Cabbage and Cream Salad

Studio Inn

102 West Erie Street
Painesville, Ohio

1941 – 1968

The transaction that gave birth to the Studio Inn in Painesville, Ohio, was less a conventional real-estate sale than an exchange of dreams.

Grace Bond and Dorothy Moodey were operating an inn in Painesville that had been known as “The Tea Kettle” since its opening in 1911. Dorcas and Wendell Oliver, meanwhile, had begun their own improbable career as restaurateurs at the Octagon House—an eight-sided brick landmark just outside town that had been built by a local resident in 1840 as a sort of tribute to Thomas Jefferson. In 1941 Bond and Moodey took over the Octagon House and the Olivers moved to the Tea Kettle, renamed it the Studio Inn, and set about remaking nearly every room by hand.

The stately old house at 102 West Erie Street had been built sometime around 1870 as the family home of Zenuf “Zeke” Wilson. As the Studio Inn, its coach house and domestic arrangement of parlors, hallways, and stairs would give diners the sensation of being received in a private home rather than processed through a commercial dining room.

Dorcas Henderson Oliver brought her own Ohio pedigree to the Studio Inn. She was born and raised in Kenton, and her father was a prominent judge who had been the dean of the law school at Ohio Northern University. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied for two years in Paris with George Elmer Browne, an American painter and influential art teacher who in 1916 had founded the West End School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and regularly conducted classes in Europe. Before returning to Ohio, she worked as a commercial artist in New York City.

Wendell Oliver was likewise trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and spent two years at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. He worked in commercial art and interior decoration in Chicago and New York, traveled in Europe, and developed a serious enthusiasm for culinary exploration. His European travels sharpened both his palate and his confidence in the kitchen.

By their own account, the Olivers had grown tired of metropolitan life. They wanted room to travel, time to paint, and a livelihood that could be arranged around both. Painesville made practical sense to Dorcas: it stood between Chicago and New York, close enough to either city to maintain family ties and professional connections. Their solution was to combine Wendell’s interest in food with their shared command of color, composition, and design. They would make a restaurant that was also a gallery, gift shop, travel diary, and stage set.

They did not arrive in Painesville as experienced innkeepers. At the West Erie Street house they cleaned, papered, painted, decorated, and trimmed, learning restaurant work the hard way. Yet inexperience may have freed them from convention. The Studio Inn did not look like a standardized dining room because the Olivers did not think like professional restaurateurs. They treated the old house as a series of compositions. Rooms acquired names—the Gingham Room, Trellis Hall, and the Blue Grass Room—each with its own decorative character. Plants, handblown glass, antiques, flowered paper, and Mexican objects shared space with an elegant cut-glass chandelier that Wendell had carried home from Paris. Mahogany banisters and the old house’s distinctive architecture remained part of the effect.

The Studio Inn’s name was literal. Art was not an accessory hung after the restaurant had been furnished; it was one of the reasons the restaurant existed. Dorcas and Wendell displayed their own work and made room for other artists. The Blue Grass Gift Shop in the old carriage house became Dorcas’s particular domain; there she mixed paintings, ceramics, and handmade jewelry by Cleveland-area artists with imports from Mexico, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. A 1948 advertisement distilled the Olivers’ theatrical salesmanship into a phrase: it was “divine to dine at Studio Inn.”

The couple also understood that a destination restaurant needed a sense of occasion. In 1949 they invited the public to a “Garden Sale of Art,” directed by Cleveland artist Kae Dorn Cass, a gifted watercolorist and longtime member of the faculty of the Cleveland School of Art. The Olivers encouraged clubs and sorority groups to make “a bus-ride for fun to our door.” Visitors could take tea while viewing paintings, then pass into rooms whose furnishings and merchandise blurred the line between restaurant, exhibition, and bazaar. Even Duncan Hines, whose guidebooks could make or break a roadside dining room, came to eat there in 1948 while attending the National Restaurant Association’s convention in Cleveland. The restaurant later advertised his recommendation, a powerful assurance to travelers on Route 20 that the eccentric old house also met his exacting standards of food and service.

The Studio Inn offered a menu as distinctive as its setting. A 1947 food column singled out its “Gorgeous Board,” an Americanized play on the Swedish smörgåsbord. A 1953 listing promised hot sweet rolls and cheese sticks, fresh shrimp, “pampered chicken,” steaks, lobster Newburg, green noodles, fresh vegetables, and rich desserts. Oven-fried chicken became one of the restaurant’s best-known dishes. Luncheon and dinner prices ranged from $1.25 to $3.75, with party meals offering “many extras.”

The Studio Inn was also a popular venue for parties and social gatherings. Its old rooms and layered decorations gave private meals a setting more personal than a hotel banquet room. Advertisements emphasized luncheons, dinners, and parties, “gay music,” candlelight, and air conditioning. The Olivers employed about twenty people at the height of the business, enough to sustain the elaborate service and the labor-intensive dishes that guests remembered.

No aspect of the Studio Inn mattered more to its identity than Mexico. For roughly a decade, the Olivers closed the restaurant around November 1, drove south, and spent about five months painting and traveling before returning to reopen in April. By 1953 they had logged some 75,000 miles on these annual journeys. They worked at their easels in Guadalajara, Taxco, San Miguel de Allende, Cuernavaca, Ajijic, and around Lake Pátzcuaro. Dorcas regarded Pátzcuaro and the island of Janitzio as the most beautiful place on earth and repeatedly painted the region’s Purépecha people, then commonly called Tarascans, in their local dress.

