Category Archives: proprietors & careers

March 17, 2024 · 11:23 am

Anatomy of a restaurateur: Clifford Clinton

Rarely is the word fantastical used to modify the word cafeteria. Nor are restaurant proprietors usually thought of as powerful vice crusaders. [cover, 1940s booklet; below Pacific Seas]

A major exception of the latter was Clifford Clinton, creator of two of Los Angeles’ most memorable cafeterias. Both Clifton’s Pacific Seas and Clifton’s Brookdale were indeed fantastical, exotic, and composed of an odd blend of entertainment and salvation. In appearance they anticipated elements of Disneyland as well as Polynesian restaurant decor.

One of their strangest aspects was that they represented Clinton’s missionary work. After a few years of operating his father’s Puritan restaurant chain in San Francisco – previously owned by moralist Alfred W. Dennett — he came to Los Angeles in 1931 and re-opened a former Boos Brothers cafeteria at 618 S. Olive.

By the following year he was running that “Clifton’s” cafeteria plus another one on W. Third, one on Hollywood Blvd, a hotel probably housing his employees, “A miniature Cafeteria of the Tropics” in Whittier, and a “Penny Caveteria” in a basement on S. Hill street that offered dishes for 1 cent each.

In October 1932, perhaps the worst year of the Depression, a newspaper featured a smiling woman in the Caveteria with her 5¢ meal of soup, veal loaf, macaroni, sliced tomatoes, and buttered bread. According to another story, she was but one of an average of 4,500 customers fed each day (except Sundays, when all Clifton’s closed). Lines typically stretched down the street. For Christmas that year 7,000 guests enjoyed a Christmas turkey dinner priced at 1¢.

In 1939 Clinton remodeled the redwood-forest-themed Clifton’s Brookdale that had opened in 1935 as well as the original place on S. Olive, Clifton’s Pacific Seas, with a dazzling Polynesian look, neon palm trees, and many, many waterfalls. [Brookdale interior shown above; below more waterfalls, Pacific Seas exterior]

Along with meals, the restaurants acted as social centers and spiritual retreats for the thousands of uprooted mid-westerners who had relocated to Los Angeles. And they served as a kind of political base for Clinton’s reform campaigns. His cafeterias and his political activities were entirely consistent with the tenor of Los Angeles culture of the time. As George Creel summarized it in a 1939 Colliers article, the city throbbed with “two thousand religious cults . . ., each claiming daily and direct communication with Jehovah, and an equal number of social, economic and political movements: Epic, Social Credit, Utopia, the Townsend Plan and Thirty Dollars Every Thursday, etc., all guaranteed to promote the immediate salvation of mankind.”

Religiosity permeated the Clifton’s Cafeterias, as it had Dennett’s and would in a number of restaurants later in the century. If guests left the main dining room of Pacific Seas and entered the basement they would find a life-sized figure of Jesus praying in The Garden of Meditation [shown above]. Brookdale featured a Little Chapel set amidst the redwoods.

During World War II, Pacific Seas diners could also post their “feelings and wants” on a bulletin board or consult with a “Mrs. Von” in her bamboo hut for advice on personal problems.

Clifford Clinton’s mission to offer affordable meals continued throughout his career. The policy was that no one would be turned away because of a lack of funds. Although the practice undoubtedly ate into revenue, and was probably taken advantage of by some, Clinton managed to amass enough profits to live in a sprawling mansion on Los Feliz Blvd. and Western Ave in which he hosted convalescing employees [shown above]. (The house sold last year for close to $5M.)

Clifford Clinton was as colorful as his restaurants, despite his appearance as a conventional religious and civic-minded family man. He had spent much of his childhood in China with his missionary parents, an experience that he said made him ultra-sensitive to human hunger. That is unusual but it was just a prelude to his role as one of Los Angeles’ prominent crusaders of the 1930s dedicated to cleaning up the city’s vice and political corruption.

He succeeded in getting Mayor Frank Shaw recalled and replaced by the candidate of his choice, who he promoted on his radio show. In addition, the city’s police chief was indicted and found guilty of plotting the car bombing that severely injured the private detective working for Clinton’s lawyer.

Clinton’s success as a crusader has been partly attributed to his alliances. He worked with Protestant ministers under the banner of an organization he created known as C.I.V.I.C (Citizens’ Independent Vice Investigating Committee). And he also allied with the Communist Party during its popular front phase. As a result of these efforts, gambling, prostitution — and the city’s anti-Communist Red Squad — were eliminated, or at least removed from sight.

