Chicago/ Illinois

Sauerkraut Balls

Tom Brown’s Coach Light Restaurant

5200 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, Illinois

1956 – 1963

Four may have been the charm for Tom Brown, as legions of customers came to know Chicago restaurateur Thomas F. Brown in the two decades immediately following World War II.

His first restaurant, Tom Brown’s Cafe Lounge, opened at 1102 Granville Avenue in 1945 and quickly gained a loyal following for its aged steaks and for lobster and other seafood that, as its newspaper ads said, were “flown in daily.” Next, in 1952, came Tom Brown’s Skokie Restaurant, at 8617 Niles Center Road in the upscale Chicago suburb of Skokie. And then, in 1955, came Tom Brown’s Blackboard Club, a members-only “key club” with assorted bon mots gracing blackboards on the walls of its main dining room and a kitchen headed by Sam DeFino, who’d been the chef at the Granville Avenue restaurant, which Brown had just closed.

As Brown was opening his third establishment, George Holt, the owner of the Embers restaurant at 1034 North Dearborn Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, was opening an outpost in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the city’s North Side. He called it the Coach Light, and it occupied a space at 5200 North Lincoln Avenue that since 1939 had been occupied by Potter’s Stockade, whose owners, William and Bessie Potter, were eager to retire and move to Florida. The Coach Light on November 12, 1954, but Holt’s attention soon turned to another venture, and in March 1956 Brown became the new owner of the Coach Light, and, as was his custom, affixed his name to the marquee.

Brown had a partner in the venture: Frank Helsing, the co-owner, with his brother, of Helsing’s Vodvil Lounge, a restaurant and nightclub at Sheridan Road and Montrose Avenue. This was, to say the least, an unusual establishment. Billing itself as “America’s Most Outstanding Theatre Lounge,” it was attached at the hip to the “Bowlium,” an ultramodern, 24-hour-a-day facility with 30 bowling alleys and nary a column to block anyone’s view of spectators. As for the Vodvil Lounge, it was best known for being the longtime home of Al “Flying Fingers” Morgan, the immensely popular pianist and nightclub singer, and the place where comedian George Gobel had gotten his start in 1948.

At his new restaurant, Brown reprised many of the dishes that had been hits at his first place, including aged steaks and live Maine lobsters. Other specials included roast prime rib of beef (served with onion pie) and an Alaskan king crab platter. Every meal started with a complimentary relish tray and, for many, ended with a slice of one of Brown’s trademark cheesecakes—plain, apricot, chocolate, coconut, or maple walnut—prepared by Ernest Lasenby, the restaurant’s pastry chef.

In the end, though, Tom Brown’s Coach Light Restaurant didn’t fare much better than its predecessors. In 1963 Brown closed it and moved to the Granada Apartment Hotel, also in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, at 525 West Arlington Place, giving his new place an old name: Tom Brown’s Cafe Lounge.

Brown retired from the restaurant business in 1971. He died in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1983 at age 81.

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November 29, 2024 By
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Washington/ D.C.

Bounty of the Sea à la Bouillabaisse, Maison

The Three Thieves

2233 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest
Washington, D.C.

1965 – 1971

Almost as soon as it opened in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 1965, the Three Thieves was, or at least was said to be, the city’s new “in” restaurant. For starters, it was embedded in a brand-new office building at 2233 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., immediately north of Georgetown, the toniest neighborhood in the nation’s capital. And it could seat more than 300 diners in an over-the-top setting that the restaurant’s owners said was inspired by a Spanish castle.

“A stunning new entry on the dining-out scene,” John M. Rosson, the Washington Evening Star’s restaurant critic, gushed in an early review. “The Three Thieves is quite a looker. In terms of décor you’d think you were walking into New York’s Four Seasons. It’s that rich.”

In truth, however, it was more as if the Four Seasons had swapped its midcentury-modern cool for a sort of conquistador-style grandiosity. The central decorative feature of the Three Thieves was a massive fireplace visible from just about every table in the restaurant, but there were also antique brick and wrought iron accents galore, walls of dark-wood panels laid in a herringbone pattern, ornate chandeliers (though made in Mexico, not Spain), and assorted heraldic paraphernalia. An elevated dining area emitted an aura of exclusivity, separated as it was from the main floor by three steps and a decorative balustrade.