Their winter absences were not escapes from the restaurant so much as part of its production cycle. Mexico supplied paintings, textiles, silver, glass, jewelry, decorative ideas, and stories. Each spring the Studio Inn reopened replenished. In 1950 the couple returned in their yellow Studebaker Starlight two-door coupe stuffed with work from a four-month painting tour below the Rio Grande. A growing tree in the gift shop had been painted shocking pink, its branches hung with Mexican silver bracelets and concho belts.

That Easter, the Studio Inn opened its tenth season with an exhibition devoted to Mexican subjects. Dorcas showed watercolors of Ajijic on Lake Chapala, along with architectural studies, tropical flowers, and fruit; the works were displayed in the Gingham Room and Trellis Hall. Wendell contributed scenes of Cuernavaca’s Borda Gardens, churches at Ajijic, landscapes near Taxco, and views of Lake Chapala. Their work was joined by paintings from Irma René Koen, a Chicago artist who often worked in Cuernavaca, and Frederick Jennison, who had lived for years in Taxco. The exhibition transformed the annual reopening into an art event and made the winter journey visible in every corner of the inn.

The Studio Inn continued to host notable painters. Later in 1950, Kae Dorn Cass exhibited watercolors selected from trips through the American West, Mexico, the Gaspé Peninsula, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, and New England, as well as earlier European travel. Cass had taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art for more than 25 years and had participated repeatedly in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s May Show. Dorcas and Wendell directed the exhibition and received visitors with her. The Blue Grass Gift Room thus functioned not merely as a souvenir shop but as a small regional gallery capable of presenting serious professional work.

The Olivers’ life looked enviably unconventional, but it was governed by discipline. They ran an inn for seven months, closed it, drove thousands of miles, painted intensively, acquired stock, and returned to begin again. Dorcas explained the philosophy behind the schedule: “We have the feeling that people should live as they go along. Why wait until you retire to do the things you want to do? So many people are afraid of the word ‘retire.’ They wouldn’t be if they knew how to try new worlds of experience. To do that makes you more interesting and enthusiastic as you grow older instead of the opposite.”

The arrangement also gave the Studio Inn the rhythm of a summer resort even though it stood on a principal highway in an Ohio county seat. Each reopening could bring new paintings, new imports, and visual surprise. Guests did not simply return for another meal; they came to see what the Olivers had brought back.

In early 1954 the Olivers sold the Studio Inn to Karl Griffith Sasse of Princeton, New Jersey. Sasse, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania and a Navy veteran of World War II, had spent four years as assistant manager of the Nassau Tavern in Princeton.

The Olivers’ departure ended the Studio Inn’s most inventive period, but not the restaurant itself. Under Sasse, who retained the established name, the inn generally operated from May through October, while the gift shop remained open in winter. Sasse’s unexpected death at age 67 in 1968, however, forced the Studio Inn’s closing.

The final transformation of the Studio Inn came quickly. Sasse’s heirs sold the property to Red Barn, Inc., a rapidly expanding fast-food chain founded in Springfield, Ohio, that was known for barn-shaped restaurant buildings as well as its hamburgers and fried chicken. The inn’s contents were sold at auction in October 1968, with buyers carrying away the French chandelier, mahogany banisters, and antique fixtures and furnishings that had made its rooms so distinctive.

In 1969 wrecking crews moved onto 102 West Erie Street. The Studio Inn’s flower-papered walls and timbers were burned; its old bricks went to the yard of a local excavating company. A reporter for a local newspaper who covered the demolition began her story with a wistful recollection of the Studio Inn. “It was,” a former patron recalled, “the finest dining place around.”

July 13, 2026 By Bill Hogan

New York City/ New York

Bourbon Cheese Spread

Ma Bell’s

218 West 45th Street
New York, New York

1972 – 1983

When Ma Bell’s opened smack in the middle of New York City’s famed Shubert Alley in 1972, the concept was simple enough to explain in a sentence: Every table in the restaurant had a working telephone. Its spot at 218 West 45th Street was the epicenter of Broadway’s Theater District, where actors, producers, agents, stagehands, tourists, and after-show crowds crossed paths in a constant shuffle. Here, Restaurant Associates—the ambitious New York company behind such destination restaurants as Brasserie, La Fonda del Sol, The Forum of the XII Caesars, The Four Seasons, Mamma Leone’s, and Tavern-on-the-Green—turned the ordinary act of placing a phone call into part of the dining experience.

At Ma Bell’s a patron could sit down and use an old-fashioned candlestick telephone to place a call to another table or booth inside the restaurant or, for that matter, anywhere else. In a world without cellular phones—it would be decades before most people would have them—Ma Bell’s aimed to be more than just a restaurant with a gimmick. It aspired to be the social switchboard of Shubert Alley.

The concept behind Ma Bell’s has been credited to George Lois, the legendary advertising provocateur whose genius lay in stripping an idea down to its barest essence. (Lois was perhaps best known for the 90-plus covers he designed for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1973.) Restaurant Associates, the company that retained him for its Shubert Alley project, had the dining-room machinery, the leasehold, the service systems, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for high-concept New York restaurants. Lois supplied the idea; Restaurant Associates knew how to turn it into an experience: a Broadway saloon built around the telephone, one of the most familiar objects in American life.