Through these years Clinton experienced endless phone threats, a bombing at his home, false reports of food poisoning at his restaurants, and an endless array of dirty tricks such as an invasion of one of his public forums by 300 hungry people who had been given tickets for a (non-existent) free meal of chicken and beer. [above: 1939 advertisement for magazine article; below: Clinton examines bomb damage]

Having turned the cafeterias over to his children in 1946, Clinton and his business partner, Ransom Callicott, focused on world hunger. They found a scientist who developed what would be known as Meals for Millions, a soy-based one-dish meal that could be prepared as soup or, with a little flour or corn meal added, bread.

Clinton died in 1969 but his restaurants, including a number of conventional ones in shopping centers, endured well into the 2000s.

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Filed under cafeterias, Offbeat places, popular restaurants, proprietors & careers, restaurant decor, restaurants, theme restaurants

Tagged as 1930s, 1940s, Clifton's Brookdale, Clifton's Pacific Seas, Los Angeles restaurants, Religious restaurants

February 18, 2024 · 11:20 am

A tough business in a tough town

Most people realize that the expense and hassle of opening a restaurant in New York City is daunting, but a 1980 New York Magazine story by Paul Tharp laid it out in excruciating detail.

Generally new restaurants have a short run, but the piece underscored this observation by noting that the city’s Restaurant Association claimed that three of every four places shut down or had new owners within five years. Tharp added that a real estate broker said that one out of ten operating restaurants was for sale “at any given time.”

New York was a particularly tough city for restaurant operators. Higher food costs there meant that the consumer was going to pay four times the cost of a meal’s raw materials rather than three times, then the national norm.

Expenses involved in opening a new restaurant were staggering. Although the total estimate for a 40-seat restaurant of $162,018 given in the article seems quite low by today’s standards, it wasn’t then. The biggest chunks of money were for payroll, kitchen equipment, rent, and remodeling costs.

But that was just the monetary total. Tharp also outlined a time factor, noting that the amount of time spent getting set up was often not anticipated by those lacking previous experience.

The article observed that few new owners expected to be putting in 14-hour days the first year working in the kitchen or waiting on tables, virtually abandoning their personal life. Nor did they realize how much time and patience would be required to obtain licenses and satisfy city regulations, such as taking and passing a 15-hour Health Department course in sanitation and food handling.

And then there were the exasperating bureaucratic hurdles. For some it was a surprise that stove vents were required to extend to the top of buildings. If the Buildings Department found that the restaurant had not obtained a permit and met city standards for remodeling, an owner might need to tear out all the work that had already been done and start over.

Taking over an existing restaurant may have avoided the hassles of remodeling, but its costs were likely much higher and brought their own hazards. Tharp relates a horror story involving two inexperienced men, elsewhere termed “babes in the gastronomic woods,” who wanted to take over a former Toots Shor restaurant for a bargain price if the new owners also assumed the restaurant’s debt. They teamed with major investors who pulled out and left them at sea. They renamed it Jimmy’s after soon-to-vanish partner Jimmy Breslin. Although at first it was quite popular, business then fell off with the recession and they realized they couldn’t handle the large staff or deal with unexpected costs such as credit card service charges, electricity rate hikes, and a temporary loss of their liquor license. Even adding an upstairs cabaret and a downstairs jazz club and hiring Jack Lemmon as Monday night bartender failed to attract the disappearing crowds. After about 34 months capped by a flooded basement, Jimmy’s shut down.

If Tharp’s report didn’t contain enough warnings, a published letter from a Manhattan realtor added another note of caution. He pointed out that owners of “quality buildings,” fearful of restaurant failure rates, tacked on security deposits equal to as much as five months rent, plus additional payments to make up for premiums required by insurers who assessed a higher fire risk for a restaurant tenant. Altogether, he estimated the operating budget should be 30% to 40% higher than Tharp’s.

Perhaps to offset all the bad news, the story included five thumbnail sketches of restaurateurs who overcame obstacles. I took a closer look at their subsequent careers, which raised some questions about just how well they all did. Three seemed to be well-connected pros who, despite disappointments with some ventures, did well overall. One of those briefly profiled was Peter Aschkenasy who had a number of successes including Charley O’s and U.S. Steakhouse, but who hit a snag trying to revive the classic New York restaurant Lüchow’s [pictured at top].