Five investors were apparently behind this ambitious venture, including three—Norman Abramson, a lawyer; Norman Bromze, a lawyer turned full-time restaurateur; and Victor Silbert, an accountant—who somewhat cheekily declared themselves to be the restaurant’s namesake “thieves,” this for having unapologetically borrowed the finest recipes from their travels and translated them into an expansive menu designed to bridge European and American palates. (The three men, as it happened, had first joined forces four years earlier when they acquired Costin’s Sirloin Room in the National Press Building.) At one end, for example, there was the pretentiously styled “Bounty of the Sea à la Bouillabaisse, Maison,” at the other the crackers and cheddar-cheese spread that was served gratis to all diners.

The Three Thieves also featured the “Rogue Room,” a cocktail lounge with an intimate area for dancing and, most nights, a talented combo providing live music.

Yet, for all its glitz and glamour, the Three Thieves was not long for the nation’s capital. In 1971 the restaurant suddenly and without explanation closed its doors. Some whispered of financial troubles, others cited shifting tastes in an era of social upheaval. Whatever the truth, the space was soon taken over by a new restaurant, Le Pauvre Immigrant (The Poor Immigrant).

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November 26, 2024 By
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Jamestown/ North Dakota

Ham and Pineapple Rolls

Mac’s Restaurant

805 20th Street Southwest
Jamestown, North Dakota

1961 – 1978

For more than 50 years the name MacKenzie was synonymous with first-rate restaurants in Jamestown, North Dakota.

It began in downtown Jamestown in the 1930s with the Moline Cafe, owned by Ralph E. MacKenzie and his wife, Josephine. Their counter-and-booth storefront restaurant, complete with soda fountain, served customers from 5:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. and advertised itself as the “Best for Many Miles.”

But with the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which authorized the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways in the United States, opportunity came knocking in the form of Interstate 94. One of the first four-lane ”superhighways” to be built under the new law, I-94 was to run more than 350 miles east–west through the southern half of North Dakota. The MacKenzies started scouting for a location for the new restaurant they had in mind and soon settled on the spot in Jamestown where U.S. Route 281, a north-south federal highway, met I-94.

Mac’s Restaurant opened at that high-traffic location in 1961. Open every day from 7 a.m. to midnight (except for Sunday, when it closed at 8:30 p.m.), Mac’s was a hit from the beginning. Locals knew the food would be worth a short drive, and billboards up and down the highway brought in thousands of hungry travelers who could choose between a quick bite to eat in the coffee shop or a sit-down meal in the dining room. This, to be sure, was no truck stop: Waiters in white dinner jackets and black bow ties made their way around the dining room with napkins draped over their arms.

In 1964 Charles A. (Chuck) MacKenzie and his wife, Elna, moved from Manderson, Wyoming, where they both were working as teachers, to help run his parents’ restaurant in Jamestown.

But soon came a threat in the form of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, the landmark legislation championed by Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, that was intended to improve the aesthetic quality of the nation’s highways by addressing such issues as billboards, junkyards, and roadside landscaping. As for billboards, the new law limited their size, spacing, and proximity to interstate and federal-aid primary highways. More specifically, it aimed to control all outdoor advertising within 650 of the edge of the right-of-way.

At a public hearing convened by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Public Roads in Bismarck, the state capital, Charles MacKenzie testified that billboards had played a big role in the success of Mac’s Restaurant in its five years in business. “We feel that roadside advertising is very important to our operation,” he said at the hearing.

Chuck and Elna MacKenzie continued running Mac’s Restaurant until 1976, when they sold it to buyers who would apparently keep it for only a couple of years. The restaurant was sold again in 1978 and became the Wagon Masters Restaurant. Since 2008 an outpost of the Pizza Ranch chain of buffet restaurants has occupied the same location.

