Apple Cream Pie

Johnny Appleseed Cottage

1114 South Nevada Avenue
Colorado Springs, Colorado

1951 – 1957

In 1951 George E. Snow, a Texas-born real estate salesman, and his wife, Ruth, opened a little restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that they called the Johnny Appleseed Cottage. No matter that their restaurant’s famed namesake—a.k.a. John Chapman, born in Massachusetts in 1774—never made it to Colorado, getting only as far west as Fort Wayne, Indiana, as he spent 50 years planting apple seeds and seedlings across a broad stretch of the American frontier.

The Snows’ new restaurant made its debut on August 22 in a little house at 1114 South Nevada Avenue that reportedly had once been owned by Frank Daily, a local underworld figure. There was an apple-shaped neon sign out front that beckoned diners with the promise of pit-barbecue dinners. There were little red apples painted on the eaves of the storybook-like cottage and on the white picket fence that surrounded it. The theme carried inside, where Ruth had seen to it that the walls of both dining rooms were covered with wallpaper depicting scenes in the life of Johnny Appleseed and that the draperies, tables, chairs, dishes, and napkins were in colors associated with different varieties of apples.

As for the specialties of the house, the Snows wisely brought in Andrew Bender, a veteran barbecue man who also happened to be a Baptist minister. Bender, who’d earned his spurs in the kitchen of The Flaming Pit, a famous barbecue restaurant in Denver, slow-cooked all manner of meats in an open pit over applewood and also pork butt, ribs, ham, beef brisket and chicken, barbecued over an open pit using applewood and also turned out charcoal-broiled steaks and trout.

In 1954 a national magazine dubbed the Johnny Appleseed “justly famous,” citing its barbecued meats and excellent desserts. The star of the restaurant’s dessert menu was—what else?—a luscious Apple Cream Pie.

In 1957, for reasons that have been lost to history, the Johnny Appleseed quietly closed its doors, and the quaint little cottage sat vacant for three years. In 1961 Lee and Bonnie Coleman reopened it as the Johnny Appleseed Restaurant, but they apparently weren’t stay in business for more than a few months.

The Snows later moved to Denver, where Ruth died at age 74 in 1977 and George at age 83 in 1985.

January 6, 2023 By Bill Hogan

Carlsbad/ New Mexico

Roquefort Dressing

The Red Barn

1408 North Canal Street
Carlsbad, New Mexico

1947 – 1963

In 1943 Marge and Bill Fowler bought a large ranch in Carlsbad, New Mexico, that had been built in 1918, six years after New Mexico became a state. The ranch, directly north of the La Huerta Bridge, was owned by C.A. Pierce, the general superintendent of the U.S. Potash Company, whose pioneering work had helped to make Carlsbad “the potash capital of the United States.” In 1941 Piece had built a red barn and stables on his ranch so large that during the early years of World War II pilots used it as a landmark, and it was mostly that feature that led the Fowlers to buy the property in 1943.

Several years later the Fowlers took over the Arrowhead Drive-In, a popular counter- and curb-service spot across from Carlsbad High School, but they were forced to go to court when the owner, Soda McLaughlin, tried to terminate their lease so that he could sell the restaurant for a higher price than the Fowlers were willing to pay. “Used to be where a landlord tried to keep a tenant in a building,” the Judge James B. McGhee said in ruling for the Fowlers. “Now it is where he is trying to get him out.”

But the Fowlers undoubtedly realized that their days at the Arrowhead Drive-In were numbered, and in 1946 they moved to the Old Barge Café, a relatively new restaurant right on the Pecos River at Lakeview Courts. Meanwhile, Don had been hosting open-to-the-public dances at the big barn on their property at 1408 North Canal Street, and soon they began converting it into a rustic restaurant they would call the Red Barn.