One restaurateur had a place I could find absolutely no trace of anywhere, and another had a single tiny restaurant with a short life. It was operated by the only woman mentioned in the story, chef Leslie Revsin, whose professional biographies unfailingly cited that she was the first woman chef to be hired by the Waldorf-Astoria. She opened Restaurant Leslie in Greenwich Village in 1979. With only nine tables and no liquor or wine license, it lasted only a few years despite critical praise. Following that she cycled through about nine New York restaurant kitchens including Argenteuil, One Fifth Avenue, and The Inn at Pound Ridge, often as executive chef. Eventually she turned to writing cook books.

Building a myth: Bookbinder’s

As a Philadelphia Inquirer story observed when the legendary Bookbinder’s on Walnut Street closed for the first time, in 2002, its popular appeal had been based not only on seafood and steaks but also on the restaurant’s ability to play on its history.

Eventually, in the 1940s, the myth led to a claim that it was founded in 1865. Not everyone took the claim seriously, but that still leaves the question of why the restaurant invented it. The motivation was somewhat mysterious considering that Bookbinder’s was in fact very long-lived compared to most restaurants in the U.S., which do well to last five years. It’s curious to me that the actual founding date in the 1890s wasn’t good enough, but it may have been that its actual beginnings didn’t seem like much compared to the long patriotic history of Philadelphia.

An 1895 newspaper story reported that Cecilia Bookbinder, wife of Samuel, had bought the building on 125 Walnut Street for $5,000. Since 1884, it had been operated as an oyster and chop house by a man named Attila Beyer. It appears, however, that the devious Beyer may not have actually owned the building when he sold it to Cecilia, having already used it as collateral for a loan on which he was about to default as he left for California.

Perhaps due to monetary claims by Beyer’s creditors, the Bookbinders evidently lost ownership of the building and didn’t regain it until 1906, nevertheless operating the restaurant all the while, possibly at first under the simple name Merchant Restaurant. The restaurant was in Philadelphia’s long-established insurance district where business people flooded the local eating places at noon.

Somewhat before the myth of an 1865 founding was adopted, 1875 was advertised as the restaurant’s start date. For instance that was the date given in a 1940 Life Magazine advertisement for Hines ketchup shown here; it is also indicated by the poster on the wall.

A family rift may partially explain the adoption of an exaggerated founding date. Bookbinder’s on Walnut street adopted the name “Old Original Bookbinder’s” about 1935 or 1936 after Samuel C. Bookbinder, son of the founders, opened a rival Bookbinder’s on South 15th Street [shown above, 1935]. He had been in line to inherit the Walnut Street restaurant but was disinherited upon his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism in order to marry a Catholic woman. The false founding date and the name “Old Original” were likely ways to distance the Walnut Street restaurant from its new competitor. [Note that the 1936 advertisement below had not yet revised the fictitious founding date.]

As a result of the family split, Harriet Bookbinder took over the Old Original, operating it with her husband Harmon Blackburn. He was a successful corporate lawyer, and a collector of Americana, including the Lincoln memorabilia, old theater playbills, and Carrier & Ives prints that adorned the restaurant’s walls.

Obviously the building occupied by Old Original Bookbinder’s itself looked aged, and the memorabilia contributed to a sense of age. Other historical attractions were the fireplaces made of old cobblestones taken from Walnut Street. The fireplaces probably dated back to 1915 or 1916 when the city was removing cobblestones from streets. A 1916 advertisement promised “A Beefsteak Dinner in the ‘Maine Woods’” cooked at that room’s fireplace, with steaks and chops grilled in the fireplace and served with oysters, radishes, celery, and hot biscuits baked on the hearth.

When Harriet died in 1944, her husband ran the restaurant for a year and then donated the business to the Federation of Jewish Charities. Along with the building, the furnishings and equipment, the donation included “all food and liquors on hand, the good will and everything in the till.” John and Charles Taxin bought it, with John running it until its final bankruptcy and closure.

In the 1940s and 1950s Old Original Bookbinder’s was regularly recommended in books featuring the country’s favorite restaurants, such as Duncan Hines Adventures in Good Eating. In 1947 “The Dartnell Directory for America’s Most Popular Restaurants named it the country’s most popular eating place of the 2,300 restaurants it recommended.

In 1965 the restaurant celebrated its 100th anniversary as Bookbinder’s — a mere 30 years prematurely.

By the 1970s, the cobblestone fireplaces remained, but some rooms had been redecorated and modernized. Time was catching up with Bookbinder’s then, as new kinds of restaurants with inventive cuisine such as Le Bec-Fin came on the scene. Citing an estimated 300 new restaurants opening in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, a 1978 issue of trade magazine Restaurant Hospitality observed that traditionally conservative Philadelphia was now “vying with New York and San Francisco as the Eating Capital of the United States.”

