazing band and end up serving the band breakfast the next morning,” Alex said. “It’s funny that it’s called Backstage bakery because we truly were the musician’s bakery. We met true rock stars and served amazing people. Sharing the Burkholder Woods building always offered that community feel. It’s a true public house.”
On Thursday evening, the Ihnats have invited their community to gather again for a spaghetti dinner to mark the end of their tenure backstage (their final day of service will be Saturday, after which they’ll hold a sale of much of their equipment).
Join them, won’t you, for a classic Thursday Bread Club experience and the kind of send-off that only the Burkholder Woods building can offer.
Al Ciopino
Dominic Ihnat
Backstage Spaghetti Farewell Dinner
