Fresh Vegetable Casserole

Name: Fresh Vegetable Casserole
Ingredients: 1 small cauliflower; Salt; 8 small new potatoes, quartered; 8 baby carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces; 1 cup baby lima beans; 1 cup fresh peas; 3 celery stalks, chopped; 2 small onions, chopped; 2 tablespoons unsalted butter; 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; 2 cups half-and-half (or 1 cup each whole milk and heavy cream); 1/2 pound processed cheese, sliced; Pepper; 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan or other cheese; Chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

Southern Air

3045 East Clear Lake Avenue
Springfield, Illinois

1948 – 1984

Venette Hullett often gazed at the old Colby estate on Clear Lake Avenue in Springfield, Illinois, thinking that it would be the perfect home for a restaurant, surrounded as it was by stately trees and some five acres of gardens. Vanette and her husband, James, lived just down the street from the mansion, which had been built in the mid-1800s by John McGredy, a Scottish immigrant who found success in Springfield as a nurseryman, and later owned by William H. Colby, a prominent lawyer and judge. (The mansion had also served for a few years in the 1920s as a home for “wayward” girls.) James, who’d made a career for himself with the Underwood Typewriter Company, was known in Springfield as the moving force behind the American Pioneer Guild, a small organization that, among other activities, sought to preserve, through phonograph recordings, the recollections of the few individuals still living who had known Abraham Lincoln. Vanette was something like a local version of Emily Post, dispensing such lessons on business etiquette as “Telling Qualities of a Secretary,” and “Dealing With the Public Over a Counter.” She dreamed of running a restaurant.

On January 24, 1948, Venette’s dream was realized when she and her husband opened Southern Air—a restaurant, the pre-opening newspaper ads promised, “where savory dishes of the South await your pleasure.” The ads further promised “Food you all will like,” including “Southern baked hams and yams,” “luscious chicken,” “steaks, “hot biscuits,” and “delicious home-made pies.” Venette was listed as the proprietress of the new restaurant, which now was also the Hulletts’ home.

Within just a few years Venette could justifiably claim that her restaurant was “Famous for Fine Foods.” It was blessed with an ideal location on Illinois Route 125, directly across from the Bergen Park and just a block west of the U.S. Route 66 Bypass. “True to its name,” a postcard for the restaurant from that era says, “an air of Southern hospitality abounds in this lovely and spacious mansion.”

But in January 1955, everything changed when James Hullett died unexpectedly at age 70. At year’s end Venette married John J. Oberly, an engineer with the U.S. Rubber Company in Chicago, and closed the restaurant for a month at the beginning of 1956 so that the two of them could take a honeymoon tour of France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. Venette reopened Southern Air on returning, but later that year the newly married couple decided to move from Springfield to Chicago, and Venette sold the restaurant to Jack and Hazel Crifasi.

The Crifasis undertook an extensive remodeling and expansion of the restaurant and reopened it on January 20, 1957. “No Change in the Southern Air’s Famous Menu,” the Crifasis promised in a newspaper ad for the restaurant’s grand opening. “We wish to emphasize that the Southern Air will continue serving the matchless food for which it has become famous.” There was, however, a brand-new cocktail lounge featuring a mammoth mural of the historic Orton Plantation in Winnabow, North Carolina. The Crifasis would go on to run the restaurant for so many years that most people in Springfield assumed that they had started it.

By 1974 Southern Air was in the hands of the Crifasis’ two sons and daughter. “It took us a long time to get here,” Jack Crifasi Jr. told a reporter for the local newspaper. “My parents almost went bankrupt 500 times it seems.” The reporter went on to note that the restaurant had “one of the biggest kitchens in town” and was “one of the most successful eateries in Springfield.”

By the early 1980s, however, things had dramatically changed. The restaurant was rumored to be in financial trouble, and in 1984 patrons noticed that its menu was shrinking—desserts were no longer offered, for example—and were told that they now had to pay in cash. In December of that year, the Southern Air closed with no explanation. Early the following year the Small Business Administration ordered the restaurant’s equipment to be sold at auction as partial payment on a foreclosed SBA loan, and a couple of months later the Illinois Department of Revenue filed suit against the restaurant and its owners for more than $11,000 in sales taxes that it said had not been paid since March 1984.

In February 1985 Dennis “Denny” Joslin bought the Southern Air and reopened it as the New England Lobster House. Joslin had worked in restaurants since he was 13, but it was his wife, Carole, who had her eye on the foreclosed property. “My wife liked this place,” Joslin recalled in an interview in 1993. “I hated it, but I got a heck of a good deal. I was making a low offer and I got it.”

A couple of years after buying the restaurant, Joslin changed the name to Chesapeake Seafood House, which it remains today.

Print Recipe

Fresh Vegetable Casserole

(No Ratings Yet)

This Fresh Vegetable Casserole, one of the Southern Air's most popular dishes in the early 1950s, was probably developed by Emma Seymour, who was in charge of the kitchen at the restaurant from the time it opened in 1948.

Ingredients

1 small cauliflower
Salt
8 small new potatoes, quartered
8 baby carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup baby lima beans
1 cup fresh peas
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups half-and-half (or 1 cup each whole milk and heavy cream)
1/2 pound processed cheese, sliced
Pepper
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan or other cheese
Chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

Instructions

With a paring knife, cut the cauliflower into florets.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, and lima beans and return to a boil. Then cover the pot, lower the heat to a steady simmer, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are fork-tender but still firm. Drain well, add the peas, and set aside.

Make the celery and onion broth: Put the celery and onion in a small saucepan, add enough water to cover them, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. Strain.

Make the cream sauce: Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook, whisking constantly until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Still whisking constantly, slowly add the half-and-half. Raise the heat to high and bring to a simmer, whisking all the while, then immediately reduce the heat to continue simmering, now whisking occasionally, until the sauce thickens to the consistency of gravy, 10 to 20 minutes. Season generously with salt and pepper. Remove the cream sauce from the heat, add the processed cheese to hot cream sauce, and stir until melted.

Meanwhile, heat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk the broth into the cream sauce and spread half a cup or so of the mixture on the bottom of the baking dish. Transfer the vegetables to the baking dish. Add the remaining sauce, stirring to coat all the vegetables.

Bake the assembled casserole for about 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven, sprinkle with grated cheese, and let stand for 10 minutes to thicken and set.

Garnish with parsley and serve.

Notes

This recipe has been adapted from the restaurant's original version, which did not specify whether the potatoes and carrots should be cut into pieces and simply called for adding the processed cheese to 2 cups of "medium cream sauce."

Print Recipe