For someone who’s long carried a torch, Denise Doyle glides like a ballroom dancer in her white Keds. She swings through her restaurant’s kitchen, rings up a customer, and hugs a friend while sidestepping the pair of fire hydrants near the door.

The hydrants, each weighing about as much as a baby elephant, are the heftiest of the firefighting memorabilia stuffed into Barry’s Cafe. Helmets and toy fire trucks line shelves. Hundreds of departmental insignia patches decorate the walls.

“Somehow, someone carried fire hydrants here,” Denise says with a shrug, hazel eyes amused behind wide glasses. “People were always bringing things to Barry.”

Barry Doyle (in the red shirt and light blue T-shirt) turned his restaurant into a community-building tool to help others. “Barry really had, along with a huge heart, a great mind,” Denise says. “He was so forward-thinking.” photograph by Alex Boerner

That would be Denise’s late husband, Barry Doyle, the founder of the restaurant in Wake County’s Swift Creek community. In many ways, it’s a classic diner, serving lunch and an all-day breakfast amid red-checkered tablecloths, paper napkins, and the sizzle of a busy grill.

But soon after opening, Barry added a special ingredient: his devotion to firefighters. He began hauling hot food to first responders on emergency calls, sometimes with Denise riding shotgun.

Though Barry died eight years ago at 64, the faithful still come with memorabilia. So do the firefighters.

Titus Brown (left), a retired captain with the Raleigh Fire Department, can share many stories with Raleigh firefighter Chris Holcomb about the memorabilia in Barry’s Cafe, as well as about Barry Doyle himself, and how he served firefighters food during all kinds of calls, day or night. photograph by Alex Boerner

Titus Brown first strode into Barry’s Cafe more than 30 years ago. Back then, he was a captain at the Raleigh Fire Department and volunteered at the Swift Creek Volunteer Fire Department, no more than 300 yards away.

“If it were up to me, I’d throw all of this away,” says the impish, silver-haired Brown, 85, side-eyeing the mountains of memorabilia. “’Cause you gotta keep it all dusted. It’s a lot.”

No one knows this as well as Denise. She’s now 70, and Barry’s death left her at the center of a four-alarm life emergency.

Today, the restaurant is a tribute to her husband’s legacy — and her own perseverance.

• • •

Denise met Barry on a first date — his first date with her roommate. It was 1977, and they were all students at East Carolina University. Barry was tall, dark, and inquisitive, and he came by Denise’s apartment to pick up her roommate, who was running late.

Denise and Barry made small talk. The ensuing date was brief. Within half an hour, the roommate came back home. The initial conversation had not gone well, and Barry, always decisive, had called the whole thing off.

Soon after that, he asked Denise out. Denise resisted. Barry persisted. Denise finally agreed. Two years into their courtship, he began proposing. In 1979, on the third try, Denise gave in. They were married six months later.

Badges from emergency response departments adorn on the wall at Barry’s Cafe. photograph by Alex Boerner

At that point, Barry was working in construction — until he fell through a soft patch of roof. As legend has it, still flat on his back, he opened his eyes and declared, “I need a new line of work.”

Barry gravitated to hospitality, drawn by the chance to, as Denise puts it, “mingle with people while giving them something they wanted.”

In May 1992, he debuted his eponymous café at the then-shiny-new Swift Creek Shopping Center. Denise pulled double duty, pitching in at the restaurant and maintaining her career as a sales rep in the media business.

At first, Barry’s Cafe leaned into a real ’50s soda shop vibe, complete with a jukebox blasting Elvis and “Wooly Bully.” But then the staff and volunteers up the hill at the fire station started marching in. Among the first were Brown and firefighter Bryant Woodall.

“The first time we came in, Barry burned the eggs,” Brown says with a chortle. “Had to throw ’em away. I thought, This guy’s never gonna make it unless he hires a cook.”

breakfast photograph by Alex Boerner

Barry hired a cook, but a certain quirk of his would never change: “He liked everybody and talked to everybody,” Woodall says. “But he always had a special interest in the fire service, in how we did what we did and why we did it.”

In the winter of 1994, a vicious ice storm wreaked havoc across the South. Cars skidded and crashed. Fires erupted as people without electricity sought warmth. Emergency responders labored around the clock — duty-bound, determined, and stomach-groaningly hungry.

A Swift Creek firefighter — no one is quite sure who — got in touch with Barry to see if he could feed and fuel his team and the other emergency responders. Within a couple of hours, Barry delivered biscuits, coffee, and good cheer.

“After that, he just kept doing it,” Denise says. “He felt called by God to help.” A major house fire? Barry carted food to the scene. Painstakingly dredging a lake? Barry not only showed up, but he spent the night and cooked on cue.

