The Lake Lanier Tea House re-opened its doors on August 8th, 2007.  Patty Otto, owner of the Hare & Hound Pub in Landrum, purchased the historic restaurant from the Kerhulas family in the Spring of 2007. In a few months she has updated the restaurant, but kept the "Tea House" charm. 

The Lake Lanier Tea House, first constructed in 1925 and operated by the Kerhulas family since 1940, closed its doors in September, 2005, not long after the death of second generation owner/operator Theo Kerhulas, who passed away in February 2005.  “It is scary,” Otto said of taking on another restaurant in addition to her catering business, “but I have loved The Tea House ever since I moved here. I met Theo at IGA every day, and had breakfast every day with him at Bantam Chef. He talked about selling The Tea House then.”   Otto said she hopes to continue the best parts of the tradition and history of the Tea House. “It is important that someone buys the Tea House who loves it as much as Theo did,” Otto said. “People came to look at it from all over, but did not know its history. You have to have a feeling for it.”

Otto plans to offer dinner at the Tea House Wednesdays through Saturdays and to serve brunch on Sundays.  Eventually, she said she plans to rebuild the boat house, perhaps with a deck where guests can enjoy an appetizer and watch the sunset. There will be a dock for those who want to come to dinner by boat.  The room on the right of the restaurant, once a bath house for visitors swimming at the beach there, will be converted into the bar, with chairs by the fireplace. There will also be a private dining room for about a dozen people.   The menu will be different, Otto said.
“We’re looking at doing great steaks, fresh fish, keeping Theo’s lobster nights. We will keep that tradition.” The bar will open early, offering appetizers and light fare. 

Sunday brunch will be “more brunchy offering,” than what was served in the past, Otto said, with eggs, omelet stations, salads, as well as heavier fare. Otto said the popular Tea House brunch brought in 200 patrons on normal Sundays, 400 on Mother’s Day and holidays. She expects to do 400 all the time.  Some longtime employees will be coming back, Otto said, such as Mike Leonard, a 20-year Tea House veteran.  Otto said she has hired chef Marshall Watkins, who grew up here and worked at Gerhard’s for years. Watkins helped open Twigs, and was at Pine Crest Inn. She says she has a sous chef lined up, Matt Ryan, from Blossoms restaurant in Charleston.  “I have been watching for staff for (The Tea House) for quite a while,” Otto said.   Otto said she can rest easy about continuing smooth operations at the Hare & Hound Pub as she takes on a new challenge. She already has a “great staff” in place there. “Probably 60 percent have been employed with me since I bought the business in 2002,” she said.  She was scared that time, too.

Otto, a Cincinnati native and University of Cincinnati business major, started out as a real estate broker, the youngest in the state of Ohio at the time. She moved to Hilton Head, S.C., to sell property and wound up helping to build the South Beach Marina. That’s when she got into the restaurant business. She bought Land’s End Tavern at South Beach in 1981 and sold it in 1987.  Otto next went into event planning, making all the arrangements for corporate events and weddings, traveling all over. She moved to the Thermal Belt in 1997, and worked out event contracts for two years. Then she jumped back into the food business, in a big way.    “I had always loved the Hare & Hound building,” she said. “I knew (prior owners) Sheila and Harry Grymes. On my birthday, Dec. 2, 2002, I purchased the business. That was the day of the ice storm. There were no customers. I had a temperature of 101. I remember looking out through the iced-covered windows, crying, wondering, ‘What have I done?’”
She has done lots more since then. She now has a separate building for her catering business. She also owns the old Cottage Books building, but says she will probably sell that.   “I have no time to be a landlord,” she explains.  In fact, Otto said, as patrons like seeing her in person, she expects she will “want to be seen at both Hare & Hound and the Tea House.” She will probably be back and forth a lot.

The Tea House building has required some extensive renovation, Otto said. She began the work months ago, before actual closing, because she said she wanted to be open for summer business this year.   Contractors found some termite damage, and are replacing some logs. Old copper water lines found under floor “began leaking if you touched them,” she said, and are being replaced. The kitchen is being completely torn out.  “Some pieces of equipment in the kitchen were older than Theo,” Otto said. Hare & Hound staff have looked at certain Tea House devices and try to guess what they were used for, even though they had actually been in use as recently as 18 months ago.   “We’re not changing the character,” Otto said. The exterior will be fixed up with plantings and flowers, and the hillside behind the restaurant may be graded toward Butter Street to make room for more  parking.  “I go over there now, and see all the problems,” she said. “Then I just look out at the lake and take a deep breath.”

The million dollar view across the first basin of Lake Lanier, with the mountain backdrop, is “magical,” Otto says. Many a future husband popped the question at The Tea House over the years.   “An 82-year-old man from Greenville and his wife came looking for me, came up steps to my second floor office over the Hare & Hound, just to tell me how much the Tea House meant to them,” Otto said. She’s heard that a lot, from all sorts of folks.  Otto gets the same feeling. She rented The Tea House last Christmas to cater a dinner for Bright’s Creek.  “I looked at the restaurant, all decked out, and got tears in my eyes,” she recalled. “Tom Foster came over to me and said, ‘Theo would be happy.’”

Compliments of the Tryon Daily Bulletin, Tryon, North Carolina