The Red Barn opened on April 6, 1947. At first the Fowlers offered only two entrees—charcoal-broiled steaks and country-fried chicken—in their small dining room. But they soon set about expanding their restaurants, and within the next couple of years it earned recommendations from the American Automobile Association, Duncan Hines, and Gourmet magazine. Each meal came with French fries or mashed potatoes, a salad, and, for a little extra, a slice from one of the pies baked by Pearl Hogan especially for the Red Barn. And, in the restaurant’s early years folks in Carlsbad could have a complete steak or chicken dinner delivered to their door for $3.00.

On entering the restaurant patrons saw a wall lined with menus from famous restaurants all over the world, and during the winter months the Fowlers kept a camp coffee pot over the fire in the Pine Room and served coffee to guests as they sat down. In 1954 the Red Barn was featured in Life magazine, which dubbed it “a favorite party spot” in Carlsbad.

In 1961 the Fowlers sold the Red Barn and moved to Taos, where the following year they opened the Hickory Tree, a barbecue place, on Santa Fe Road. The restaurant’s new owners were Donald E. Protz, who’d been a mining engineer with the Potash Corporation of America, and his wife, Mattie.

The Protzes had been operating the Red Barn for about two and a half years when, on December 13, 1963, the restaurant burned to the ground after it had closed for the evening. Many attributed the loss to the lack of adequate firefighting capabilities in the area, and after the fire the Protzes spearheaded a successful drive to organize the La Huerta Volunteer Fire Department.

Don Protz died in 1976 at age 69; Mattie Protz died in 1994 at age 82.

The Fowlers went go on to open two other restaurants in Taos: the Doll House, where Marge Fowler displayed her magnificent collection of rare dolls, in 1965, and the Red Chimney Pit Bar-B-Q in 1983.

December 30, 2022 By Bill Hogan

Waverly/ Iowa

Apple Dumplings

Carver’s Restaurant

1600 West Bremer Avenue
Waverly, Iowa

1953 – 1987

In 1952 Robert L. Carver and his wife, Connie, gave up their home in Whittier, California, to move with their three daughters to Waverly, Iowa, where they planned to open a restaurant. They found a perfect location on the western edge of town at 1660 West Bremer Avenue, right at the intersection of U.S. Route 218 and State Highway 3, and in 1953 opened Carver’s Coffee Shop and Dining Room there.

Built in the style known today as midcentury modern, Carver’s looked as if it could have been imported directly from California. It was popular from the beginning, drawing customers from Minnesota and all over northeast Iowa who appreciated the attention Bob Carver lavished on the food he served there. By 1954 Carver’s was billing itself—with just a morsel of hyperbole—as “Iowa’s Finest Restaurant.”

In 1956 Carver decided to return to California to manage a chain of restaurants and supermarkets owned by F. Donald Nixon, the brother of Vice President Richard M. Nixon. (Carver would leave Nixon’s, Inc., a little over a year later to open Carver’s Coffee Shop in East Whittier.) The Carvers found a buyer for their Waverly restaurant in Robert L. Benck, who owned and operated a motel right next door. Benck announced his plans to keep the restaurant open seven days a week—it had been closed on Mondays—and to open earlier each day to accommodate customers in search of breakfast. The only thing Benck didn’t plan to change, he said, was the restaurant’s name, which by now was known simply as Carver’s.

For the most part the menu didn’t change, either. Top billing still went to Carver’s Deluxe Hamburger (“It’s love at first bite!”), but there was also a “Steak Night” every Saturday and a special turkey dinner every Sunday. And many customers would make a special trip just for a piece of Carver’s pecan pie.

In 1973 Carver’s Restaurant changed hands again when Otto Schnider, a Swiss-born restaurant manager who’d worked at the Des Moines Club in Des Moines, the Drake Hotel in Chicago, and the Pere Marquette Hotel in Peoria, bought it. For a while it became, confusingly, Otto Schnider’s Carver’s Restaurant, and then Otto’s Carver’s Restaurant. Schnider and his wife, Katie, introduced the Swiss Chateau Room, an “all-German smorgasbord,” multicourse “gourmet dinners” prepared by German-born chef Martin Vollmer on the last Tuesday of each month, and what was advertised as the “largest salad bar in northeast Iowa.”