For years, Restaurant Associates had been helping to modernize the New York dining scene by creating restaurants that were complete environments—with names, graphics, architecture, uniforms, service rhythms, and moods. The newest restaurant in the company’s constellation would carry that philosophy into a looser, more playful, more Broadway-facing form. Ma Bell’s was for people with curtain times, people coming out of shows, people killing an hour near Broadway, people who did not want the night to end when the curtain fell.

The Ma Bell’s name came directly from the familiar nickname for the Bell System, and in 1972 that reference had not yet lost any of its cultural weight. The telephone was still fixed in place, wired into walls, governed by exchanges, operators, bills, etiquette, and long-distance charges. It was an instrument of business, romance, family duty, gossip, flirtation, and interruption. Now, at 218 West 45th Street, the telephone was no longer something that pulled a person away from a meal. Now, it was the meal’s central feature.

By 1973 Restaurant Associates was confident enough to boast that Ma Bell’s was “a winner the day it opened.” Newspaper ads for the restaurant promised a phone on every table, fast service, a menu that was neither too long nor too short, an eighty-foot bar, lunch, cocktails, dinner, theater-intermission service, and after-theater dining and drinking. A line at the bottom reduced the whole pitch to three words and a joke: “Food, Phones, and our Long Distance Bar.”

For much of the 1970s, that was enough. Most theme restaurants, however, live under the clock. A great dining room can age into dignity; a concept room can age into yesterday’s joke. By the early 1980s, the telephone itself was changing as a symbol. The Bell System was under legal and political pressure, and the monopoly that had put “Ma Bell” into the American vernacular would be broken into pieces as the result of a 1982 antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. In short, the table-phone gimmick that had seemed so fresh in 1972 had begun to lose its novelty.

By 1983 the ownership of Ma Bell’s had passed from Restaurant Associates to the Riese Organization, a New York City-based restaurant-and-real-estate company whose sprawling portfolio had once included such culinary landmarks as Longchamps and Schrafft’s. In 1983, with average weekly sales at Ma Bell’s reportedly down to just $18,000, the Riese Organization converted the restaurant into an outpost of its own restaurant brand, Charley O’s. Weekly sales soon rose to about $40,000, which was in keeping with what Dennis Riese, the company’s chief operating officer, called its “My Fair Lady” philosophy of restaurant operation. Riese liked to point out that when the musical My Fair Lady finished its original run on Broadway, the theater didn’t close with it; instead, the owners of the theater simply brought in a new show.

As Riese later put it to a trade publication, “Ma Bell’s was a concept that ran its course.” At least by Broadway standards, however, the restaurant had enjoyed a respectable run. For a little more than a decade, it was the only place in New York City where dinner came with a dial tone.

July 5, 2026 By Bill Hogan

Indianapolis/ Indiana

Shish Kebab on a Flaming Dagger

The Log Cabin

3758 North Keystone Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana

1924 – 1972

In 1924 John R. Murray and his wife, Elsie, opened a restaurant on the southwest corner of 38th Street and North Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis, just east of the Indiana State Fairgrounds, that they christened “Ye Log Cabin Barbecue.” John, who was born in 1886 in the seaside town of Weymouth, England, had come to the United States when he was just 14 years old and found his way to Indianapolis a few years later, where he met and married Elsie. The Murrays advertised their new place as “a delightfully cool, clean, first-class inn” specializing in steaks, chicken dinners, and, of course, “all kinds of barbecues.”

The “Ye,” which may have been a nod to Murray’s English roots, soon fell by the wayside. By 1926 the restaurant was being listed simply as Log Cabin Barbecue, and by 1934 it was appearing in advertisements as the Log Cabin Inn. Ads promised dining, dancing, and entertainment, including a singer from Louisville billed only as “Sadie” and The Three Sparks, a popular Indianapolis trio.

When John died in 1935 just before his 50th birthday, Elsie took over as the Log Cabin’s proprietor. She began booking local dance bands—and even a blues singer—to give the restaurant more of a nightclub or supper-club feel, and business was apparently so good that in 1938 she decided to have the parking lot enlarged. Not long after that Elsie decided to open another restaurant, which she dubbed the “Chicken Coop,” some three and a half miles north on Keystone Avenue. But just a few days it was set to open, a fire, thought to have been triggered by a stove explosion, destroyed the building that was to be its home. Elsie eventually managed to open the Chicken Coop in different quarters at 71st and Keystone, but in 1941 she was charged with violating local liquor laws and advertising a lottery.

In 1942 Elsie sold the Log Cabin to Abraham “Abe” Silver (in later years he was also known by the nickname “Art”) and his wife, Alice. Almost immediately the Silvers launched a remodeling and expansion program that never quite seemed to stop. By the mid-1960s the Log Cabin’s upstairs dining rooms could serve about 200 patrons, and the lower-level “Silver Room” could accommodate about 100 people for banquets and other private functions.

