PJ’s Hometown Café celebrates Fourth of July opening

PJ’s Hometown Café, located on the corner of Belmont and 13th, currently opens at 8 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. on Sundays. They’re closing times are posted online and may still vary by the week.

With menu items like omelets and pancakes or BLTs and burgers, PJ’s Hometown café serves traditional American breakfast and lunch staples.

While it currently operates with a limited menu, owner Paula Ruth said that as they grow, they plan to expand their menu. For now, they are focused on getting their menu items served as well as possible.

According to Ruth, they are not worried about making “trendy foods” or anything “grandiose,” instead wanting to provide good food and excellent service. They are also planning menu expansions to provide more options for people with dietary restrictions,like serving sugar free baked goods or meat substitutes on their burgers.

Ruth worked in the restaurant industry for 28 years, starting when she was 17. It brought her from California to Oregon, where she then pursued a career as a paralegal.

“I thought it would be my forever job until this opportunity came along,” she said.

She has always dreamed of having her own café. When the owner of the building asked Ruth if she wanted to start a restaurant there, she said she couldn’t refuse. She saw “a void that needed to be filled in the Heights” for traditional breakfast meals and hopes that her new restaurant will help fill this gap.

During the process of turning part of the facility PJ’s shares with Thirteen-O-One into a restaurant, Ruth said that she found community members “coming out of the woodwork” to help. While most restaurants can take more than six months to start up, PJ’s only took 10 weeks due to “phenomenal” community support, she said. According to Ruth, it “wouldn’t have happened” without support from the local community.

But the support has been from more than just the community. Ruth said that her family has also been extremely supportive in helping her follow her dream of restaurant ownership. In fact, she named her restaurant PJ’s after the initials of her mom to express her gratitude for how much support she has provided Ruth throughout her life.

Ruth said that the support from the community and her family has made her “eternally grateful and humbled” and that she “owes it to them.” Through her café Ruth wants to do everything she can to give back. To Ruth, being a “hometown café” isn’t only in the name; it’s in the goals. She says that PJ’s is “community centered” and focused on the “core principles of relationship building and family.”

She wants PJ’s Café to be a safe place where everyone “feels cared for and part of the environment.” She hopes that PJ’s can become an “integral” part of the community where families can enjoy time together without worrying about cooking or cleaning. To Ruth, hospitality is “more then just providing a service, it’s about developing a relationship.”

Ruth is working on the community-centered hometown feel in a few ways. First, she said that she hopes to support community artists by letting them display their art on the walls of her café. She welcomes artists to reach out to her if they are interested in displaying their works.

Second, PJ’s will be closed all major holidays. This is because Ruth is “more concerned with employees spending time with family then making her money.” Finally, as the restaurant expands, Ruth plans to set up a board where customers can suggest new items they would like to see on the menu. Each week, Ruth will pick from those suggestions to add to the menu as an item of the week named after the customer that recommended it.

Ruth said that she hopes that she can “look back in 20 years” and see themselves and PJ’s as a “part of the community.”  But until then, she will be busy doing what she loves: building a relationship with her employees, costumers, and community.

She hopes to build a “local-centered place” where people can go and feel “welcomed and part of something” while eating the country-fried steak and eggs that she said are “the best in Hood River.”

For more information, including menus, visit www.pjshometowncafe.com.

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Riley McNamara is a 2025 Hood River Valley High School graduate and will attend Oregon State University this fall. McNamara is working at Columbia Gorge News this summer as an intern; to read McNamara’s introduction, see below.