Nevertheless, in 1986 Restaurant Hospitality rated Old Bookbinders the nation’s 7th highest-grossing restaurant, with annual sales totaling $10.6M and an average dinner check of $33. It was well-known nationwide and particularly popular with tourists, all the more so since it was near historical points of interest.

But nothing lasts forever. Both Bookbinder’s closed in the first decade of the 21st century.

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Tagged as family-owned restaurants, Philadelphia restaurants, restaurant competition

November 12, 2023 · 11:52 am

Chicken in the Rough

Frequently when I write about the demise of a restaurant chain I can almost be certain to hear from at least one person who lets me know there is a survivor of that long-gone chain.

And, yes, that is also true of Chicken in the Rough, a franchised process for preparing fried chicken. As recently as now, Palms Krystal Bar & Restaurant in Port Huron MI offers “The World’s Most Famous Chicken Dish,” as it has for decades. In 2000 a Palms order consisted of an unjointed half fried chicken, with shoestring potatoes, hot bun, and jug of honey. Two orders cost $9.99 and they even threw in free coleslaw. In the 1930s an order usually was priced at 50 cents. [above, 1940s menu from an Arkansas restaurant]

The developers of the Chicken in the Rough formula were a husband and wife team, Beverly and Ruby Osborne. They ran roughly nine cafes and waffle shops in Oklahoma City and even the 1930s Depression could not halt their enterprising spirit. [above: Beverly Osborne pictured in yellow boots]

Their operations employed the magic word in modern management of that time – “system” – to streamline their operations and reduce costs. In 1936 they opened a drive-in in Oklahoma City which introduced customers to their method of preparing chicken. They soon began franchising the process and the trademark. In 1942, they patented their imprinted dishware and glasses, and the image of a chicken with a broken golf club, all of which had been in use for several years.

“In the Rough” was a perplexing phrase that often needed an explanation. It meant no silverware was provided despite the half chicken being unjointed. Evidently customers proved willing to adapt to “roughness,” although I’ve run across some evidence that over time some franchisees served the chicken in pieces. Another alternative was to serve the meal with a small metal pail filled with water for cleaning hands.

When the Osbornes opened the Ranch Room at their Oklahoma City drive-in in 1937 a large advertisement appeared in The Daily Oklahoman. Just in case anyone reading it didn’t realize the name Chicken in the Rough had been copyrighted, they were informed of this six times in the text: Yes Sir, “Chicken in the Rough.” (Copyrighted) – In one year we are known from coast to coast for “Chicken in the Rough.” (Copyrighted) – Served without silverware. In one year we have sold over 50,000 chickens or 100,000 orders of “Chicken in the Rough.” (Copyrighted) – We are now able to offer for sale franchises on “Chicken in the Rough.” (Copyrighted) . . . We took the town by storm – “Chicken in the Rough.” (Copyrighted) 50c. [Above: Madison WI franchisee]

The Osbornes were very particular about the meal’s composition, preparation, and presentation. Franchisees were required to use a freshly killed chicken, weighing 2 pounds and graded A, meaning it had been raised in an incubator and had sustained no injuries. No batter could be added to falsely make it look bigger and it had to be cooked in vegetable oil that had not been used for any other purpose. Inspectors came by regularly to make sure franchisees were following the rules.

World champion runner Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics, was slated to open a restaurant featuring Chicken in the Rough in Chicago in 1953, for which he planned to use delivery wagons decorated with large images of himself racing. I could not determine the fate of that plan, but I don’t think it ever materialized.

The Osbornes sold the rights to their franchised process in 1969 and ten years later ownership changed hands once again. At the time of the first sale of the business there were only 68 franchises in 20 states left, compared to possibly 379 in 38 states at the peak, which I am guessing was in the late 1940s. Judging from a 1946 postcard that claimed to list all the U.S. restaurants with franchises then, most of the populous states without franchisees were in the Northeast. By contrast, Michigan had the most, followed by Indiana and California.

Unlike that of Harlan Sanders, who also began by selling a chicken recipe across the U.S. some years after the Osbornes, their venture remained a franchised cooking process and did not develop into a chain of restaurants.

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Tagged as franchised cooking process, fried chicken

October 15, 2023 · 12:59 pm

The celebrity connection

Celebrities – and their names and faces – have had multiple connections with restaurants, generally adding to the glamour or appeal of the restaurants involved. One of the most obvious and probably the oldest attraction is the chance that customers will spot celebrities in a restaurant.

