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.
Veal Cutlet Parmigiana
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Loading...One of the most popular items on the menu of the Azure Restaurant, which opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1956 and closed in 1960, was Veal Cutlet Parmigiana, a luxurious combination of breaded veal, rich tomato sauce, and melted mozzarella. This recipe was the work of French-born Armand Kauffmann, a former executive chef of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, who was in charge of the kitchen. The dish was often featured as one of the Azure's nightly dinner specials (a complete meal, from relish dish and appetizer to dessert and beverage, priced at $1.50 in 1959), but it could also be ordered à la carte as a dinner entrée.
Ingredients
- 8 veal cutlets (about 1 1/2 pounds), pounded to 1/2-inch thickness
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 cup dry breadcrumbs
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 cup canned tomato sauce
- 8 slices mozzarella cheese
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt, and pepper.
In another bowl, combine the Parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs.
Dip each veal cutlet into the egg mixture, letting any excess drip off. Coat generously with the breadcrumb mixture, pressing lightly to adhere.
In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Working in batches if necessary, brown the cutlets on both sides until golden, about 2–3 minutes per side.
Arrange the browned cutlets in a single layer in a baking dish. Pour the tomato sauce evenly over the cutlets. Place a slice of mozzarella on each cutlet.
Bake in the preheated oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly, about 15 minutes. Serve hot.
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