Main Street Restaurant, a staple for 17 years on the west end of Smithfield, has been closed for several months following the death of one of its proprietors.

A sign on the restaurant’s locked door reads “In loving memory of Lea Katselos, May 20, 1960 – May 9, 2024, a friend to all she met.” Another taped to the restaurant’s brick exterior warns the building is undergoing fumigation. Its listing on Google shows the restaurant as being permanently closed.

The Smithfield Times was unable to reach Lea’s husband, Jimmy, or the building’s owner, Michael Keith Hearn, for comments. However, Ed Hipp, a volunteer at the Isle of Wight County Christian Outreach Program, told the Times in August that Jimmy called that month to offer the restaurant’s remaining nonperishable foodstuffs to COP’s food bank program, and had told volunteers that he would not be reopening the restaurant after his wife’s death.

Hipp said he remembers the restaurant for its “good value” and “good food” that was “always served with a smile.”

“It was a great breakfast place,” Hipp said. “It was one of the best places to get a steak in town.”

Main Street Restaurant opened at 837 West Main St. in 2007 at the site of the former Ken’s Barbecue following a dispute with the town that closed the Katselos’ previous venture, Angelo’s Steak and Seafood Restaurant, on South Church Street.

According to reporting from that year in the Times, the town had offered to buy Angelo’s in 2006 for $925,000 with the intent of razing the building and constructing the fire station that now stands on the site. The town’s closed-door negotiations with Angelo’s landlords Evangelos and Ourania Theodorogiannis sparked a dispute with Jimmy, who at the time claimed he had first right of refusal to purchase the building and was under contract to continue his lease for all of 2007.

Jimmy had, by January 2007, matched the town’s offer of $925,000, by which time the town was laying groundwork to seize the property through eminent domain. By March of that year, the town had closed on its deal with the Theodorogiannises and by April, state health department violations caused Angelo’s to close three months ahead of schedule.