In 1957 an African American officer at Fort Benjamin Harrison, a U.S. Army post in Indianapolis, sued the restaurant, alleging that he had been refused service because of his race. Abe Silver’s public response did little to soften the charge. “If he was refused service my help must have had good reason,” Silver told a reporter for the Indianapolis News, brushing aside the complaint. “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

The Log Cabin’s longtime chef, Harold Carmack, was a Tennessee native who’d previously worked as the chef at the Anderson Country Club in Anderson, Indiana. Carmack, an avid angler who loved to tell jokes, was well-known for his barbecued ribs (the Log Cabin’s baby back ribs were imported from Canada). Among the restaurant’s dinner specials: Chateaubriand steak for two, prime ribs of beef au jus, baked sugar-cured ham with fruit sauce, stuffed veal birds with natural gravy, steamed knockwurst with sauerkraut, kosher-style corned beef with steamed cabbage, and Italian ravioli. Then there was the house spectacle: “Shish Kebab on a Flaming Dagger”—melt-in-your mouth cubes of beef tenderloin marinated in a wine sauce, broiled on skewers with mushrooms and other vegetables, and flambéed tableside before serving.

By the late 1960s the Log Cabin was being run by Abe and Alice’s son, Bernard. Contemporary accounts put Bernie Silver and his wife, Bernice (“Bunny”), in almost constant attendance at the restaurant, overseeing the continuity of an establishment whose loyal customers had watched it evolve from a roadside barbecue joint into a large, full-service restaurant.

Abe Silver died in Miami Beach in 1971 at age 76. The following year Alice sold the Log Cabin to Thomas A. “Tommy” Caito (whose father, Indianapolis wholesale-produce magnate August F. Caito, was known as the city’s “banana king”). Soon after that, however, the Log Cabin ran into trouble with the Indiana Alcoholic Beverage Commission for “failure to maintain a high and fine reputation, to wit, gambling on the permit premise,” which the Indianapolis News characterized as “a high stakes craps game.” Before the year was out the restaurant had been rebranded “The New Log Cabin” and, before long, “The End Zone.”

Alice Silver died in 1985 at age 81.

Print Recipe

Shish Kebab on a Flaming Dagger

(No Ratings Yet)

Ingredients

12 beef tenderloin tips, about 2 1/2 ounces each, or about 1 3/4 to 2 pounds beef tenderloin, cut into 12 cubes
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 small garlic clove, grated or minced, optional
4 medium tomatoes, sliced crosswise into thick rounds, about 3 slices per tomato
4 medium onions, sliced crosswise into thick rounds, about 3 slices per onion
2 green bell peppers, quartered
Grated Parmesan cheese, for dusting
4 pineapple rings
8 breaded onion rings, fried until crisp
8 breaded mushrooms, fried until crisp
1/2 ounce 151-proof rum, for the flambé, optional

Instructions

Place the beef in a shallow dish. Add the red wine and, if using, the garlic. Turn the meat to coat, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Drain the beef and pat it lightly dry.

Heat the broiler or prepare a hot grill. For each kebab, thread the skewer in this order: 1 beef cube, 1 tomato slice, 1 onion slice, 1 pepper quarter, 1 piece of beef, 1 tomato slice, 1 onion slice, 1 pepper quarter, and 1 final piece of beef. Reserve the center slices of tomato and onion for the platter. Repeat 3 times to make 4 skewers in all

Sprinkle the reserved tomato slices lightly with Parmesan. Grill or broil the reserved tomato and onion slices until softened and lightly browned. Grill the pineapple slices until marked and warmed through.

Broil or grill the kebabs, turning occasionally, until the beef is cooked to the desired doneness, about 6 to 8 minutes for medium-rare, depending on the thickness of the meat and the heat of the broiler.

Arrange the grilled tomato, onion, and pineapple on a warm platter. Add the onion rings and breaded mushrooms. Set the kebabs on top.

To flambé, pour the rum into a small heatproof ladle or metal measuring cup. Keep the rum bottle far from the heat. Carefully ignite the rum with a long match, then spoon or pour the flaming rum over the kebabs at the table. Let the flame burn out completely before serving.

Notes

Although the original recipe did not call for seasoning the meat, you may season the tenderloin tips with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, if desired.

July 2, 2026 By Bill Hogan

New Bern/ North Carolina

Crabmeat Salad

Charles Manor

208 South Front Street
New Bern, North Carolina

1954 – 1965

Alta S. Braxton was in her mid-50s and twice widowed when she opened Charles Manor at 208 South Front Street in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1954. She had purchased the property as her home in 1941, a year after the death of her first husband, William H. Simons, at age 51. Simons had spent most of his career at S. Coplon & Sons, which billed itself as “North Carolina’s Biggest and Best Department Store,” where he’d started out as a “bundle wrapper” in 1910 and by 1922 had worked his way up to become its general manager. Alta remarried in 1950, but her second husband, Jesse Fountain Braxton, a widower, died just three months later at age 67.

Braxton beckoned diners with a streetside neon sign for Charles Manor that not only promised “Fine Foods” but noted that her 70-seat restaurant was air-conditioned—a big attraction in a city of warm and humid summers with average high temperatures that often hit the low 90s. This was also a grand old home with a grand view—namely, the picturesque waterfront of downtown New Bern near the confluence of the Trent and Neuse Rivers.

In 1959 the address of Charles Manor changed when, following the restoration of Tryon Palace, the original capitol of North Carolina, South Front Street was renamed Tryon Palace Drive, but the new name never quite stuck.