In 1980 Carver’s changed hands once again when Larry Kussatz and his wife, Susan, became its new owners. Kussatz, a Waterloo native who’d previously been a music teacher at Waterloo Central High School, introduced “musical meals” served in a separate dining room by waiters and waitresses who doubled, between courses, as “Carver’s Singers.” And, for the Friday-night German buffet, there was Frank Lundak playing his “Yugoslavian Button Box”—a handmade five-row diatonic button accordion.

Carver’s 35-year run ended when the restaurant closed with little fanfare in 1987. It was replaced by a franchised Country Kitchen restaurant, part of a rapidly expanding chain of 250 or so outlets, most of them in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

December 14, 2022 By Bill Hogan

Sedalia/ Missouri

Mel’s Salami Treat

Beverly’s Drive-In Restaurant

1705 West Broadway Boulevard
Sedalia, Missouri

1954 – 1986

Melvin H. (Mel) Carl wasted little time after news came on December 5, 1933, that Utah had become the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending Prohibition in the United States. Carl immediately began laying plans to open a tavern in his hometown of Sedalia, Kansas, even though the state had not ratified the 21st Amendment. In early 1935 he applied for a permit to sell liquor at 211 South Ohio Avenue, and as soon as he had the permit in hand he opened Mel Carl’s Tavern. Business was so good out of the gate that by 1936 he decided to expand and redecorate his establishment so as to provide, the Sedalia Democrat observed, “larger food accommodations for the patronage which his place enjoys.”

Carl’s next move came in 1949, when he opened Beverly’s Snack Shop (named for his 11-year-old daughter) at 520 South Ohio Avenue. The following year he renamed it Beverly’s Snack and Steak Shop and, then, Beverly’s Steak House.

Carl’s big break came in 1954, when he arranged to lease one of three available spaces in the brand-new Broadway Plaza Shopping Center at 1705 West Broadway Boulevard, which was anchored by a giant Kroger supermarket. Closing the operation on South Ohio Avenue, he spent some $40,000 to equip and furnish his new restaurant, which featured a 30-foot soda fountain and counter on one side of the room, seven sets of booths on the other, several tables in the middle, and a bar with 15 stools in the back, for a total seating capacity of about 90. As they’d done before, Carl and his wife, Emma, decided to name the new restaurant after their daughter, now 17 years old, and all three would work there in the years ahead.

Beverly’s Drive-in Restaurant made its debut on June 15, 1954, with Carl dubbing it “The House of Fine Foods” in newspaper ads for the grand opening.

In 1957 Carl suddenly found his name in the news when a sandwich recipe he entered in a competition sponsored by the National Restaurant Association and the Wheat Flour Institute was judged one of the top 20 out of more than 700 submitted. Soon his recipe for “Mel’s Salami Treat” appeared in newspapers all over the country.

In 1959, with Mel’s health in decline, the Carls announced that they had sold their restaurant to Thurlow and May Belle Puckett, who for many years had owned a cafe in Sedalia. Aside from dropping the “Drive-In” from the name of the restaurant, the Pucketts kept things pretty much as they had been from the beginning, with steak and fried chicken at the top of the menu, and an assortment of pies (made by pastry cook Isa Cayton) heading the dessert list.

There were daily specials galore, like this one described in a 1964 newspaper ad: “Stewed Chicken with Dumplings, Potatoes, and Salad. Choice of Two Vegetables, Hot Roll and Butter, Coffee or Tea. Complete Dinner, 95 cents.” Plus: “We serve the only Rum Cream Pie and the tastiest Fresh Strawberry Pie in the Sedalia area.”

Mel Carl died in 1966 at age 64. The Pucketts operated Beverly’s Restaurant until 1978, when they sold it to Tony and Pat Rimel, who restyled it as Beverly’s House of Fine Foods. The restaurant closed in 1986.

