There is rarely a time during the peak of lunch or dinner business when the West End Cafe doesn't carry a waiting list. The lunch crowd starts stacking up by 11:30 a.m..; for dinner, get there by 6 p.m. or expect to cool your heels at the bar.

Monday through Saturday, it's been that way ever since cafe founder Robert Shay and his partners - Stacy Griffin and David Martin - relocated the old West End Cafe in April 1997 to bigger quarters next door in the historic Winston-Salem neighborhood on the western edge of downtown.

Shay is amazed. "Fantastic," he says. He recalls with some irony how some of his old customers at the smaller West End Cafe across the street were glad to hear of the expansion. "We won't have to wait in line! they said hopefully.

The restaurant business is not where most people make their fortune, Shay knows that. But the West End Cafe does a good amount of business each year and it may soon be expanding - either upstairs or downtown.

The secret to West End's success? "It has to be good," Shay says. "The food cost

here are a little high, but if you have volume like we do, that cures everything."

Soups and salads, sandwiches and burgers - that's the lunchtime staple. For dinner, a near-gourmet menu is added. There may be an appetizer of Caribbean coconut shrimp with mango creme sauce, a salad of pan-fried oysters over mixed greens and fried leaks and ginger currant vinaigrette, and an entre of seared salmon with apple cranberry compote and coconut creme sauce.

You can eat upscale or down-scale, doesn't matter. It's why they say West

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