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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.

January 13, 2025 By
0
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.

January 13, 2025 By
0
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.

December 28, 2024 By
0
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.

December 25, 2024 By
0
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.

December 23, 2024 By
0
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.”

December 22, 2024 By
0
New York/ New York

Calf’s Brains au Plat au Beurre Noir
(Calf’s Brains with Black Butter Sauce)

Chez Cardinal

14 East 52nd Street
New York, New York

1950 – 1955

John “Nino” Cardinali was well-schooled in the restaurant trade by the time he opened his eponymous Chez Cardinal on East 52nd Street in 1950 with a partner, Joseph Zazzi. Both were veterans of The Colony, long the vaunted headquarters of café society in New York City, and both adhered to the philosophy that a restaurant’s chief mission is to please its patrons.

Though he’d never actually worked in a restaurant before coming to the United States in the early 1920s, Cardinali, born in Rome, had attended restaurant schools in Italy, France, and England. He did so well in his chosen profession that by 1947 he was able to take over the ownership of Chez Jean, at 11 East 60th Street, renaming it Nino’s Chez Jean. (It became Le Monseigneur when Cardinali and Zazzi opened Chez Cardinal.)

By 1954 Cardinali was ready for yet another move, this time to the historic hamlet of Bedford Village in Westchester County, where, on Route 121, he opened Nino’s, with his Milan-born brother-in-law, Giuseppe “Peppy” Tirloni, as chef. Zazzi proceeded to bring on two new partners: Angelo Ferrero, the veteran head captain of the Barberry Room at the Hotel Berkshire, and Remo “Ray” Corti, formerly of Al Schact’s, the popular Manhattan steakhouse. Toward the end of 1955, however the three partners sold Chez Cardinal to Abraham “Peppy” De Albrew, a onetime professional dancer known as “The Argentine Sheik,” who promptly rechristened the restaurant Chapeau Rouge, the name of a supper club he’d opened in late 1933 and closed a little more than a year later.

Cardinali died in 1994 in North Palm Beach, Florida, at age 90. “It’s a mistake to think that superb cooking must necessarily be expensive,” he once told a reporter. “It may take more time to prepare a really fine dish, but it can be done reasonably. The best cooks are usually the thriftiest.”

December 18, 2024 By
0
South Pasadena/ Florida

Veal Cutlet Parmigiana

Azure Restaurant

1500 Pasadena Avenue South
South Pasadena, Florida

1956 – 1960

Michael S. Badolato and Theodore R. Schluter surely were hoping that three would be the charm when, in 1955, they paid $57,000 to acquire Max Lanier’s Diamond Club in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Five years earlier Max Lanier, a standout pitcher whose excellent control and deceptive curveball had helped propel the St. Louis Cardinals to two World Series championships, had joined forces with John Broccoli, the owner of Johnny’s Tavern, to buy the Rhapsody Restaurant at 1700 Pasadena Avenue South and convert it a high-end venue with a baseball star’s name on the marquee. And it wasn’t just any star: Lanier called St. Petersburg his home, as the Cardinals held their spring training there every year.

But by 1954 Lanier’s star was fading fast, with Whitney Lewis, a sports columnist for the Associated Press, describing him in a piece filed from St. Petersburg as “at one time quite a fellow in [the Cardinal] locker room but now a fading veteran of 38, fighting for one last chance in the big show.” In his column, filed from St. Petersburg, Lewis went on to observe that Lanier “has a restaurant here, but baseball is his love and he wants that one last chance to finish his career in the upper class.”

What’s more, Johnny Broccoli had died in 1952 at age 48, leaving Lanier without an experienced business partner. (Broccoli’s brother, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, who was living in Los Angeles, would go on to achieve fame as a motion picture producer and co-creator of the blockbuster James Bond film franchise.)

Lanier never made it back onto the Cardinals roster, and in late 1954 he and Broccoli’s widow put the Diamond Club up for sale. After a deal signed in December of that year fell through, they found an eager buyer in Badolato, who’d just moved his family to St. Petersburg from Rye, New York, where his family had owned several restaurant properties.

Badolato and Schluter spent more than $30,000 to turn the Diamond Club into the Azure Restaurant, commissioning architect Martin Fishback to oversee the transformation. Fishback introduced a number of modern design elements, including eye-catching entrances to both the restaurant and its cocktail lounge that featured vaulted canopies of translucent yellow plastic supported by steel posts and girder-like horizontal beams. Fishback also altered the entire interior floor plan, devising plastic-covered partitions that could be opened to create one big dining area that could seat 200 guests or closed to create two or three smaller rooms. Then there was the Azure’s cocktail lounge, whose centerpiece was a mesmerizing “waterfall bar” that got its own neon sign, just below the restaurant’s, that could be seen up and down Pasadena Avenue South.