A footnote: The state of Kansas has never ratified the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

December 13, 2022 By Bill Hogan

St. Petersburg/ Florida

Ambrosia Chiffon Pie

Molly’s Restaurant

5756 Central Avenue North
St. Petersburg, Florida

1950 – 1960

Lincoln L. Loper already had more than 25 years in the restaurant business under his belt—first in Milwaukee, then in Seattle, and then in several different cities in Iowa—when, in 1950, he and his wife, Florence, moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, bought a brand-new building at the corner of Central Avenue and 58th Street, remodeled it for their purposes, and opened Molly’s Restaurant.

The Lopers billed their restaurant as the “House of Good Food”—the legend emblazoned above the awning and on the big sign out front—as well as “The Best Place in Town to Eat Full Course Dinners.” The restaurant offered table, counter, and booth service, and customers could get their fill of comfort food at Molly’s without spending a lot of money. Weekday plate lunches, for example, were just 60 cents. Complete Sunday dinners ranged in price from $1.15 for “Fried Snapper Fingers” to $2.50 for a “Grilled Large T-Bone Steak”—served with chicken noodle soup or tomato or papaya juice, a combination salad with French dressing, and homemade rolls and butter—with a half-dozen other entrees in between. And in 1956 diners at Molly’s could get a full Thanksgiving dinner—roast turkey, roast Long Island duckling, or prime rib with soup or salad, side dishes, dessert, and beverage—for just $1.94.

In 1959 Loper bought a 100-acre of virgin land in western Brazil on the advice of his brother-in-law, who’d seen the tract while living in Sao Paolo. “He said the soil was rich and the climate was perfect,” Loper told a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times., adding that his grandfather had traveled west in a covered wagon during the California Gold Rush. “My wife and I plan to visit our ranch next summer. If we like it we may buy more and perhaps settle there.”

But Brazil, at least for the Lopers was not to be. In 1960 they announced that they had sold the building at 5756 Central Avenue to the I.C. Helmly Furniture Company, and Molly’s Restaurant closed on September 30 of that year. Lincoln Loper died in St. Petersburg in 1973 at age 79.

December 9, 2022 By Bill Hogan

Milwaukee/ Wisconsin

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

Strucel’s Supper Club

8253 West Appleton Avenue
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1963 – 1996

Stanley and Beatrice Strucel opened Strucel’s Supper Club in 1963, and within just a short time they would be advertising it, with only a bit of hyperbole, as “Milwaukee’s most exquisite restaurant and cocktail lounge.” Strucel’s was a grand place, and on most nights of the week the restaurant would be packed with patrons who kept coming back for its prime-rib and fish-fry dinners.

By the mid-1980s Stanley and Beatrice were ready to retire from the restaurant business, and in 1985 they sold Strucel’s to their son Jack and his wife, Barbara Jean (“BJ”). (Beatrice died four years later, and Stanley died at age 86 in 2005.) The younger Strucels ran the restaurant and bar for 11 years and watched the neighborhood around it gradually decline until, as Jack put it, “we made the very difficult decision to sell.”

Strucel’s closed on August 10, 1996. A little while after that it reopened with a new owner and a new name—Alondra’s Restaurant. Within a year, however, a fire put Alondra’s out of business, and the building at 8253 West Appleton Avenue has pretty much been a boarded-up shell ever since.

December 8, 2022 By Bill Hogan

Skowhegan/ Maine

Indian Pudding

Gene’s

69 Water Street
Skowhegan, Maine

1929 – 1973

Eugene C. Tarbox started out as a cabinetmaker but decided in his early 40s to put down one set of tools for another and become a restaurateur. In 1929 he opened Gene’s at 69 Water Street in Skowhegan, Maine, a picturesque little town on the banks of the Kennebec River. Tarbox had no way of knowing that the Great Depression would begin that year, too, but his restaurant thrived under his management through the next decade, becoming a well-known stopping place for travelers on U.S. Route 2, the principal east–west route through the central portion of Maine.

