What’s Cooking? At This Cafe You Don’t Want to Know

--Bernie Hannaford of Hines, Ore., isn’t satisfied with serving the worst food in the state from his roadside diner. He wants to franchise. “We’re going to call them ‘Bernard’s Restaurant, the Worst Food in . . . ‘ then you fill in the state,” said Hannaford, 62. When Hannaford’s restaurant first became notorious, “it opened a kettle of worms,” said his wife, Betty, who helps out, along with their son, Gary. “All my relatives called, asking for money.” The publicity and Hannaford’s marketing strategy have made his restaurant an institution on U.S. 20, a two-lane blacktop across eastern Oregon’s high desert country between Bend and Ontario. The menus warn of “free gas with every fill-up” but add comfort by noting, “We sell Rolaids.” Hannaford, his gray hair crew cut, wearing a white shirt with a grease-stained apron across his ample belly, says his claims are true. “I’m a lousy cook,” he said. “My father always told me to tell the truth, no matter how it hurts. I haven’t changed my cooking,” he added. “That would be our problem with the franchise, to find lousy-enough cooks.”

--Radio station KSTR in Grand Junction, Colo., is preparing to serve 15,000 lunches Saturday to pay off its bet with Mesa County over the number of fatal accidents during the holiday weekend. The station promised to treat everyone in the western Colorado county to a barbecue if it registered no fatal traffic accidents during the long Fourth of July weekend, said Charlie Michaels, operations manager of the AM-FM station. “We thought we’d have to pay up, and we’re glad it happened this way,” he said. There are an estimated 80,000 persons in Mesa County, and Michaels said that the station expects at least 15,000 to show up for the picnic of hamburgers and hot dogs at Lincoln Park.

--”I’m as jubilant as I can be,” said Paul Tavilla, 51, produce merchant of Chelsea, Mass. “When I got out to the building and felt all that wind, I never thought I’d do it.” Well, he did. Tavilla caught in his mouth a grape that had dropped 38 stories from the roof of a Boston bank. The black grape plummeted 520 feet, 5 inches. Documents to support the record have been signed by witnesses and notarized and will soon be on their way to Guinness Book of World Records officials. If accepted, the record will replace the standard of 354 feet set by a Denver man. “My family was in the produce business and I’d always sit around catching grapes, cherries and small pieces of watermelon in my mouth,” Tavilla said. “It was just something I was good at. I’d be sitting there and someone would always say, ‘Hey, look what this kid can do.’ ”