Denise loves the firefighting memorabilia people bring in. “Every day,” she says, “somebody brings me something.” photograph by Alex Boerner

He installed an emergency scanner at the restaurant, and when the Swift Creek crew retired a 1961 pump rig, Barry bought it and turned it into a food truck long before those roving smorgasbords became de rigueur. News purveyors from Cary Living to People chronicled his exploits. Many of the faded clips now line the café walls behind framed glass.

Denise joined Barry on some calls, but she had a plateful of other duties as she tended to her sales career and the couple’s daughter, Catherine, their only child. Occasionally, she’d make a crucial adjustment to the café’s operations. Barry once had offered a 50 percent discount to all firefighters. Denise looked at the books and trimmed it to 15 percent.

“They were complementary,” says Peg O’Connell, a longtime customer, about the couple she came to hold dear. “Barry loved running a restaurant, being out front. But Denise was always there helping to make sure they kept a roof over their heads.”

• • •

Barry’s last call came in March of 2017, when a downtown Raleigh apartment building bloomed into flames, and he arrived to feed and fuel everyone there. Barry was sick with a condition known as idiopathic neuropathy, which attacks the nervous system. A month later, he died at home.

By then, much had changed. Fire departments had established formal procedures for fetching vittles, largely eliminating the need for a well-stocked Good Samaritan. In the late 1990s, Barry, Denise, and others had organized the Feed the Firefighters Foundation to provide food and beverages to firefighters and other personnel on-site at emergencies. A year after Barry’s death, the foundation created an endowment to help local residents pay for the certifications and training they need to become a firefighter in Wake County.

Barry’s Cafe remains a go-to lunch spot for local firefighters, like these four members of the Fairview Fire Department: (from left) Jarrett Manning, Jeff Blackford, Glenn Clapp, and Andrew Lynch. “Firefighters have a good outlook; they are positive,” Denise says. “Because what they’re doing is not.” photograph by Alex Boerner

At Barry’s Cafe, Denise got even busier. Retired from her day job, she had to answer the restaurant’s call of duty on her own. At first, she struggled, especially during the pandemic. “I prayed a lot,” she says. “Read a lot of Proverbs and Psalms.”

Her Methodist minister offered support. “Denise, your identity has always been as Barry’s wife or Catherine’s mother,” he told her. “It’s time to reinvent yourself.”

• • •

Denise took up golf and, like most mortals, found it a test of faith. “I’m not good,” she admits. “But I enjoy being outside.” She began painting, specializing in landscapes.

She started ballroom dancing and discovered she was a natural. At Barry’s Cafe, she seems to float in her white Keds as she moves lithely from kitchen to cash register. On the dance floor, she tangos in pink heels with rhinestone buckles. In a way, her husband’s café calling had helped set the stage for her own reinvention.

After two years of classes at an Arthur Murray studio, Denise ventured far from North Carolina to a glittering dance showcase in Rome. There, draped in a bejeweled black gown, she danced the waltz, the rumba, and the cha-cha. On her dance card last month: a showcase in Prague.

Denise Doyle photograph by Alex Boerner

There’s also a new man in Denise’s life. “He’s two and a half feet tall,” she says, “doesn’t have all his teeth, and lives near Houston.”

That would be Timothy, her 3-year-old grandson. Catherine is all grown up and ventured west last year for work. Every few months, Denise jets out to dote on the brood, which now includes granddaughter, Elisabeth, who’s just a year old.

Every November, she hosts a fundraiser for the Feed the Firefighters Foundation, and every six weeks, she makes sure the restaurant’s memorabilia gets dusted. With summer in full fettle, Denise knows another buffing is due soon.

“Seasons change,” she says. “In nature, and in our lives.”

• • •

Back at the café, Michael Hudson is stationed at the grill, ready for the lunch rush. He’s the seasoned cook whom Denise promoted to general manager about a year ago. He flips another burger, while hostess Jill Grant gaily seats another customer.

Their work frees up Denise to focus on a young lady who’s frequented Barry’s Cafe since she was a tyke. She’s now planning her wedding reception, and for her big celebration, she wants Denise to whip up a batch of the delectable chocolate chip cookies the restaurant served in its early days.

General Manager Michael Hudson loves anchoring the kitchen.  photograph by Alex Boerner

“I’ve got the recipe somewhere; I’ll find it,” Denise assures her. Between dance rehearsals and golf rounds and café check-ins, she knows she’ll find the recipe.

This is life after Barry. While even the most brilliant fires eventually extinguish, embers rekindle; new passions spark. Or as Denise, pausing for just a moment at the counter, puts it: “You’re allowed to have a pity party, but you can’t stay long.”

Barry’s Cafe
2851 Jones Franklin Road
Raleigh, NC 27606
(919) 859-3555
barryscafe.com