At a time when many restaurants were cutting corners as they struggled to stay in business, Tarbox obsessed over the quality of everything served in the establishment that bore his name. All the milk and cream at Gene’s, for example, came from the herd of registered Jersey cows that Tarbox maintained at his own farm. Little wonder that the restaurant’s home-made ice cream was one of the things that made Gene’s, as its newspaper ads said, “A Delightful Place to Dine.”

In 1945 Tarbox brought on Stanley (Stan) T. Tyks, a former manager of the Hotel Oxford in Skowhegan, as a partner in his restaurant. In just a few years Tyks would be voted president of the Maine Restaurant Association, and Tarbox would go on, with his son, to establish another restaurant, the Three G’s, in Skowhegan. (Tarbox retired for good in 1960 and died at age 82 in 1966.)

In 1963 Edmund P. Branch, a veteran restaurant and hotel manager, joined Tyks as a partner in Gene’s, and he oversaw an extensive remodeling the following year. Expo ’67, as the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal was popularly known, offered the prospect of increased business, but it apparently was not to be, with Branch telling a reporter that the much-hyped world’s fair had proved “less than stimulating.”

In 1972 Branch moved to Northeast Harbor, Maine, where he converted the restaurant next to the Kimball Terrace Inn into the Mast and Rudder. That same year Tyks died in his home, at age 58, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and Gene’s restaurant closed soon after that.

The building that housed Gene’s for more than 40 years has since been home to a variety of businesses, including a pub, a pool hall, a clothing shop, and, most recently, Leakos’s Auction House & Gallery.

December 8, 2022 By Bill Hogan

Torrance/ California

Barbecued Pork

Ichabod Crane’s Tarry Town Tavern

2808 Sepulveda Boulevard
Torrance, California

1976 – 1987

In 1975 Harry Prodromides—Harry Prod, as most everyone knew him—decided that it was the right time to open a restaurant he could call his own. For a couple of years, as a vice president of Host International, Inc., he’d been managing the firm’s 18 Red Onion restaurants in and around Los Angeles. In that role he’d forged a friendship with Jose Ruiseco, a top-flight bartender who’d worked his way up to a management position at the Red Onion in Torrance. When Prod and Ruiseco learned that a sprawling restaurant property in Torrance would soon be available, they saw opportunity knocking. It didn’t seem to bother them that the building had been home to three different restaurants—first Gallareto’s, then Thirty Tons of Bricks, and then Neptune’s West—in just four years.

The 1970s was the heyday of American theme restaurants, and Prod and Ruiseco found just what they needed in the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the famous short story by Washington Irving first published in 1819. They enlisted Arthur Valdes, an up-and-coming architect and designer in Newport Beach, to give the building at 2808 West Sepulveda Boulevard an appropriate makeover (with such rooms as the Grand Salon, Katrina’s Cottage, Sleepy Hollow, the Study, and the Van Tassel Gallery), and their new restaurant, Ichabod Crane’s Tarry Town Tavern, opened its doors there on February 26, 1976.

From the beginning the specialty of the house was prime rib of beef, styled on the menu as “Roast’d Prime Ribs of Beefe,” served with a spoon bread pudding, a spinach popover, and a vegetable. Other entrees followed suit, style-wise, including “Hickory Smoked Barbecued Beefe Ribs” and “New England Boyled Brisquet of Corn’d Beefe,” as well as other beef and seafood dishes that changed with the seasons. When it came time for dessert, there was proverbial pièce de resistance: Baked Alaska, flambéed at the table.

In 1981, with Ruiseco by then out of the picture, Harry Prod and his wife, Linda, opened a second Ichabod Crane’s Tarry Town Tavern in La Habra, about 30 miles to the west of Torrance. Over time, though, the fortunes of both restaurants waned. Ichabod Crane’s Tarry Town Tavern closed in 1987, and all the restaurant’s antique furniture, artwork, leaded glass windows, and collectibles were sold.

King’s Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant moved into the building in 1988 and has been there ever since.