By 1961, with her establishment having become one of the most popular restaurants in New Bern, Braxton apparently was ready to retire. In August of that year a classified ad in the Raleigh News and Observer quietly announced that “The Charles Manor—Famous for Fine Foods” was for sale, citing the “owner’s health” as the reason. But Braxton had no takers, and in 1965 she placed another classified ad in the Raleigh newspaper that read: “Charles Manor Restaurant. In an old home. Seats about 70 people. Living quarters also. Will give lease or sell. Interested only in qualified persons. Closed due to ill health. Call Mrs. Alta Braxton, New Bern, N.C.”

It would take Braxton another three years to sell her restaurant. The buyer was the Trent Academy of Basic Education, which would operate from the house until a fire destroyed it in 1970.

Alta Braxton died in New Bern in 1975 shortly before her 76th birthday.

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February 8, 2025 By Bill Hogan

Elkhart/ Indiana

Sweet Charity Pie

Arthur’s

Midway Motor Lodge

300 South Main Street
Elkhart, Indiana

1980 – 1991

Arthur’s made its debut in 1980 as part of an ambitious initiative to revitalize the central business district of Elkhart, Indiana, a city widely known as the “Band Instrument Capital of the World.” Located at 300 Main Street in downtown Elkhart, the restaurant was joined to the Midway Motor Lodge, a $5.5 million hotel that was the cornerstone of the “City Centre” development that local leaders had devised in the late 1960s to attract visitors and stimulate the local economy.

The hotel—the 19th in the Midway chain—opened its doors on July 22, 1980, with Terry Carrick, the lead investor in its Milwaukee-based ownership group, announcing that 15,000 reservations for meals at Arthur’s were already on the books. Because of various construction delays, however, only a third of the hotel’s 180 rooms were ready for occupancy on opening day, and there were just three paying guests on the first night. Nonetheless, Carrick projected confidence about Elkhart’s future. “I don’t think your town as a whole is in that bad a shape,” he said that day. “I think your economy is more diversified than most people give it credit for.”

It would be another three months before Arthur’s—named for Arthur Aldendorf, the Wisconsin-based restaurateur chosen to operate it—opened its doors. The 19,500-square-foot restaurant had four separate dining areas, including a huge banquet hall, with seating for more than 700 patrons. Two adjoining venues, the Irish Pub and Aldie’s Show Lounge, pushed the total seating capacity to over 1,000.

Arthur’s got off to a very good start. Under a headline that branded it the “crown jewel” of the entire City Centre development, a reviewer for the daily newspaper in nearby South Bend gushed that the residents of Elkhart “have every reason to glow over a sharp, stylish restaurant that has returned gracious dining to a gastronomically undernourished downtown area.”

By the end of the decade, however, the Midway Motor Lodge was in financial trouble, with Arthur’s struggling in its wake. In May 1990 the hotel’s parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection—reporting assets of $4.3 million against debts of $5.5 million—to stave off a foreclosure action by Midwest Commerce Bank, which claimed that it had fallen more than $500,000 behind on its mortgage payments. The Midway Motor Lodge’s attorney argued that the business was fundamentally sound but had suffered at the hands of external economic factors, including the loss of commuter air service between Elkhart and Chicago O’Hare Airport. Others noted that the hotel had been the first and maybe the only in the Midway chain to be situated away from an interstate highway.

In March 1990 the judge presiding over the bankruptcy case appointed Marshall Management Inc., a Maryland-based company that specialized in rescuing financially troubled hotels, to be the receiver for the Midway Motor Lodge. This appointment, however, did not extend to Arthur’s, the Irish Pub, and Aldie’s Show Lounge, which continued to operate under the ownership of the company Carrick had originally set up as a tax shelter for its Milwaukee-area investors.

In 1991 Marshall Management rebranded Midway Motor Lodge as the Quality Hotel City Centre. It also undertook a “floor to ceiling” remodel of Arthur’s and announced that the restaurant would be renamed Plaza I.

Despite the renovations and rebranding, the hotel and restaurant continued to struggle. At one point the restaurant returned to operating under its original name, but after the Elkhart County Health Department briefly closed the reincarnated Arthur’s for numerous health code violations, a new owner reopened it under another name.

In the years to come the development would be seen as “a blight on the downtown,” as a reporter for the Elkhart Truth put it. The city of Elkhart eventually acquired the property in 1998 for $850,000 and demolished everything the following summer.

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January 13, 2025 By Bill Hogan

Chaffee/ New York

Brandy Alexander Pie

The Butternut Inn

12020 Olean Road
Chaffee, New York

1982 – 1996

In the early 1980s Keith W. Slocum, the president and owner of a successful insurance agency in Arcade, New York, and his wife, Arletta, who worked alongside him, started dreaming of something different—a venture that would combine their love of good food, warm hospitality, and the charm of country living.

“We decided we wanted to start one near our home after visiting inns in the area and other parts of the country,” Arletta Slocum would later explain to a reporter. “We really had no background in innkeeping.”

Their opportunity came in the form of an old white farmhouse nestled at the intersection of Route 16 and Genesee Road in the small town of Chaffee, just six miles or so from Arcade. Built in 1930 by Michael Joseph Jewert, the house had aged gracefully, shaded by two towering trees that seemed to guard its quiet dignity. The Slocums saw beyond its humble façade, envisioning a place where travelers and locals alike could gather for hearty meals and cozy stays.