Restaurateurs and silver screen celebrities capitalized on that attraction in the 1930s and 1940s by encouraging gossip columns to publish sightings of dining celebrities. Despite their lack of real significance or accomplishments, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were one of the celebrity couples most often attracting columnists’ attention in restaurants.

About the same time, there were also eating places, especially delicatessens, that named sandwiches for stars of stage and screen. Reuben’s was the best known, but in 1931 there was also Dave’s Blue Room, another NYC deli. As late as 1960 a Hollywood deli menu was full of humorous names such as Lox Hudson, Lucille Matzo Ball, and Judy Garlic.

Other eating places such as The Brown Derby and Sardi’s displayed portraits of celebrities who were past or present patrons of that restaurant.

But the BIG bump in celebrity links to restaurants came in the late 1960s and 1970s with the franchising boom. Many restaurant chain franchisers believed that by linking a chain to the name of a well-known athlete, singer, or actor, they would sell more fried chicken or hamburgers. Usually the celebrity was paid a fee and possibly a percentage of profits for their participation, which could involve taking the role of chairman of the board or as little as lending their name or likeness or making an occasional appearance at openings.

Much of the time the deal turned into a losing proposition for those celebrities who put their own money into the venture, as well as for stock market investors and franchisees. Joe Namath dismayed investors when he announced in 1969 that he was retiring from football to become chairman of Broadway Joe’s. The following year he pulled out when the chain’s stock plummeted downward. Within two years of becoming chairman of the soon-defunct Mickey Mantle’s Country Cookin’, the former New York Yankee resigned.

Some other sports figures who lent their names to restaurants included Dizzy Dean, Rocky Graziano, Fran Tarkenton, and Brady Keys.

Among Black celebrities failure took on a sadder note, given that some of them had hoped to bring business opportunities to Black communities. Other Black entertainers with restaurant connections were Fats Domino, Mahalia Jackson, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Black athletes included Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Brady Keys, who created and headed All-Pro Chicken. In 1969 he had 10 outlets in San Diego, where he began the chain, as well as in Pittsburgh, Rochester, and New York City. Like Muhammad Ali, Keys hoped to spur Black business, and enjoyed much better luck than Ali, who lost a lot of money fast with his short-lived Champburger chain.

Among singers and musicians who joined restaurant ventures in the 1960s and 1970s were Trini Lopez, Tony Bennett, Julius LaRosa, Eddie Arnold, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hank Williams, Pat Boone, and Al Hirt. Most of them took a bruising. Some other entertainers were Minnie Pearl, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Treacher, Johnny Carson, and Rodney Dangerfield. [Tony Bennett display above]

Observers were quick to point out that the celebrities who did well with a restaurant or chain were those whose places had good food and management. Of themselves, celebrity connections counted for little or nothing. A frequently cited example of a success story was the Gino’s Pizza chain [not to be confused with Papa Gino’s]. Its good fortune was attributed to food quality and good management, rather than a name. In fact, most customers had no idea that Gino was Gino Marchetti, formerly of the Baltimore Colts.

But while a celebrity name could not guarantee restaurant success, it could be helpful. As Steve Chrisman, manager of two Sam’s Cafes in NYC (the name was the nickname of his wife Mariel Hemingway), would observe in the 1980s, “You need to get customers in to become visible. Mariel’s notoriety was important.”

The new wave of celebrity involvement in restaurants came in the late 1980s when it became popular to invest in restaurants, particularly for film stars. The restaurants were nearly all located either in NYC or the Los Angeles area. Involvement was largely financial and rarely meant day-to-day management. In some cases stars grouped together as was true of Malibu Adobe that came into being in 1987 through a venture by Dustin Hoffman, Tony Danza, Bob Newhart, Stacy Keach, Alan Ladd Jr., and Randy Quaid, with Ali McGraw [shown above] in the role of decorator.

The 1980s wave was not about franchised chains, but mostly single restaurants. And that probably tended to give them a somewhat higher survival rate – as it had earlier for Joe DiMaggio, Joe Lewis [above, ca. 1940], Jack Dempsey [shown at top], and Stan Musial. Some of the new restaurants bore celebrity names, for example Charo’s Cantina, Tommy Lasorda’s Ribs and Pasta, and Bono, owned by Sonny Bono. Most did not, e.g., Dolly Parton’s Dockside Plantation, Tom Selleck’s Black Orchid, Clint Eastwood’s Hog’s Breath Inn, or Midwestern exception Oprah Winfrey’s The Eccentric. But their connections were widely known by patrons and they could sometimes be spotted dining in “their” restaurant.

The next wave of celebrity restaurants would feature famed chefs. But that’s another chapter in restaurant history.