December 6, 2022 By Bill Hogan

New York/ New York

Chicken Pagan

Camillo Restaurant

160 East 48th Street
New York, New York

1956 – 1964

In the late 1940s, while he was working as a pastry chef in New York City, Camillo Sidoli began dreaming of owning his own restaurant. Soon, however, a wee problem entered the picture: In 1951 Lawton Carver, a syndicated sports columnist, and Mike Manuche, a college football standout and Pacific War hero, had opened a Camillo’s Restaurant, so named for unknown reasons, that was attracting such big-name sports celebrities as boxer Rocky Graziano and New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto.

Sidoli got around the problem by naming his new restaurant Villa Camillo. It opened in 1952 at 142 East 55th Street, just east of Lexington Avenue, with the name emblazoned on a green canopy out front. Soon such famous Italians as opera star Ezio Pinza and motion-picture actress Silvana Mangano were finding their way to Villa Camillo, which one reviewer described in this way: “Past a photo gallery of Italy’s wonders—including some of her shapeliest movie queens—you are guided to a spacious and attractive dining room, where a small army of red-jacketed waiters is drawn up in battle array.”

In the mid-1950s, however, plans were drawn to raze the building on 48th Street that housed Villa Camillo, and Sidoli was forced to move. He found new space nearby at 160 East 48th Street and opened Camillo Restaurant there on February 27, 1956. (The other Camillo’s was to be rechristened Mike Manuche’s at around the same time, clearing the way for Sidoli to use the name.) White Rock Beverages featured Sidoli himself in newspaper ads for its sparkling water and ginger ale. “The same fine staff serves you at famous Camillo’s now located at 160 East 48th Street,” the ad said. “In their beautiful new dining rooms you can enjoy food that is better than ever. Visit Camillo’s and try Broiled Veal Chop en Papillote, or delicious Scampi.”

Camillo Restaurant would enjoy a fleeting moment of fame when it was used for a scene in The World of Henry Orient, a 1964 American comedy film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Peter Sellers. Later that year Wanda Hale, the longtime film critic of the New York Daily News, took actor Robert Taylor there to interview him over lunch. “The food was delicious, the service excellence, and our host, Camillo, charming,” she later wrote. Bob thanked me for taking him there….And he extracted some culinary secrets from Camillo painlessly. As a rule, getting a culinary secret from Camillo is like extracting blood from the old turnip.”

Sidoli closed Camillo Restaurant in 1965 but apparently couldn’t stay out of the business for long, as a little more than a year later he opened a new Camillo’s in Beekman Tower at 5 Mitchell Place. He died in 1990 at age 80.

Print Recipe

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Camillo Sidoli opened Camillo Restaurant at 160 East 48th Street in New York City on February 27, 1956. "As a rule," Wanda Hale, the longtime film critic of the New York Daily News, would later write, "getting a culinary secret from Camillo is like extracting blood from the old turnip.” Fortunately, though, Sidoli wasn't as stingy with his "secrets" as Hale suggested. Here's his recipe for Chicken Pagan, one of the restaurant's most popular specialties.

Ingredients

6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
6 thin slices prosciutto
6 bay leaves
6 teaspoons chopped chicken liver
6 to 8 tablespoons (3 to 4 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
8 tablespoons (1/4 pound) unsalted butter, divided
½ cup all-purpose flour for dredging
Juice of 1 lemon (about three tablespoons)
1 1/2 cups white Chablis wine
8 ounces thinly sliced mushrooms

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of parchment or plastic wrap. Using a mallet or rolling pin, pound each one to an even thickness of about 1/4 inch.

Place 1 slice of prosciutto over each flattened chicken breast. Place a bay leaf on top, leaving the stem extended so that it may be removed before serving. Spread 1 teaspoon of the chopped chicken liver over the top of the prosciutto, sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese, roll tight, and dredge in flour. Set aside.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter. Place the rolled-up chicken breasts in the skillet seam-side down and sauté until golden brown, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Turn and cook for another 1 to 1 1/2 minutes.

