It’s not just all the delicious food – from chicken wings to hamburgers to steaks – that she serves.
Debbie O’Neill, who grew up working in her parent’s restaurant, also serves hospitality. Come to the Native New Yorker, a new family restaurant in Lacey, and you’ll get a home style cooked meal with good old home style hospitality.
“I like welcoming people to my house,” Debbie said recently while sitting her in restaurant. “I love the socializing. I went crazy sitting behind a desk.”
In September, Debbie and her husband, Tom, opened the Native New Yorker. Thirty years ago, Debbie’s parents opened a restaurant under the same name in Phoenix, Arizona. She grew up working that restaurant, doing everything from being a waitress, to a busser to a cook to an administrator.
When her parent’s restaurant first opened in 1981, Debbie’s mom added chicken wings to the menu in hopes of drawing more customers. Using a recipe from her hometown of Buffalo, New York, the family sold chicken wings for 10 cents each. It worked and the restaurant boomed. Now, there are 21 franchised restaurants in Phoenix.
Tom and Debbie’s restaurant is the first in the franchise outside the state of Arizona.
“I think we pride ourselves in making our guests feel like family,” Debbie said. “We want them to feel like they’re welcome.”
She always wants them to enjoy a meal out. As their sign says, they’re “more than great wings.” A family-friendly menu has lots to offer. Besides a tempting list of appetizers that includes chilli cheese fries and mozzarella cheese sticks, Debbie offers eight different salads, a soup of the day, 10 different sandwiches, seven different hamburgers, shrimp, fish and chips, six different pizzas, salmon, three steak cuts, baby back pork ribs and five different Italian pasta dishes. There’s also a kid’s tasty menu, complete with mac-n-cheese and grilled chicken breast with sliced Granny Smith apples.
Then, to top it off, there are delicious desserts, all made by Debbie’s 24-year-old daughter, Ashley. Her cheesecakes, brownie Sundays and key lime pies are worth every calorie.
“We use real cream. Real blue cheese,” Debbie said. “We take a lot of pride in that.”
And then there’s the chicken wings. There are 14 different sauces, ranging from plain butter to a spicy “suicide” barbeque. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the chicken wings are 39 cents each. And you can order one or 100.
“You don’t have to order six or 12,” Debbie said. “You can order as many as you want.”
You can get 10 chicken wings for less than $4.
For parties, the restaurant has room to cater groups up to 40. They don’t cater parties outside their restaurant, but they do have takeout trays.
For the O’Neills, who have lived in Lacey for 12 years, their restaurant is a family affair. Beside her husband, both of her daughters (Chelsy and Ashley) also work in the restaurant.
“We all work together,” Debbie said. “We all go home together. It’s always good.”
If you want to watch a sporting event or some big game on TV, there’s not a bad seat in the house at the Native New Yorker. The restaurant has 27 flat-screen TVs mounted on the walls. There’s even one in the men’s bathroom.
“It’s not really a sports bar,” Debbie said. “We’re a family restaurant with a lot of of TVs.”
Debbie’s goal is to give her “guests,” as she likes to call them, a full meal deal – a great meal and a great outing.
“It’s a matter of giving them the whole package,” Debbie said. “You have to have a staff that is able to provide that. I think we have that.”
On every work shift, the Native New Yorker has five to seven cooks. The restaurant employs about 80 people.
“They’re people who care about what they’re doing and care about the customers,” Debbie said.
So, the little girl who was born in New York and grew up in Phoenix has brought her family’s restaurant to Lacey. And she’s doing what she likes doing – cooking and welcoming friends for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
“I love it,” Debbie said.
So do her “guests.”
Native New Yorker
Time: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and they stay open an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays. On Sundays, they open one hour earlier for NFL games.
Address: 4441 Pacific Ave. Lacey
Phone: 360-915-6958.