Chuck MacKenzie died in 2005 at age 77; Elna died in 2023 at age 87.

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November 17, 2024 By
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Des Plaines/ Illinois

Frozen Fruit Salad

Charm House Tea Room

661 Graceland Avenue
Des Plaines, Illinois

1948 – 1952

In 1948 two budding restaurateurs, Eugene Van Kirk and Russel Kobow, transformed a grand old home at 655 Graceland Avenue in Des Plaines, Illinois, into a tearoom they named the Charm House. In the mid-1930s the two-story mansion did a brief turn as a funeral home, but Van Kirk and Kobow had the requisite imagination to see it as a perfect venue for offering their patrons comforting home cooking in a warm, inviting atmosphere.

The Charm House boasted a perfect location and a fine pedigree. Originally the residence of J.A. (Jake) Sigwalt, a prominent local businessman, it sat diagonally across from the town’s bustling post office, at the corner of Graceland and Webford Avenues, and had been built in 1930 by one of Sigwalt’s companies.

The Charm House was open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., except on Wednesdays, and from the beginning catered to the typical tearoom clientele: bridge and garden clubs, sororities, shoppers, bridal parties, and the like. Its specialties included Southern fried chicken and seafood, with lunches ranging from 85 cents to $1.50 and dinners from $1.65 to $2.75.

In 1949 the Charm House’s address changed to 661 Graceland Avenue when the city instituted numerous changes in its street-numbering system.

By 1952, despite its prime location and superior reputation, the Charm House was in financial trouble. In February of that year Van Kirk and Kobow put their 75-seat establishment up for sale, with classified newspaper ads saying that it was a “nice business” with “good equipment,” while adding “Will sacrifice.”

But apparently there were no takers, and in June everything inside the restaurant—from the kitchen equipment, fixtures, and furnishings to the dishes, glassware, and silverware—was offered for sale. As soon as everything was gone, the City of Des Plaines bought the Charm House and the property on which it sat, which adjoined a proposed municipal parking lot, for $25,000.

In 1972 Van Kirk, then 50, found himself in the news after he bravely thwarted an attempt by two gun-wielding men to steal his car. Kobow, who before his brief tenure as a restaurateur had been an assistant instructor for Edward Gould, an esteemed concert pianist and music teacher, died in 1980 at age 69.

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November 16, 2024 By
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Sarasota/ Florida

Swiss Onion Pie

Swiss Chalet

3500 South Tamiami Trail
Sarasota, Florida

1941 – 1959

Sometime in the late 1930s George Frederick Zoller and his wife, Frieda, traveled from Cleveland, where they’d settled in 1916 on arriving in the United States from Switzerland, to vacation in the emerging boomtown of Sarasota, Florida. Once there they found their way to the Sarasota Tourist Park, a virtual city within a city with its own volunteer fire department, a 2,000-seat auditorium complete with a sprawling dance floor, a commissary, and even its own police officer to direct traffic around the 70-acre campground.

The Zollers were smitten with Sarasota, so much so that by 1939 they had made it their new home. George, a chef by trade, had long dreamed of opening his own restaurant, and soon he and Frieda set about planning to open a place that would evoke the charming and distinctive inns of Switzerland. One day they found the perfect location for their new restaurant at the corner of South Tamiami Trail and U.S. 41.

The Zollers’ Swiss Chalet debuted on June 1, 1941, with George in charge of the kitchen and Frieda overseeing the front of the house. The main dining room was paneled in cypress, with rough-hewn beams spanning the ceiling and a massive stone fireplace with a piece of gold ore that George Zoller had embedded in it. The Swiss ambiance was further highlighted by the alpine wood carvings decorating the walls, acorn-shaped cowbells hanging from the rafters, white linen napkins neatly arranged on red-and-blue-checkered tablecloths, and the huge hand-carved wooden bear greeting diners as they entered the restaurant.

