By Robert Williams

Editor

The pandemic created an opportunity for partners Sara Watson and Terri Trickle when they transformed the former Pickle Factory Bar & Grill into what became many regional diners’ favorite restaurants. Blackboard, in rural Vergas, closed last weekend after six successful seasons.

Trickle addressed the closing and her impending retirement in a heartfelt Facebook post on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

“It’s no doubt these last six summers are one of the greatest accomplishments of my professional life,” she said. “Leading a restaurant isn’t easy, but this is not my achievement alone. Blackboard has never been about me, and to that end I have always been clear. Blackboard is about the team, the guests, the view, the food, and the celebration of others. Full stop. I am forever grateful to the team that took the risk to follow me to this 140-year-old schoolhouse in rural Minnesota on a grassy hill in Dora Township with three fryers, no working ovens and just a handful of forks that weren’t plastic.”

That small bit of Dora Township was very familiar to both Watson and Trickle. Each of their parents owned lake properties within four miles of the restaurant on Spirit Lake. 

“We’ve been going there for years and years and have good memories of the place,” Trickle told the Forum in a 2022 feature.

Blackboard also provided an out from the cooped-up sensation of traversing the strangeness that was the pandemic and brought some fresh air to Trickle’s family in particular.

“I was searching for what our family and my career would look like with a summer of no activities, no gatherings, no celebrations,” she said. “My 17-year-old son had just finished the chemotherapy and radiation treatments he underwent to battle Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and while he was still so fragile we’d all been at home in isolation for months. What to do?”

Blackboard provided a big sense of moving on in life.

“The opportunity came to purchase this delightful old schoolhouse just a few miles down the road from my parent’s summer lake home,” Trickle said. “A restaurant we’d visited countless times after long, sunny lake days. We thought of the wonderful experiences ‘in a life before.’  Before cancer. Before COVID. Just, BEFORE. And we set out to recreate our favorite culinary memories from those days—be it Grandpa Dave’s famous smoked barbecue ribs, Grandma Shirley’s Christmas meatballs, or the most incredible Chicken Cordon Bleu from our travels abroad.”

The two families created a casual, yet professional, atmosphere and food that was rated the best in the area continually by first-time and regular visitors alike.

“We’ve committed ourselves to our standards of high level cooking and service in a comfortable and fun environment,” said Trickle. “We’ve been blessed with more compliments than I can remember and so many loyal customers that feel like lifelong friends and family. The generosity and gratitude that we’ve been gifted over the years humbles us daily.”

Trickle and Watson’s dream became a charming reality over the six years and while those in the dining room were enjoying exquisite meals, the people in the kitchen had opportunities of a lifetime in creating the dishes.

“Blackboard is and has always been a teaching restaurant,” said Trickle. “A training kitchen. A springboard for summer kids working toward a different future and also for those who want to move on and up in the culinary world. I have never enjoyed saying goodbye to any of our rotating staff—but their leaving has always been made sweeter by the promise of those who follow behind. We are and have always been a hand up. A way out. A passage through.”

Which is the same mindset Trickle used in announcing her retirement.

“It’s my time to exit stage left,” she said. “Or out the kitchen door, as it were. On October 26, I will hang up my apron for the last time, and retire from the kitchen, bar, and campus of Blackboard. No longer will my tired feet walk these 140-year-old hard rock maple floors. It seems fitting, in a place that was designed to teach, train, and say goodbye to students—that this has always been our way.”

Diners instantly responded to Trickle’s announcement booking all reservations for the final October leading up to last Sunday’s final service. Back in her 2022 feature with the Forum, Trickle hinted at the possibility of Blackboard leading to her retirement.

“It was a perfect location to have a career out there,” she said. “There aren’t a whole lot of jobs that aren’t a work-from-home kind of thing. It was a great idea for me to move forward with a restaurant investment in the lakes area.”