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Filed under chain restaurants, proprietors & careers

Tagged as athletes, celebrity restaurants, movie stars

March 12, 2023 · 11:57 am

Irish restaurants & pubs

Opening an eating place or a tavern was popular with immigrants – especially the Irish — for much of the later 19th century and into the 20th. They served as waiters, waitresses, kitchen workers, and proprietors.

And before World War II, when it was easy and inexpensive to open an eating and drinking place, they started many a restaurant, becoming the leading nationality in the business according to restaurant insider J. O. Dahl. Although he had no established figures to go by, judging from “numerous interviews and personal observation over a period of twenty-five years,” he estimated in his 1935 National Handbook of Restaurant Data that the Irish made up 18% of restaurant keepers.

The restaurants run by Irish immigrants were not usually identified as Irish, nor were they particularly appealing. Many fell into the category of “hash house,” generally viewed as the lowliest sort of eating place. Neither hash house proprietors nor those who ran finer spots made any mention of being from Ireland.

There were also numerous restaurants in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, run by well-known men of Irish birth, that were bigger and more prosperous. Typically they were oyster or chop houses that drew tourists and theater-goers. Among them was the prominent Shanley’s, established by Shanley brothers in the 1890s, and Dinty Moore’s, begun by James Moore whose name and fame were due to a comic strip. [above: Life with Father, 1923, by Jim McManus] Like many of the others, Shanley’s was put out of business by Prohibition, while Dinty Moore’s survived despite being “busted” time and time again.

In 1887 a journalist noted that “there is not an Irish restaurant in all these blessed United States.” He was wrong, but could his error have been due to the reticence of Irish businesses outside of New York’s entertainment districts regarding their heritage? He called on someone to explain why this was, “for of course it is significant of something.” Many immigrants sought to shed their difficult pasts and become “American,” but it’s hard not to wonder if the absence of overt ethnic identification also had something to do with the nativist “Know Nothing” movement of the 1850s that was based on fear that Catholic priests conspired to undermine Protestant values.

Whatever the reason, most Irish restaurant proprietors continued to keep a low profile in the 20th century. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, now targeting Irish and Jewish citizens as well as Black Americans, may also have been a factor. An Irish-born family that opened a tavern in Indianapolis in the 1930s called the Golden Ace Inn later revealed that they had avoided choosing a name that would reflect their ethnicity because of its unpopularity. In 1937 they had tried out the name Erin Go Bragh but changed it back after they lost customers.

Most early Irish-run eating places had very little in common with the Irish pub type of eating place that would begin to appear in the 1960s, when the term “ethnic restaurant” came into use. But even then, they were often snubbed in guide books, not out of prejudice against the Irish so much as dislike of their cuisine. The Underground Gourmet series, for instance, did not recommend or “discover” Irish eateries or cuisine. Rather, the books’ alphabetical indexes typically jumped from Indian to Jewish. The author of New Orleans’ Underground Gourmet, Richard Collin, said in a no-star review of Molly’s Irish Pub that “Irish food at its best has a somewhat limited appeal.” As late as 1990 a columnist in Columbus OH included in his St. Patrick’s day restaurant survey several jokes about how bad Irish food was, adding that restaurant reviewers and food editors shared the opinion among themselves that there was no such thing as a good Irish restaurant.

Corned beef and cabbage? That was a dish that appeared on a variety of 19th-century menus before it was widely defined as Irish. For one thing, corned beef, or any meat that was preserved in barrels with salt, had been available throughout the 19th century (and earlier), and was not identified with any particular nationality. [above advertisement from 1788] And in 1850 McKenzie’s Exchange in New Orleans offered corned beef and cabbage, right along with curried frog and barbecued gopher. Hudson’s department store in Detroit put corned beef and cabbage on an 1896 summer menu. [see below]

Even the Irish did not universally love corned beef and cabbage. Many Irish women worked as domestic servants and one of them reported in 1902 that servants got better food if they worked for millionaires with few rather than many servants. In those cases, she said, you ate the same food the rich did, such as chicken, rib roasts, strawberries, and ice cream. But in households with a large number of servants you would be eating inferior dishes such as corned beef and cabbage.

Yet corned beef and cabbage grew in popularity in the later 20th century, at least for one day out of the year, and became strongly identified as Irish. But the real winner in Irish restaurants, or what might in many cases be called Irish-themed restaurants, was the pub concept that gave restaurants the ability to stay open later with drinks and light fare, generate male appeal, and build upon the popularity of “good cheer” that had come to be associated with Irishness. Some featured Irish folk singing [above advertisement, Charleston SC, 1986], while the Irishness of others rested entirely on decor and market-tested names.

