This plate of assorted seasonal fresh fruit includes pineapple, grapes, bananas, kiwi, and strawberries.[/caption]

Sandy McGee’s Restaurant & Catering is celebrating 25 years of business in Richmond this year.

The restaurant and catering business is located at 314 Morton St., and operates out of the old post office building that was built in the 1800s.

Sandy McGee’s will be closed from May 20-22 for remodeling. According to McGee, an earlier remodeling of the establishment had an unexpected consequence—it disturbed the spirit of a man killed in the building decades before Sandy McGee’s was there. A portrait of the man hangs in the eatery.

“He was killed on our back stairs,” McGee said. “Years ago, when we tore out the original stairs is when we started noticing activity. He was actually shot on that staircase.”

Although the interior of the building has been redone, it retains some of the original building’s interior aspects—including the floors and ceiling.

The restaurant employees start their day by boiling 75 pounds of bone-in chicken breast in order to make chicken salad and to provide stock for four homemade soups: crab and corn chowder, broccoli and cheese, chicken tortilla and chilled avocado, McGee said.

Many of the items on the menu are named after people the owner has shared a meal with over the years. She said one of the most popular menu items is the Max-Out—an oven roasted turkey sandwich with melted Swiss cheese and topped with the restaurant’s signature spinach salad—which was created by and named after—her late husband, Max McGee.

This entree comes with six jumbo fried shrimp, choice of two sides and a side salad (not shown).[/caption]

“When I first opened, I would ask Max [to]help do this, [or] to help me do that, and so he would work his entire lunch hour and then he would have to go back to work,” McGee said. “One day he thought of what to eat in the car—he wanted a spinach salad but [couldn’t] eat that in the car with a fork, so he put it inside the sandwich.”

McGee suggests pairing the sandwich with a cup of her chicken tortilla soup.

“These two together [are] fabulous,” she said.