The Kamotiq Inn was the dirtiest, greasiest, booziest restaurant in Iqaluit. After 28 years of service, it closed Thursday, May 8, apparently for good.
It will be missed.
It was one of the few places where poor families could eat out. Food was, as far as Iqaluit goes, cheap, with meals under $15.
It also enjoyed a reputation for letting customers drink the afternoon away at a table with an untouched plate of food. The broken blood vessels on the noses of prominent lawyers and politicians likely owe a great deal to the establishment.
And it was a magnet for misfits, of which there are many in this town, who could come in, no matter their dress or appearance, and feel at ease.
For the past two years, Brian Czar, a misfit himself, ran the restaurant. Czar, 53, is a stocky, excitable man who hails from central Manitoba. He has glasses and a greying goatee and ponytail, and he always wore to work a T-shirt with pants that resembled striped pajama bottoms.
It’s hard to tell what was the bigger draw for customers: the greasy food Czar prepared, or the show he put on yelling at staff and unruly patrons.
“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England or the King
of Romania,” Czar says. “Everybody gets the same service. Nobody here’s special.”
Once, when a regular made fun of Czar’s pants, he went into the kitchen, picked up the biggest knife he could find, returned and stuck it into the customer’s table. Other patrons clapped.
He had no tolerance for disruptive drunks or drug dealers - both of which were not uncommon during the restaurant’s earlier incarnations. Yet Czar had a soft spot for lesser troublemakers.
Brian Czar ran the Kamotiq for the past two years. It’s hard to tell what was the bigger draw for customers: the greasy food Czar prepared, or the show he put on yelling at staff and unruly patrons.
He’d yell at customers who had previously dined and dashed out without paying. But he’d also often let them stay. And, minutes later, he’d return to joke with the same table.
The food Czar prepared often seemed to be an exercise in how much meat could be fit atop a pizza crust or between two hamburger buns. The aptly-named Kamotiq Killer pizza was piled high with thick layers of pepperoni, ham, bacon, ground beef and cheese - with green pepper, onion and mushroom added, it seemed, for garnish.
The cooked pizza stood two inches tall and oozed grease. The burgers similarly dripped with fat from cheese and bacon, and usually fell apart before they were half eaten.
Nobody came to the Kamotiq to eat healthy. Asking a waitress to exchange a side of fries for salad would earn you a sneer. No salad here.
But it was a haven for the hung-over who sought solace in greasy food on a Sunday afternoon. No fear of judgment: the majority of customers felt similarly awful. The dirty windows took the edge off the outside world. The canned beer that sat on most customers’ tables accomplished a similar purpose.
The building’s famous igloo-shaped design contributed to the cozy atmosphere. Conversations on one side of the dining room could be clearly heard on the far side, thanks to the peculiar acoustics of the domed roof.
The Kamotiq has been closed before - by the liquor inspector, the fire inspector, the health inspector, and by its own staff, when they decided to not show up to work. But this time, it seems, the closure is permanent.
Iqaluit is changing. The old town - grubby, chaotic, and strangely charming - is disappearing.
It’s being replaced with garish new buildings such as the Nova Inn, which caters to Iqaluit’s business and government professionals, and where, at the Water’s Edge restaurant, entrees start at $21 for fish and chips, and reach $58 for lobster with shrimp and scallops.
Beer sat on most customers’ tables in the Kamotiq. Like the dirty windows of the establishment, it helped take the edges off the outside world. The restaurant was grubby, but its patrons felt at ease there. It was a magnet for misfits.
Mike Mrdjenovich, the Edmonton-based developer who built the Nova, bought the Kamotiq last summer, with plans to demolish the building and put a two-storey office complex in its place.
It’s unclear when this will happen. Mrdjenovich doesn’t have permits to begin work yet. But he says it’s unlikely the restaurant will reopen. He says it’s not profitable.
Meanwhile, if Iqaluit were a Monopoly board, the Kamotiq would be sitting on Boardwalk. It’s prime real estate, at the heart of downtown, at Four Corners.
There’s been speculation as to whether Mrdjenovich will open a restaurant in the new building. But Mrdjenovich says he has little interest in being a restaurateur. He says there’s more money, and less hassle, in renting office space to government.
As for Czar, on Monday he was to begin work with Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. to help buy food for the company’s site at Mary River.
His last shift at the Kamotiq, on May 8, was a slow evening. Few people in town knew the restaurant was closing, and there was a big banquet being held at the Arctic Winter Games arena for the Iqaluit trade show.
A handful of customers imbibed beer and greasy food while the radio played the R.E.M. hit, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”
Then Czar flicked off the neon “OPEN” sign for the last time.
“It’s hard,” he says. “Every day I came in here and put my heart in this place.”
“Now it’s done. It’s gone, it’s finished, it’s over with.”
The Kamotiq is Iqaluit’s last igloo-shaped building. It’s also, most agree, an eyesore.
The red paint on its walls is peeling. The roof has been patched and re-patched. Mrdjenovich calls it a “garbage building.”
There is no Kamotiq Preservation Society. But if it were to have started, it would probably have been led by J.F. Beauchesne, 35, who has fond memories of the place - especially from a few years ago, when clouds of cigarette smoke hung over the tables, and you could still order deep-fried muktuk.
“I felt like I had just kicked in the door to a saloon in the wild west,” he says.
He would poke the muktuk with a toothpick and pour vinegar and salt over it before eating the meal, accompanied by a bottle of Donini. Whale fat, cooked in grease and washed down with cheap wine, summed up the spirit of the place for him.
Beauchesne acknowledges the restaurant’s closure is good news for his liver and waist line. But, he says, “I’m going to be in mourning, a bit.”