Although corned beef and cabbage remained on the menu of Irish restaurants – especially on St. Patrick’s day — fare tended toward hamburgers and steak. In more recent years, reflecting changes in Irish restaurants and new approaches to traditional fare, some restaurants have emerged in the U.S. that explore what is considered authentic Irish cuisine. An Irish cuisine ambassador noted in 1998 that, “Chefs coming from Ireland to the United States are melding the finest provisions into such nouveau recipes as Irish smoked salmon salad with citrus dressing, Gaelic potatoes, and Irish oatmeal apple crumble with Irish whiskey cream.”

Sláinte!

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Filed under ethnic restaurants, food, proprietors & careers, theme restaurants

Tagged as corned beef, Dinty Moore's, Irish proprietors, Irish restaurants, men's restaurants, pub restaurants

February 5, 2023 · 11:29 am

America’s literary chef

One way or another Othello Pollard found ways to make a big impression in Cambridge MA in his relatively short tenure there as a caterer and restaurateur.

In 1794 he was listed as a member of The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, in Philadelphia, said to be the first “African” church in America. A short time later he came to the Boston area, marrying a woman in 1799 who kept a boarding house there.

Although I couldn’t find anything about where he was born, I suspect he may have been a freed slave from Haiti, then known as Saint Dominigue.

In 1801 he and his wife moved to a site on Tremont Street in Cambridge MA across from “the mall,” a shaded walk. They were near the Columbian Museum, which housed wax figures and advertised “curiosities” that included an elephant that drank liquor.

Othello knew how to get attention, for instance by wearing a diamond pinkie ring. In 1802, about six months before he established his eating place “for ladies and gentlemen,” he advertised an attraction perhaps inspired by the Museum: a live leopard.

Maybe the leopard was not as big a draw as he had hoped, though, because in August 1802 he placed an elaborate advertisement for his “Attic Bower” supplied with “epicurean dainties” such as bread, butter, cheese, ham, tongue, ice cream, custards, “whip syllabubs,” pies, jellies, olives, pickles and all kinds of fruit, along with wine, brandy, gin, ice punch, cordials, spirits, bitters, and porter.

His advertisement was peppered with classical allusions and Latin phrases, such as in the above excerpt, roughly translated, “Where are you taking me, Bacchus?” According to The Wine Bible, ancient Falernian wine was so sought after in its time that “you practically had to be the emperor of Rome to get a taste,” so his claim to have some might have been a gimmick.

A short time later, he ran a longer advertisement with an expanded bill of fare [shown above] that included heartier food – introduced under intriguing headings – and indicated to patrons what kinds of money he would take in exchange.

No one could quite decide if he had composed his unusual advertisements himself, or whether the author was one of his regular visitors from Harvard who, perhaps, offered his writing skills as payment while short of funds.

When a fire wiped out his Attic Bower in 1803 he moved farther along Tremont, next door to a tavern, and appealed once again to “gentlemen of delicate taste, and well educated appetites.”

A little more than a year later, he moved again in the same general vicinity. In 1805 he notified Harvard students that he would not be able to entertain graduates as he had done for the past four years because he did not have enough space.

His last location seemed to be in Boston, where I found an advertisement for his coffee house in 1805. He simply mentioned having turtle soup, worded with what could be read as a resigned tone. Then he just seemed to disappear. He still remains a mystery, even though articles recalling him continued to appear as late as 1908.

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Filed under food, Offbeat places, proprietors & careers

Tagged as restaurant advertising

December 11, 2022 · 11:53 am

An early restaurateur’s rise & fall

Life in the 19th century was chaotic and unpredictable in so many respects, but the weird and eventful life and restaurant career of the highly enterprising Mark Langdon Winn, with its succession of ups, downs, and strange twists, would stand out in any century.

As far as his many business schemes went, he never stuck with any of them for long, restaurants included. He bounced around Maine, Boston, New York City, Albany NY, San Francisco, Virginia City NV, and finally back to New York City where he died in 1881. His San Francisco restaurants were the most successful of his enterprises, but despite their promise he held onto them only for about six years.

Before going to California he owned two grocery stores in Boston. Next he went to New York City where in 1843 and 1844 he manufactured and sold a cure-all product called Winn’s Irish Vegetable Relief Candy, good for “weakness of the chest and lungs, liver complaint(s), asthmatic affection, impurities of the blood, dyspepsia and all bowel complaints.”