The Azure Restaurant officially opened its doors on January 17, 1956. Despite its glamorous aura, the restaurant offered modestly priced meals, with lunches starting at just $1.00 and dinners starting at $2.50. Armand Kauffmann, a French-born culinary maestro and former executive chef of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, helmed the kitchen.

St. Petersburg had never seen anything like the Azure Restaurant, and often its 150-car parking lot would be full or nearly full. Soon, too, the cocktail lounge, with its unusual waterfall bar, would become a big draw on its own.

But by 1960 Badolato and Schluter were apparently ready to sell, just as Lanier had been five years earlier. They found a buyer in Jefferson F. Buttress, a former automobile dealer, who paid $90,000 for the property and rebranded it as the Circle J Steak House. Soon after that Badolato opened the Azure Package Liquor Store next to the restaurant, at 1401 Pasadena Avenue South. (In 1957 the address of the Azure Restaurant had been changed to 1500 Pasadena Avenue South when St. Petersburg shifted the street-numbering scheme near the Corey Causeway.)

Badolato died in 1996 at age 83.

As it turned out, the Circle J Steak House did no better than its predecessors. It closed in 1965 and was briefly replaced by the Red Garter restaurant and then, for a much longer stretch, by an outpost of the Florida-based New England Oyster House chain. In 1980 the building was reconstructed as a replica of a covered bridge in Pennsylvania and became the Covered Bridge Restaurant, but its owners closed the restaurant in 1986 to switch to the citrus business, first as Florida Orange Groves and then as Florida Orange Groves Winery, which occupies the site today.

December 12, 2024 By
0
Brielle/ New Jersey

Crab Meat Soufflé

The Bite Shop

425 Higgins Avenue
Brielle, New Jersey

1928 – 1963

Forman C. Bissett had spent most of his life in the hotel business when, on July 4, 1928, he opened a little sandwich shop on State Highway 35 in Brielle, New Jersey, a small, picturesque borough along the Manasquan River in southern Monmouth County, near the Atlantic Ocean. Bissett aimed for his modest roadside restaurant, which he named The Bite Shop, to cater to travelers driving between Manasquan and Point Pleasant and from points beyond. The Bite Shop did so well from the start that in 1932 Bissell spent $12,000 to build a new, 75-seat home for the restaurant on the other side of the highway, at 425 Higgins Avenue, and expanded its menu to include seafood and platter dinners.

Although Forman’s untimely death in 1933 at age 63 could have spelled the end of The Bite Shop, his widow, Caroline (Carrie), and one of his daughters, Eva C. Bissett, immediately took over the operation, which by now had 15 employees in season (from April to November). Under Eva’s leadership, a columnist for the local newspaper noted in 1934, the Bite Shop had “attained its highest recognition” by such serving such dishes as broiled lobsters “fresh from the water [and] so skillfully prepared, seasoned, and served that the most fastidious appetite finds them a delicacy long to be remembered.” The columnist went on to note that the restaurant’s broiled chicken, served on a sizzling platter, was “another of the dishes for which The Bite Shop is justly famous.” Meanwhile, Carrie had been turning out a tantalizing variety of pies, cakes, and other baked goods.

By 1943 the widespread foot shortages brought on by World War II—including meats, sugar, butter and cooking fats, canned goods, and coffee—forced the Bissetts to temporarily close the restaurant. “Regret to Announce Because of Present Conditions Will CLOSE at Once,” the Bite Shop declared in a large newspaper ad. Yet, by 1947, the restaurant had bounced back, celebrating its 19th anniversary with fanfare. A local newspaper observed that it had “come a long way from its humble beginning as a sandwich shop” to become “famous now for broiled lobsters, steaks, and fine home-baked pastries.”

Guests delighted in the antics of Eva’s talkative parrot, which became a quirky symbol of the restaurant. While Carrie was still overseeing the pastry department, Eva had taken over the ownership and management of the Bite Shop, appending her name to the restaurant’s newspaper ads, printing a poem on the back of its menu, hanging paintings by local artists on its walls, and crafting such homespun slogans as “Good Food Is Good Health” and “What a Lovely Place to Eat.” She even sought to lure diners to the Bite Shop by sending out Western Union telegrams with a suggested special—“Fresh Vegetable Soup, Broiled Juicy Steak with French Fried Onion Rings, Potato Balls with Parsley, Lettuce with Russian Dressing, Coffee,” one of them read—for just $1.

But in 1963, with Carrie and Eva facing the inevitable challenges of growing older, a classified ad in the Asbury Park Press signaled the end of the Bite Shop: “Completely equipped restaurant, air-conditioned. Finest equipment. Seats 92. Owner’s apt. $35,000 including property. Good financing.” With its sale, the restaurant was remodeled into a real-estate office.

Carrie died in 1967 at age 93; Eva died in 1988 at age 91.

