‘It’s about legacy.’ Iconic Columbus restaurant will share some cooking secrets

The legacy of Minnie Hanneman, founder of Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant in Columbus, will live on from a source born far beyond her generation: a YouTube channel.

Hanneman was 89 when she died two years ago. Her granddaughter, Melinda Weeks Newton, now owns the 39-year-old restaurant and is starting a YouTube channel to republish and chronicle her grandmother’s recipes. The channel, called Minnie’s Recipe Box, will feature videos of Newton and guests cooking Hanneman’s recipes.

Newton told the Ledger-Enquirer the idea for the channel came from dealing with the grief of her grandmother’s death. These videos are a way to honor her legacy and preserve some bites of Columbus history, she said.

“These are some incredible recipes that haven’t been made for a couple of generations,” Newton said. “Why not bring back some of these fun things I had and build off them?”

This is not Newton’s first time bringing her grandmother’s recipes into the digital era. In 2023, she started a Facebook page, Minnie’s Recipes and Memories, where Newton and Hanneman would pick one recipe to share per week. Turning this into a YouTube channel always was going to be the next step in the process, Newton said. But grief slowed the development.

“I needed to get through my grandmother’s death because, when I kept trying to revisit [the channel], I was OK for a little while, and then I would start crying again,” Newton said. “Grief takes a little while, so I needed to really contain my composure so I could roll forward and address this again.”

Minnie’s Recipe Box is a more detailed spin on Minnie’s Recipes and Memories. Newton plans to bring on different guests to help cook recipes from Hanneman’s books.

The first video on the channel will be Newton and her mother making her grandmother’s Country Captain Chicken recipe. Among future videos, Newton said other chefs, like Custom Cake Studio owner Jenna Poole and personal caterer Noor Harp, will help her create other recipes, such as tomato pie and chocolate cake.

Newton also wants to invite other folks in the community to film sessions cooking their family recipes.

“With Minnie’s, it’s about moments, meals and memories,” Newton said. “Why not let other people have the opportunity to share that? I’ve always said I wanted to create the vessel for people to change their lives.”

Library project

This YouTube channel isn’t the end of Newton’s efforts to digitize her grandmother’s legacy. Newton also is working on a project with the Columbus Public Library to scan her grandmother’s recipes. Ultimately, she said, the scanned recipes will go into a cookbook, made publicly available under the local history section in the library.

“I was so proud of my grandmother to take the time to sit down and hand write all of these recipes,” she said. “It’s so much. It’s about legacy, and I’m so thankful that she did this so it could be carried on.”

As Newton flipped through the pages of her grandmother’s recipe books, she reflected on the immense effort and time put into bringing these recipes into a new digital era. Newton explained that the YouTube channel and the library project are more than sharing recipes.

It’s about sharing a piece of Columbus history with the world.

“She opened [Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant] in 1986 because she wanted to share her recipes and her passion with the community,” Newton said. “So now, we’re taking it to the next level of sharing it with the world.”