In 1982 the Slocums transformed the unassuming farmhouse into the Butternut Inn, pouring their hearts into every detail, from the tall flagpole and old-fashioned lawn swing out front to the warm and welcoming atmosphere inside, with guests invited into an antique-filled lounge for a drink before or after dinner. And the menu was an experience in itself—read aloud by the staff, changing daily to reflect the freshest ingredients and seasonal surprises. Arletta’s touch was everywhere, from the homemade mashed potatoes and buttermilk biscuits to the decadent desserts, offered from a tray, that guests struggled to choose between. Diners often found themselves in the former living room or the glassed-in porch, savoring dishes like Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding or Butterflied Pork in Peach Brandy, as the sun dipped behind the trees.

The Butternut Inn quickly became a popular destination, drawing visitors who delighted in its old-fashioned charm. Its three dining rooms could seat 46 guests, and the three guest rooms upstairs offered a peaceful retreat for those wishing to stay overnight. Locals returned for comfort food like Chicken and Biscuits or warm Blueberry Buckle with ice cream, while adventurous diners might opt for Veal Oscar, Steak Diane, or escargot served under a flaky crust.

But after running the Butternut Inn for nearly a decade, the Slocums decided it was time to pass the torch. In 1991 they sold the inn to Gary and Felicia Schultz, who pledged to preserve its reputation as a destination for hearty, old-fashioned meals served in a home-like atmosphere, and they later would retire in Venice, Florida.

Diners at the Butternut Inn continued to rave about the mashed potatoes—thick, a little lumpy, and utterly satisfying—and the desserts, made from scratch and often served with a story (like the creamy, pecan-custard pie that was supposedly created aboard the USS Missouri for President Harry S Truman). Another favorite was the Butternut Pie, made with nuts from the property’s own trees. The Schultzes even kept the tradition of freezing the nuts before shelling them, a trick passed down from the Slocums.

Despite its enduring popularity, the Butternut Inn quietly closed in 1996. For more than three years, the property stood silent, its tables still set as though waiting for the next meal service. Then, in 1999, the old farmhouse found new life as the Merry Meeting Shoppe, a gift shop.

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January 13, 2025 By Bill Hogan

Evergreen/ Colorado

Grapefruit Burgundy

Rustic Tea Room

28115 Colorado 74
Evergreen, Colorado

1930 – 1949

In the early 20th century, as automobiles began to traverse the winding roads of Colorado’s mountainous terrain, a series of quaint establishments emerged to cater to motorists seeking respite and refreshment. Among these was the Rustic Tea Room in Evergreen, Colorado, a picturesque town nestled in the foothills of the Rock Mountains about 30 miles west of Denver.

Grace V. Hamilton and her husband, Allan, opened the Rustic Tea Room on June 21, 1930. Hamilton brought considerable experience to the venture. In 1927 she was listed in a newspaper advertisement as the manager of the Cockle Shell Tearoom, and the following year a story in the Rocky Mountain News announced that the Navajo Lodge, a brand new mountain resort in Indian Hills, would be “under the personal management of Grace V. Hamilton and will feature trout and chicken dinners, sandwiches, light lunches, and refreshments, all prepared by an experienced chef.”

The Hamiltons introduced the same type of menu at the Rustic Tea Room. They placed small newspaper ads urging motorists to “dine in the mountains” and promised them “delicious trout, chicken, or steak dinners” priced at $1.25 and $1.50. By 1931 the ads were touting “the best chicken dinner in mountains.”

In 1932 the Hamiltons moved the Rustic Tea Room to bigger and better quarters on the northwest corner of Main Street (today Highway 74) and Douglas Park Road, and the same year—one of the most challenging of the Great Depression—saw Grace moonlighting as the manager of a tearoom/cafe in Denver’s Hotel La Bonte.

The Rustic Tea Room, a summers-only operation, somehow thrived through the mid-1930s, hosting dinners for as many as 80 guests at a time and introducing daily musical programs for patrons to enjoy with their meals. Its reputation soared when Duncan Hines, the nation’s leading where-to-eat expert, published one of its recipes in his Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home, published in 1935. Later, the Rustic Tea Room earned a regular spot in Adventures in Good Eating, Hines’s series of immensely popular guidebooks for travelers on the nation’s highways. The 1950 edition gave this rundown of its specialties: “mountain trout, fried chicken, roast beef, baked spiced ham, breast of chicken with fresh mushrooms, planked steaks, sea food grill, lemon chiffon pie, butterscotch tarts, ice box cake.”

In 1949 the Rustic Tea Room reopened on Memorial Day for its 21st season, with the local newspaper observing that from its beginnings as a modest one-room establishment it had “grown to be a show place as well as a place for fine foods.” But this season would turn out to be in last. In 1950 the Evergreen Crafters shop moved into the one-story building and remained there until 2008, when raccoons invaded the foundation and chewed through the electrical wiring, forcing the shop to find relocate across the street.

The Hamiltons later settled in Scottsdale, Arizona. Allan, who’d been affectionately known as the “mayor” of Evergreen, died in 1969 at age 86; Grace died in 1980 at age 93.

In 2016, after nearly a decade of neglect, the longtime home of the Rustic Tea Room was demolished.