Newspaper ads for the Swiss Chalet promised “real home-cooked food in cool, comfortable, home-like surroundings,” and the Zollers went out of their way to deliver just that. The “Business Men’s Lunch,” offered daily, included spare ribs and sauerkraut, spaghetti with meatballs, a variety of cold dishes and salads, and ice cream pie made on the premises. Sunday dinners were expansive, featuring such choices as chicken giblets with mushrooms (60 cents); breaded veal cutlets, grilled pork chops with applesauce, veal tenderloin with mushrooms, and grilled ham steak with sweet potatoes (75 cents); or a T-bone steak with mushroom sauce ($1.00).

By 1946, however, the Zollers were apparently ready to sell. A large display ad in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune read:

Just Offered
SARASOTA’S FAMOUS SWISS CHALET, Known from Coast to Coast
Have you Imagination??? Have you vision???
THEN CREATE RIGHT HERE A SWISS VILLAGE!!
and thereby add to our beautiful City’s many genuine attractions!!!
Almost an acre of land where you can build a number of little Swiss Cottages.
You have here a beautifully landscaped piece of land right on TAMIAMI TRAIL
with a Papaya Grove, Citrus Trees and unusual shrubbery.
Asking Price, $30,000—Open to offer.
POSSESSION IN 30 DAYS.
The Swiss Chalet is a going concern doing a seasonal gross
of between $5,000 and $7,000 monthly.

But the Zollers, not finding a buyer, kept things at the Swiss Chalet humming along just as they always had. A reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune painted the scene inside the restaurant this way in 1947: “At the Swiss Chalet you may eat, chat, laugh, even ring the cow bells, and over all presides the serene and kindly presence of Mrs. Zoller, happy only if her guests enjoy themselves. Mr. Zoller, who has been a chef practically all his life, cooks the food for which this restaurant is famous.”

That same year the Zollers’ real-estate agent, William Kennelly, hosted Robert Ripley, the world-famous creator of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,” who’d docked his colorful Chinese junk, Mon Lei, at Sarasota’s municipal pier, and treated him to a whole Swiss Onion Pie from the Swiss Chalet to be eaten aboard the 19th-century vessel.

In 1953 George Zoller died at age 66. His obituary noted that Zoller, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been born in Adrianople (known today as Edirne), Turkey, but became a citizen of Switzerland and served in the Swiss Army before coming to the United States.

Three years later, in 1956, Frieda Zoller once again put the Swiss Chalet up for sale. Advertisements for the property touted breathlessly highlighted its 15-year history, touting the restaurant’s prime location for any business (“Surpasses Anything Recently Available”) and detailing such features as the owner’s second-floor apartment and four rental cottages—everything except for Zoller’s personal furniture and effects. But despite what were described as “Unbelievably Liberal Terms,” still there were no takers.

Frieda carried on until 1959, when she closed the Swiss Chalet and put its fixtures and equipment up for sale. She died in Sarasota in 1987 at age 87.

The Swiss Chalet was razed in 1962, and after that the site hosted various businesses, including a beauty salon, construction company, physician’s offices, and, most recently, a Chase Bank branch office, which has occupied the location since 2015.

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November 13, 2024 By
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Hutchinson/ Kansas

Bulgur Pecan Pie

The Red Rooster Restaurant

1808 North Plum Street
Hutchinson, Kansas

1960 – 1979

In the late 1950s William Preston “Bill” Owens and his wife, Loretta, were running the A & W Drive-In on East 30th Avenue in Hutchinson, Kansas, when opportunity came knocking in the form of a vacant restaurant building nearby, at 1808 North Plum Street, just east of the Kansas State Fairgrounds. George and Lucille Hooper had opened Hooper’s Drive-In Restaurant there in 1953, but it never really took off and closed after about a five-year run.

Owens had in mind a sit-down establishment, not just a drive-in, and in 1960, following a complete remodeling of the building, he and Loretta opened the Red Rooster Restaurant—first, on May 6, for carry-out chicken and shrimp boxes, and then, on July 14, for service in the “Fireside Dining Room,” where all-you-can-eat family-style chicken dinners were just $2.25. “It’s the same pan-fried chicken we have served the past two years at the A & W Drive-In,” Bill Owens explained to a reporter for the local newspaper, but other specialties included shrimp and U.S. Choice dry-aged steaks along with house-made soups, breads, pastries, and ice cream. Lunches at the Red Rooster were 80 cents to 95 cents. The restaurant’s slogan was—naturally—“Something to Crow About.”