In later years the restaurant that once lured diners with lobster, chicken, and steak dinners—and, of course, sandwiches—later became the office of a certified public accountant and, most recently, a spiritual adviser offering such services as psychic readings, Reiki healing sessions, and “aura cleansing.”

December 9, 2024 By
0
Lincoln/ Nebraska

Pollo alla Cacciatora (Chicken Cacciatore)

Italian Village

5730 O Street
Lincoln, Nebraska

1936 – 1960

Anthony J. “Tony” Domino was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, but moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1935, where, despite the fact that the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression, he immediately set about planning a restaurant he would call the Italian Village.

Domino’s modest establishment opened the following year at 5730 O Street. It had just 46 seats and a jukebox, but word quickly spread around Lincoln that its kitchen was turning out some of the best Italian-American food available anywhere in the city.

The Italian Village was soon packed just about every night. In 1941, however, Domino ran into trouble when police raided his restaurant and several other establishments that they suspected of violating local liquor laws. Although Nebraska had repealed Prohibition at the federal level when it ratified the 21st Amendment in 1933, the city of Lincoln still outlawed liquor by the drink. One Sunday morning police officers swooped into the Italian Village and seized some alcoholic beverages as well as well as assorted soft-drink bottles that had allegedly been used to provide the restaurant’s patrons with setups. Arrested and charged with operating a “disorderly house,” Domino pleaded guilty, paid a fine of $15 plus court costs, and went back to business at to his restaurant.

Over the next decade, except for a brief period during World War II when he was in the U.S. army, Domino repeatedly expanded and improved the Italian Village, to the point where, by 1948, the restaurant could accommodate 360 diners. The jukebox was gone, replaced by a state-of-the-art sound system. There was dancing until 1:00 a.m. and nightly performances by Don Tichy on what was said to be $5,000 Hammond organ—simultaneously broadcast live on Lincoln’s KOLN radio station—as well as Jack Wells taking requests from patrons at the restaurant’s new piano bar.

In 1944, after the Lincoln police paid another visit to the Italian Village, the assistant city attorney charged Domino with “maintaining and operating a public dance without having a license to do so; permitting dancing on Sunday on premises leased and controlled by him; and permitting persons to collect and engage in the unlawful drinking of intoxicating liquors in a building leased by him and under his control.” A municipal judge found Domino guilty on all three counts and fined him $45 and costs.

On May 27, 1951, tragedy struck when a devastating fire all but destroyed the Italian Village and claimed the life of Joseph Delphia, the restaurant’s live-in custodian, who was sleeping in the boiler room and succumbed to smoke inhalation. Only the building’s brick walls were left standing.

Domino plowed some $150,000 into rebuilding the Italian Village. The new restaurant, completed in late 1951, could accommodate a total of 500 patrons in its main dining area as well as five private rooms reserved for banquets, receptions, club meetings, and the like. The floor shows were bigger and better, too, featuring such famous entertainers as Peg Leg Bates, a tap dancer with a prosthetic leg who dazzled audiences with his speed, precision, and creativity, and Lowe, Hite, and Stanley, a vaudeville comedy trio that used their radically different physical statures (Hite was promoted as “the tallest man in the world”) to deliver Three-Stooges-style slapstick humor.

In the back of the Italian Village was the “locker room,” where customers could store their alcohol, as it was still a no-on in Lincoln for restaurants to serve liquor by the drink. With a relaxation of the local liquor laws, though, the Italian Village could provide the setups—ice, glasses, and mixers—and leave the rest to its customers.

By this time Tony Domino himself had become a local legend, and his last name, flanked by two dominoes (7 and 11), glowed in neon on the sign above the restaurant’s entrance. He liked to keep his pink Cadillac—also emblazoned with dominoes—parked right in front the restaurant, and inside he worked the dinnertime crowds nonstop, radiating a kind of supper-club glamour and hospitality. On occasion he even went up on the stage to play the drums when certain acts were performing.

Then there was the attention-getting “Cupid in Cigno” (Cupid on Swan) statue that stood in front of the Italian Village. It had been sculpted by Sirio Tonelli, an Italian-born artist whose oil painting of Christ had been featured on the front page of the Omaha World-Herald on Christmas Day, 1953. (The story that Domino won the statue in a craps game in Florence, Italy, was almost certainly apocryphal.)

In 1960, after 24 years at the helm, Domino decided to sell the Italian Village—statue and all—to the Legionnaire Club of Lincoln for an amounted reported to be $185,000. After a remodeling it became home to Lincoln’s 5,600-member American Legion Post 3 (the third largest such post in the nation at the time) and a meeting place for various other veterans organizations.

Tony Domino died in 1966 at age 60. In the years ahead the place that once was the Italian Village would undergo several more transformations, first as a Farabee’s Restaurant, then as the home of Carpenter Motors, and most recently, in a newly constructed building, as a used-car dealership.

December 7, 2024 By
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