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December 28, 2024 By Bill Hogan

Binghamton/ New York

Minestrone Soup

Jack Nelson’s

1315 Front Street
Binghamton, New York

1952 – 1953

In 1952 John L. “Jack” Nelson quit his job as a used-car salesman in Binghamton, New York, with the idea of becoming a restaurateur. Nelson wasn’t a stranger to the city’s hospitality business, having spent a year or so just after World War II as the assistant manager of the Arlington Hotel in downtown Binghamton. Nelson soon struck a deal to acquire The Saxon, at 1315 Upper Front Street, from its owner, Michael Saxon. This restaurant was strategically situated at the intersection of U.S. Routes 11 and 12, approximately four miles north of downtown Binghamton. In September 1952 Nelson renamed the roadhouse Jack Nelson’s, ambitiously promoting it as “New York State’s Most Complete Restaurant.”

Nelson kept the restaurant open every day from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., in keeping with its slogan, “You Are Always Welcome.” But he may well have been overextended, for in early 1953 he brought in a partner, Charles H. Hughes, whose experience included operating a restaurant and overseeing American Legion and Elks Club facilities in Norwich, Connecticut. In short order the new partners secured a contract to operate the Sky View Restaurant at the Broome County Airport (today the Greater Binghamton Airport), succeeding the Union News Company, which had announced that it was backing out of its contract to operate the restaurant because of “business conditions,” and before that, Mike Saxon.

For whatever reason, however, the Nelson-Hughes partnership fell apart almost as quickly as it had been formed. In mid-1953 Hughes assumed full ownership of the restaurant at 1315 Upper Front Street as well as the lease to operate the Sky View Restaurant. But soon Hughes realized that he couldn’t adequately oversee both restaurants and obtained permission to sell the lease for the airport operation.

Jack Nelson’s landed in the news in August 1953 when General George C. Marshall and his wife stopped for dinner there while driving to the Adirondacks from their home in Leesburg, Virginia, for a vacation. After they had finished dinner, Marshall—the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during World War II, former Secretary of State, and architect of the Marshall Plan—took some time to chat with patrons of the restaurant and sit down for an impromptu interview with a staff writer for the Binghamton Press, whose story appeared on page three of the next day’s newspaper. (Later that year Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.)

In 1954, with its founder out of the picture, Jack Nelson’s became Hughes’ Restaurant, and Hughes, befitting his role as its owner, bought a brand-new Buick Roadmaster Sedan, Model 72, which was positioned at the top of Buick’s lineup and seen as a symbol of luxury and prestige. But in 1956 he sold the restaurant to his brother, Carl, and in 1957 Carl sold it to Leonard and Ruth Mitrowitz, who would operate it for the next 30 years as the Town & Country Restaurant. In 1987 the site occupied by the restaurant became the home of a new Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, which it remains today.

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December 25, 2024 By Bill Hogan

Wilmington/ Delaware

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

Hearn’s Restaurant

2008 North Market Street
Wilmington, Delaware

1931 – 1991

In 1931 Robert N. Hearn borrowed $100 from his cousin Stanley, the proprietor of a successful grocery in Wilmington, Delaware, to open a small restaurant in the city with his wife, Edith. This took no small measure of courage, as the nation was in the grip of the Great Depression, and Wilmington, as the industrial hub of the state, was experiencing significant unemployment and economic hardship. A businessman in the city had gone so far as to advise Hearn that his new restaurant would be shuttered within a month.

Undeterred, Hearn forged ahead, and on April 13, 1931, he and Edith opened Hearn’s Restaurant at 2008 Market Street. Under the motto “Good Things to Eat”—twice emblazoned on the sign above its awninged storefront—the restaurant offered home-style meals at modest prices, such as a full-course turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day, including soup and dessert, for just 65 cents. The 31-seat establishment was soon packing them in.

By 1934 Hearn’s Restaurant was doing so well that it took over the building next door and added an entirely new dining room, boosting its seating capacity to 110. That year the Thanksgiving Day special—a full-course dinner featuring “Roast Delaware Turkey with All the Trimmings”—was still just 65 cents.

It was still that way even through the food shortages the nation experienced during World War II and in the years immediately afterward. “You will be amazed when you dine at Hearn’s that such delicious food can be served at such low prices,” the restaurant promised in a 1948 newspaper ad. Its fastidiousness was another selling point. “When you dine at Hearn’s you are assured of cleanliness in every detail,” another of the restaurant’s newspaper ads pledged. “No soap smudges on the silverware, no lipstick marks on glasses, a kitchen that is spotless and waitresses that wear neat, clean, attractive uniforms, waitresses that serve you in a 100% correct manner.”

By 1956, the restaurant’s 25th year in business, Hearn’s had expanded to two large dining rooms (including the Stanley Room, named in honor of Robert’s late brother and early backer) as well as extensive facilities for banquets, wedding receptions, club meetings, and other such functions. The Hearns, who lived in quarters above the restaurant, had also brought their children, Robert C. Hearn and Irene Hambright, into the business.

The 1970s saw Hearn’s Restaurant introducing such popular menu items as jumbo fried oysters, and all meals were still served its renowned cinnamon buns and rolls. In 1977 the Philadelphia Inquirer succinctly summed up the restaurant’s appeal with this teaser: “It’s charming, it’s cheap, it’s good.”