Business was so good that by 1963 Owens decided to expand and remodel the restaurant. A new banquet room debuted the following year, but not long after that, in 1965, Owens decided to sell the Red Rooster to Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Konkel, the owners of Konkel’s Cafe in Great Bend, Kansas, and retire from the restaurant business. He announced plans to open a drive-through automated car wash—a newfangled concept at the time.

Things with the Konkels evidently didn’t work out, however, as by 1971 Owens was back at the helm of the Red Rooster, bringing on his son, Carl, to help manage the restaurant. In 1973, when Owens again retired (this time for good), Carl and his wife, Janette, took over. Loretta Owens died the same year at age 67.

The Red Rooster closed in 1979, to be followed by Randy’s Restaurant, Pancake Palace, and, in time, a hair salon, roofing business, and, most recently, The Rusty Needle Sports Bar and Lounge.

Bill Owens died in 2007 at age 98.

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November 11, 2024 By
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Camden/ Tennessee

Cole Slaw

Frank’s Cafe

30 Old Route 1 Road
Camden, Tennessee

1943 – 1986

Frank Bivens could see a good thing coming in 1938 when the Tennessee Valley Authority began building the Kentucky Dam, a mammoth project that would lead, six years later, to the creation of Kentucky Lake, a 160,309-acre reservoir with more than 2,000 miles of cove-studded shoreline. Before long the lake would be luring millions of vacationers and other recreation-minded visitors to the region every year, and Bivens wanted a piece of the action. He decided to build a restaurant on U.S. Route 70, just four miles east of Camden, Tennessee, that tourists in the area heading to and from the lake just couldn’t miss.

Bivens and his wife, Ruth, opened Frank’s Cafe in 1943, and it soon became known for its catfish dinners, served with cole slaw and hush puppies. “The fish served at Frank’s are taken right from the water and popped into the frying pan,” a magazine published by Ford Motor Company noted in 1954.

Ten years later, however, fire claimed the rustic, 250-seat restaurant. Blevins and his wife lived directly across the highway, and Blevins told a reporter for the local newspaper that a passing motorist, spotting flames inside the restaurant, “knocked on my door about 2 a.m. and told me my cafe was on fire.” The firefighters who soon arrived couldn’t save the place. “They did the best they could,” Blevins said,” but it was too far gone when they arrived.”

Even though the loss was only partially covered by insurance, Frank and Ruth Blevins decided to rebuild, and the new restaurant was finished before the year was out. They continued to operate Frank’s Cafe until 1971, when they decided to sell the restaurant and retire. The new owners, Adron M. and Thelma Thompson of Camden, moved the restaurant a bit upscale with fresh flowers in the five dining rooms, candlelight dinners, and organ or piano music on Saturday and Sunday nights, but the catfish dinners were still the big draw, following by barbecue, country ham, and steak dinners. In 1978 the Thompsons opened a 44-room Passport Inn next door. With the opening of Interstate 40, however, business started declining year by year.

When Adron Thompson died unexpectedly in 1986 at age 55, Thelma decided to sell Frank’s Cafe, and the new owners, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Peek, decided to give it a new name: The Manor Restaurant.

Frank Bivens died at age 72 in 1989. Months later an early-morning blaze destroyed the restaurant he had rebuilt in 1964.

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May 19, 2023 By
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Marquette/ Michigan

Cheese Nockerln

Roter Adler Restaurant

The Tiroler Hof

Carp River Hill Road
Marquette, Michigan

1966 – 2003

When Sepp and Annemarie Hoedlmoser opened the Tiroler Hof in Marquette, Michigan, in 1966, no one could have blamed them for thinking that they owned a little piece of Heaven on Earth.

