Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The Pow Wow restaurant in Tucumcari reopened Friday after being closed for several months, and Carlson Coffee Co. several days earlier moved to a higher-traffic location along the city’s Route 66 corridor.
The Pow Wow Restaurant and Lizard Lounge at 801 W. Tucumcari Blvd., a fixture in the city for decades, was rechristened as the Pow Wow Lounge with a scaled-down menu to complement its bar.
Christopher Arias, a city commissioner, and his wife Tori bought the Pow Wow in late June.
“The first few days have gone pretty good,” Arias said after the Sunday lunch rush. “We had a few hiccups, but nothing we couldn’t fix. We’re just finding our groove.”
Arias said he was motivated to get the restaurant back open for this weekend’s annual Rattler Reunion, which brings hundreds of THS alumni to town.
“We’ll take the feedback from this week and last week and build upon it,” he said.
Previous owner Todd Duplantis closed the Pow Wow shortly after Mother’s Day after buying the business in January 2022. Duplantis resurfaced with his Stone’s Pizza Grill along U.S. 54 in Logan.
The Pow Wow was the creation of Bettie Ditto, who had inherited the nine-room Lins Motor Lodge in 1955 and expanded it into the 90-room Pow Wow hotel and restaurant complex. It became a popular Route 66 stop. The hotel is under different ownership.
Ditto died in 2008 of acute leukemia at an Amarillo hospital. She was 91.
On July 23, Michael Carlson moved his Carlson Coffee Co. from downtown to the Goodies Go Last bakery he opened in March at 711 E. Route 66 Blvd.
“The move went fantastic,” Carlson said in a phone interview Sunday. “We probably should have done it a lot sooner. People are real receptive. It definitely was a good move.”
Carlson said he had several reasons for moving the coffeehouse from 115 E. Smith Ave. near the Tucumcari Railroad Museum to Tucumcari’s main drag.
“One was the logistics of shuttling things back and forth between the two places,” he said. “But the main thing is there isn’t any traffic in Old Town. We did all right for a while, but there’s nothing happening down there, and nobody’s going there.”
Carlson said he will rent out the previous Smith Avenue location.
“I think I have a person that’s going going to use it as an office,” he said.
Carlson Coffee Co. opened in June 2022 in the former Lena’s Cafe building after months of renovations. The site also once housed the Tri-Angle Cafe and Danford Dan’s Music Shop.