Robert Hearn died in 1979 at age 84. His obituary in the Wilmington News Journal noted that before entering the restaurant business in 1931 Hearn had worked as a printer, bricklayer, carpenter, and stationary engineer. He’d been a merchant seaman during World War I. And even that wasn’t all: He’d also been a drummer with Leo Forbstein’s Warner Brothers Theater orchestra in Hollywood.

Edith Hearn died at age 79 two years later, just three weeks before the restaurant’s 50th anniversary. Five years later, in 1986, Bob Hearn assumed full control of the family restaurant after buying out his sister and brother-in-law.

By 1992, however, he was feeling the squeeze. Brandywine Village, the once-thriving residential/industrial neighborhood that Hearn’s Restaurant had called home for more than a half-century, was experiencing economic, social, and physical decline, and Hearn was struggling just to break even.

Bob Hearn closed Hearn’s Restaurant on September 22, 1991, explaining to a reporter that he was nervous about getting too far in debt to his suppliers. The restaurant filed for bankruptcy three months later after Hearn failed to find someone willing to buy it. An auction was held on February 19, 1993, to liquidate the restaurant’s assets.

As for Hearn, he soon found a job with a fast-food operation but told a reporter he’d rather not name it. “They have a benefit package I’d never even heard of,” he said. “And let’s face it, that’s the future, fast food.”

Bob Hearn died in 2010 at age 80.

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December 23, 2024 By Bill Hogan

Somerset/ Kentucky

Kentucky Cream Pie

Hotel Beecher

203 South Main Street
Somerset, Kentucky

1930 – 1972

The Hotel Beecher opened its doors in Somerset, Kentucky, on July 14, 1930, amid a wave of local anticipation and civic pride. Built at the substantial cost of $250,000—an enormous sum at the time—the five-story hotel was seen as the embodiment of symbol of Somerset’s aspirations to become a hub of tourism and commerce in southeastern Kentucky. Named for Beecher Smith, a prominent local entrepreneur who had spearheaded the project, the hotel was erected on land he’d acquired from a local church that had started building on the site but, with the onset of the Great Depression, run out of money.

The Hotel Beecher welcomed its first guests with considerable fanfare, with Woodson Moss, a seasoned hotelier with experience in Nashville and Winchester, Tennessee, taking the reins as its first manager. Just days after it opened, the hotel hosted the Kentucky Press Association for a three-day convention, and one newspaper in the state declared the Beecher to be “the finest hotel between Lexington and Chattanooga,” marveling at its grandeur and architectural sophistication. The Colonial Revival-style building, which was designed by the architectural firm of Frankel and Curtis in Lexington (best known for its work on motion picture theaters), featured a limestone façade, Palladian windows, and elegant Tuscan-columned portico.

The Beecher thrived during its early years, leveraging its proximity to Lake Cumberland—“Kentucky’s Newest Resort and Fishing Paradise,” as postcards for the hotel described it—and the burgeoning tourism industry around nearby Cumberland Falls. Its Crystal Ballroom, adorned with glittering chandeliers, became Somerset’s social epicenter, hosting such functions as banquets, weddings, dances, and civic events. The Beecher’s ground-floor dining room and coffee shop offered travelers and locals alike a taste of refinement.

In future years the Beecher would weather several shifts in ownership and management, with each bringing new ambitions for its future. In 1941 Harry H. Humbert, a hotel operator from Indiana, took over the management of the Beecher under a 10-year lease, promising to remodel and redecorate it. But just a year later the 80-room hotel was sold to Victor G. Williams, and C.W. Lampkin, the operator of three hotels in Bowling Green, Kentucky, took over its management. Around that time Edwin Roberts took over the day-to-day operation of the hotel, and over the next 30 years he would become the face of the Hotel Beecher.

By the mid-1960s, however, the Hotel Beecher had begun to lose some of its luster, as interstate highways and modern motels drew travelers away from downtown Somerset. In 1967 the hotel was put up for sale, and over the next few years its fortunes—and condition—would continue to decline.

In 1972, when he was interviewed by a reporter for the Lake Cumberland Bugle, Roberts readily admitted that the Beecher was a relic of a bygone era. “We’re living in the past—no doubt about it,” he told the newspaper. The old hotels are closing every day all over the country. Even here in Kentucky, in Bowling Green, Louisville, Paducah, and Lexington, most of the downtown hotels are gone or almost gone.”

Then, reflecting on the Beecher’s early days, Roberts added: “This hotel was the civic and cultural center of this region of the state. There was no bypass then and no lake and all the traffic on [U.S. Route] 27 went past those doors over there. Why, our grand ballroom, the largest between Lexington and Chattanooga, has had as many as 412 people served in it.”

A few months later in 1972, the Beecher’s furniture, furnishings, and fixtures were sold at auction, signaling the end of its tenure as a traditional hotel.

In 1974 a new owner rebranded the Beecher as the Carriage Inn, and Edwin Roberts died the following year at age 64. In the late 1970s, with financing from the Kentucky Housing Corporation, the building was converted into subsidized rental apartments for the elderly and disabled. A $4.5 million overhaul completed in 2020 restored the façade of the building, now known as the Beecher House, to its original grandeur and recreated, on a smaller scale, its magnificent Crystal Ballroom. In an interview with a reporter for the local newspaper, the architect whose design firm spearheaded the renovation project acknowledged the sorry condition of the once-grand hotel. “Honestly,” he said, “I don’t think the building would have stood another year.”

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December 22, 2024 By Bill Hogan

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