Their classic Alps-style chalet in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, built directly into a hillside above Lake Superior and surrounded by 12 acres of verdant forest, was designed to offer guests “quietness and privacy.” That it did. There was the cool-running Carp River, filled with trout in the summer and salmon in the fall, snaking around the south side of the property before it emptied into Lake Superior. And there, winding around a rugged landscape of timbered ravines, were miles and miles and miles of moss-covered trails used for hiking, mountain biking, and skiing. And in some places you’d have a postcard-perfect view of the fire-red Marquette Harbor Light Station, one of the nation’s most famous and picturesque lighthouses.

Sepp Hoedlmoser, a onetime member of the Austrian National Ski Team, had originally come to the area with his wife to manage Cliffs Ridge, a downhill ski resort that’s now known as Marquette Mountain. Over time the Hoedlmosers built the Tiroler Hof into a five-building recreational resort that drew guests from all over the world.

In May 2003 the Tiroler Hof property was acquired by a consortium of four local businessmen led by Bob Mahaney, a financial planner, and Dave Ollila, the creator of a high-quality helmet-based camera system and founder of Marquette-based Viosport (now V.I.O., Inc.). They completely renovated the interior spaces of the Tiroler Hof and its Roter Alder (Red Eagle) restaurant, reopening them as the Nordic Bay Lodge and Trailhead Restaurant and Bar. “We are trying to revive their original dream,” Ollila said at the time, referring to the Hoedlmosers.

It wasn’t, however, to be. The new owners closed the Nordic Bay Lodge in the fall of 2007 and announced in June 2008 that the historic property would be demolished to make way for an $18 million, 42-unit luxury condominium development.

“While we are very respectful of that history, the reality of the situation was these buildings are over 50 years old,” Mahaney explained. “They were never designed to last this long.”

Sepp Hoedlmoser died in 2007 at age 82; Annemarie Hoedlmoser died in 2009 at age 87.

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April 8, 2023 By
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Seattle/ Washington

Chicken Livers, Danish Style

Selandia

711 Elliott Avenue West
Seattle, Washington

1948 – 1960

Holger B. Nielsen might have been tempting fate on November 5, 1948, when he opened the Selandia restaurant at 711 Elliott Avenue West in Seattle. Some six years earlier Bill Rose, who billed himself as “Seattle’s most famous sea food chef,” had opened Rose’s Sea Food at the same location, in a modern building overlooking Puget Sound, but his timing was certainly off, what with the nation having just entered World War II. Rose soon abandoned the restaurant business to build homes in Seattle, and in 1944 John B. O’Keefe and his wife, Lois, opened O’Keefe’s Marine Grill in the same space, advertising it as “Seattle’s Distinctive Shore Dinner Rendezvous.”

In 1940 Nielsen, a native of Esbjerg, Denmark, had launched his own brand of Scandinavia’s trademark distilled spirit though the Old Monastery Company of Seattle. It evidently wasn’t a match for its imported rivals, however, and “Nielsen’s Aquavit” soon disappeared from the market. In opening Selandia, which he billed as “Seattle’s New, Unique, Smorgasbord,” Nielsen hoped to succeed where Rose and O’Keefe had failed. To draw attention to his new restaurant, he had a billboard-size sign painted on the side of the building fronting Elliott Avenue that depicted the island of Selandia on a map of Denmark, calling it the “ancestral home of the Nordic Vikings.” (Selandia is the Latin name for Sjaelland, Denmark’s most populous island and home to Copenhagen, its capital city.) And to make sure things ran smoothly, he hired John E. Berglund, who’d formerly managed the Bit of Sweden restaurant in Los Angeles, to Selandia’s its day-to-day operations.

From the beginning, Nielsen’s advertisements for the restaurant described it in glowing terms. “In the course of a scant five months the Selandia has earned itself a reputation seldom attained in less than a period of years,” one ad in the Seattle Times said. “The Viking table’s 72 square feet of surface is laden for your pleasure with not less than 55 varieties of savory taste-thrills.” Other ads went so far as to call Selandia “America’s Finest Smorgasbord.”

