For 20 years, Auburn businessman Ryan Lindley toyed with the idea of opening his own restaurant and serving up good old American fare made from scratch.

And in August 2007, Lindley, who already owned his own commercial door and hardware company, opened Oh Ryan! Cafe, at 815 Auburn Way S.

Lindley stuffed the menu with classic and creative items, from country-fried steak to eggs and quiche and omelets. One monstrous breakfast plate came with buttermilk pancakes, bacon and sausages, three extra large eggs, biscuits and gravy and a bodacious pile of hash browns.

A burger named “You Can’t Handle the Truth,” offered up a three-quarters-of-a-pound ground beef patty on a huge bun with the fixings.

But at 3 p.m. last Monday, Oh Ryan! closed, taking Lindley’s dream with it.

Lindley said the reasons were many: the tough nature of the restaurant business; a sour economy; the recent Boeing strike; the new traffic median on Auburn Way South.

But what finally killed Oh Ryan! Lindley said, was the large power bill that hit him out of the blue several months after opening day.

“It ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Lindley said, flipping omelets for his last breakfast crowd Monday. A platter of sausage waited at his elbow.

Lindley said that when he signed the lease in 2007, he told Puget Sound Energy he wanted to put the power in the business’ name. The building has three meters on it, two electric and one gas.

“They turned two of the three meters over to us, but not the third one,” Lindley said. “It was an error on their part. For several months, we had been paying the bill based on what we were seeing. We hadn’t a clue what it was supposed to be. As far as we knew, everything was hunky dory.”

Then a shutoff notice and bill from PSE arrived in the mail, advising Lindley he owed almost $6,000. The notice and bill were addressed to the previous tenant, but he was still on the hook for the debt.

Lindley called PSE, whereupon the company discovered it had failed to turn one of the meters over to him.

“They were gracious enough to try and work things out over time in payments, but this building is so old with single-pane glass and very little glass, it’s costing us $1,500 to $1,800 a month. And with that extra payment on top of it every month, it made it real hard to make ends meet,” Lindley said.

Employees and customers were saddened to see it come to an end.

A tough loss

Sarah Henderson, server and service manager, said she already has a job lined up at Kent Station. But the tears welling in her eyes told how much this one hurt.

“I’m very heartbroken,” Henderson said. “It really feels like a member of the family has died. He worked so hard to make it work. He really has a passion for food, and he was so good to everybody.”

Dick and Rose Christofferson and their granddaughter, Heidi Simms, made Oh Ryan! a regular stop.

“We really loved it,” said Dick Christofferson. “Nice guy, good food, plenty of it, convenient. Rose and I came down maybe once a week. I came down with a bunch of guys, and my daughter and I probably came down probably once a week. We’re really going to miss it.”

Lindley would like to open another restaurant one day.

“I’ll go out, make a living for a while, and scratch my head and try to figure out how to get back into this,” Lindley said. “I’d work 12 hard hours here, then go home and play with ideas to improve the restaurant. I enjoy food as an art medium so well that I really can’t see myself doing anything else.”