Place the rolled-up chicken breasts in a baking dish. Put the baking dish in the preheated oven and bake 35 to 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the same skillet, add the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter, lemon juice, Chablis, and mushrooms. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 15 minutes.

When chicken is done, pour the mushroom sauce over the rolled-up chicken breasts, and serve hot, making sure that the bay leaves are removed.

Notes

Don't forget to remove the bay leaves from the rolled-up chicken portions before serving.

November 29, 2022 By Bill Hogan

/ Idaho

Fried Chicken

Jack’s Chicken Inn

1950 South Yellowstone Highway
Idaho Falls, Idaho

1949 – 1966

Long before Colonel Harland Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken made their way to Idaho (in 1956), Jack Scheets was already known throughout the state for his fried chicken—first from his days as the operator of the Dixieland night club near Ucon, and then as the operator of Jack’s Inn in Beachs Corner, just outside Idaho Falls.

In 1948, when Scheets—and his chicken—came to the Topper Club in Idaho Falls, the restaurant wasted no time trumpeting his arrival in a series of newspaper ads. “Chicken has come to town!” they blared. “Jack Scheets is serving his famous chicken dinners.”

Scheets, however wouldn’t be at the Topper Club for long. In 1949 he bought another supper club in Idaho Falls, the Tower Inn, at 1950 South Yellowstone Highway, remodeled it, and renamed it Jack’s Chicken Inn. A $1.50 chicken dinner was the star attraction, of course, but the menu also featured three steak dinners ($2.25 for a tenderloin or New York cut or $2.50 for a T-bone) and a shrimp and oyster dinner ($1.50).

From the beginning, Scheets made it his habit each year to throw a special Thanksgiving Day party at Jack’s Chicken Inn for underprivileged children in and around Idaho Falls. The kids could feast on turkey and all the trimmings at the restaurant and then take home but bags filled with fruit, nuts, candy, and other goodies. Even when Scheets fell seriously ill in 1952 and went to be treated at a hospital in Salt Lake City, he insisted that the special Thanksgiving Day party go on without him. He returned home soon after that but before the year was out died at age 63 in an Idaho Falls hospital.

Jack’s wife, Anna, and their three sons—Gayle, Vernon, and James had worked in the restaurant since day one, and they would keep it running smoothly in the years ahead. By 1957, thanks mostly to favorable write-ups in several national magazine, they were billing Jack’s Chicken Inn as “one of America’s finest eating places.” The restaurant became known, too, as a top entertainment venue. (Walter Kleypas, the original leader of the Texas Top Hands, a hugely popular Western swing band, later played for several years at Jack’s Chicken Inn.)

In the early 1960s management of the 400-seat restaurant fell in succession to the three sons: first to Jim, who oversaw its remodeling in 1963; then to Gayle, who took over in 1964; and finally, in 1965, to Vern, who’d left to manage two other Idaho Falls restaurants (the Flamingo and the Stardust) but returned to put Jack’s Chicken in up for sale. That year the restaurant was in the news briefly when the Hi-Notes, a musical trio from Idaho Falls, claimed to have broken “the world’s musical marathon record” there by playing and singing 43 hours without a break.

In 1966 Jack’s Chicken Inn disappeared when the Forde Johnson Oil Company, which operated 20 service stations in southeastern Idaho, bought the restaurant and its land, including its 450 feet of business frontage on South Yellowstone, to expand its operations in Idaho Falls.

Anna died at age 84 in 1981. James died at age 66 in 1988, Vernon at age 74 in 1992, and Gayle at age 77 in 1993.

Over the years Jack’s Chicken Inn has been credited as the birthplace of fry sauce, the mayonnaise-and-ketchup-based all-purpose condiment that’s popular as a dipping sauce for French fries, though Don Carlos Edwards, a Salt Lake City restaurateur, claimed to have invented it in 1949.

November 20, 2022 By Bill Hogan

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