In 1949 Nat Lund, a restaurant critic for the Seattle Times, offered his readers this tempting portrait of the fare at Selandia: “In Holger B. Nielsen’s immaculate establishment, the smorgasbord buffet offers between 60 and 70 items, ranging from four varieties of cheese through Waldorf salad, poached salmon, Swedish meat balls and brown beans, shrimp, crab, roast beef, apples baked with cinnamon, devilled eggs and stuffed tomatoes to boiled tongue and grilled meat patties bedecked with butter-fried onions. Mr. Nielsen advises at least three plate-filling junkets around his horn of plenty, and each trip yields some fresh discovery.” One such discovery was “skidden eggs,” which Lund described as “a Nielsen invention made up of hard-boiled eggs buried in a creamy mustards sauce.”

In 1952 Nielsen sold Selandia to Gunnar Hansen and Sigurd E. Jensen, two of his employees, and used the proceeds to buy the El Rancho nightclub at 250th and Aurora Avenue. Hansen, who had started out at Selandia as a busboy in 1949, was still in his mid-20s; Jensen, his cousin, had been the restaurant’s bartender. They added a new cocktail lounge, Viking’s Corner, at the front of the building and also established a catering service, but the main attraction at Selandia remained the smorgasbord.

“Choose Whatever You Wish—Eat as Much as You Wish,” a typical ad for Selandia’s “Smorgasbord Supreme” promised in 1956. “60 Different Dishes–$2.60.”

Those unlimited trips around the restaurant’s “horn of plenty” ended in 1960, however, when Selandia closed without notice.

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March 24, 2023 By
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Macatawa/ Michigan

French Silk Chocolate Pie

Point West

2330 South Shore Drive
Macatawa, Michigan

1965 – 1994

In 1964 Richard S. Den Uyl, who’d been managing the world-famous Camelback Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona, made some big news in Macatawa, Michigan, a little resort community where L. Frank Baum, of Wizard of Oz fame, once had a summer cottage. (Some people believe that Dorothy Hall, a young girl at Macatawa, was the inspiration for Baum’s heroine.) Den Uyl, whose family had owned and operated the 120-room Hotel Macatawa on the westernmost reaches of Lake Macatawa from the mid-1940s through the mid-1950s, announced that he planned to build a year-round motor inn and restaurant on the site of the historic hotel, which had been razed in 1956. In its heyday the majestic old “Mac” was typically filled to capacity with vacationers from Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and other big Midwestern cities, but toward the end of its life it was pretty much a firetrap.

The restaurant, Point West, opened on February 24, 1965. It was all stone, brick, glass, and wood, with exposed-beam ceilings, several large fireplaces, and a lakeside terrace on the lowest of its three levels. Just six miles from Holland, Michigan, Point West was by far the fanciest place in the area, with a reputation for high-end food (Den Uyl brought a chef from the Camelback Inn) and a main dining room that gave patrons a panoramic view of Lake Macatawa. The restaurant, with its two dining rooms and 80-seat cocktail lounge, could accommodate some 300 guests at a time. “It was where you got dressed up to go to dinner,” Randy Vande Water, a local historian, recalled in 2006.

In 1981 the Den Uyl family sold the Point West resort to Kelwin Corporation, which kept Dick Den Uyl on as general manager until 1986, when it sold Point West to Valley Properties, Ltd., of Farmington, Michigan.

In 1994 billionaire Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway Corporation, bought the 4.3-acre property for $4.4 million. Van Andel owned a cottage, complete with its own heliport, on one of the tree-covered sand dunes bordering Point West. At first there was some hope that Van Andel would revive the Point West resort, but within months, when the property’s appliances and furniture were sold at auction, it became apparent that Van Andel was interested in making Macatawa much more of a private enclave. Soon the restaurant was torn down, and in time the motor inn, on the south end of the property, was also demolished.

“You know, looking back now, our family wishes that we hadn’t sold Point West,” Den Uyl told an interviewer for an oral history project at Hope College in 1991. “I did try to get it back a few years ago, but we couldn’t get together on the price.”

Den Uyl, who after selling Point West went on to start more than 20 restaurants and hotels, died in 2011 at age 82.

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March 19, 2023 By
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