Maybe restless, disappointed by candy sales, or lured by gold, he took off for San Francisco in 1849, age 34, after leaving Albany where his wife and children remained for another couple of years. Borrowing money from a shipmate upon arrival, he began making candy and peddling it in the streets. After a short time he had enough money to open a confectionery with a partner. Before long he was running the business solo and had added bakery goods and simple meals to his offerings.

Fires were frequent occurrences in San Francisco and he was burned out at both of his initial locations in less than a year. In 1851 he opened his principal restaurant on Long Wharf, calling it Winn’s Fountain Head. Despite the abundance of eating places in the city, it rose to prominence rapidly due to its respectability, cleanliness, and relatively low prices. It was unique in heavy-drinking San Francisco for providing no alcoholic beverages. Winn was a dedicated temperance advocate, always emphasizing the cause in his frequent, wordy newspaper advertisements that often contained sermons on the evils of drink.

The Fountain Head was not fancy. Long Wharf (aka Commercial Street) was hardly a fine location. It was a busy street without sidewalks, filled with liquor saloons, gambling dens, and all-night stores. It vibrated with “a heterogeneous crowd” of carriages, horses, carts, and pedestrians. A writer in the March 1854 issue of The Pioneer wondered “Why there are not a dozen or two broken necks there daily.”

The Fountain Head was open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to midnight, with a menu that included a wide range of meats and vegetables, along with puddings bearing such homely names as Aunt Sally’s and Cousin Jane’s. According to a ca. 1853 menu, an order of roast beef, veal, or corned beef and cabbage cost 25c, while most vegetables were 12c.

According to the city’s Commercial Advertiser in April, 1854, the Winn enterprises — by then comprising the main Fountain Head restaurant and a more elegant “Branch” welcoming women with fancy desserts – had attained the pinnacle of success. Together, the story reported, the two places served 3,000 patrons daily, taking in $57,000 a month, and paying out monthly as much as $1,600 for advertising, $8,000 for meat, $4,000 for milk, $3,000 for potatoes, and $2,000 for ice.

But this account was misleading because only a few months later Winn went into bankruptcy.

Following bankruptcy he started up at a new address, combining the Fountain Head and its Branch into one. But things soon turned sour again. In Spring 1856, he and his new business partner dissolved their partnership with the partner taking over the business. Almost immediately after that, Winn’s wife Eliza took advantage of a California law that allowed women to run businesses independently, declaring that she would carry on the “Fountainhead Confectionery and Steam Candy Manufactory” in her name. It appears she continued to run the business of making and selling baked goods and confectionery until 1859. He may have briefly tried to make a comeback at his original address, but in 1859 the Fountain Head on Commercial Street and a confectionery run by Eliza Winn were put up for sale.

Years later, in a Poughkeepsie NY newspaper story of 1878, Mark Winn would blame the failure of his San Francisco restaurants on employees who robbed him. “Every man I employed was a thief,” he said, singling out his secretary, cashier, and cook. With honest help, he claimed, “I would have been worth a half a million of dollars.”

But the Winns’ western odyssey wasn’t over after leaving San Francisco. In 1860 they moved to the boomtown Virginia City, Nevada, where silver had just been discovered. There, Mark Winn struck silver, opened a restaurant and confectionery called Winn’s Fountain Head, Jr., and invested in a hotel. The hotel soon relocated to another city in Nevada and he lost his investment. The fate of the restaurant is unknown but it did not achieve fame as he had done in San Francisco [1864 advertisement]. He tried to sell shares in his silver mine, advertising that “there is no doubt that within the next six months a fair dividend will be made to the stockholders.”

Apparently he didn’t strike it rich, though, because after five years in Virginia City he filed for insolvency and the Winns returned to San Francisco where he began work on the invention of a shampooing device that was patented in 1871 [shown above].

Next, the couple moved to New York City where he deteriorated rapidly, living in destitution and displaying signs of paranoia that had been in evidence as far back as 1854 when he referred to his “enemies” in an advertisement for the Fountain Head. On one occasion he was arrested as a public nuisance, wandering the streets of New York wearing “armor” and a tin helmet (possibly the shampooing device?) while distributing religious tracts. He spent his final days in the Alms House on Blackwell Island where he was described as suffering from “religious mania.” It also came out that his father had been an alcoholic.

Despite the uneven contours of his career as a restaurateur, Winn’s Fountain Head has become a subject of interest, often mentioned positively in a number of books and articles that tell of San Francisco’s early history. It’s presented as a triumphal success, when really it’s a boom and bust story sadly common in the restaurant business.

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Filed under confectionery restaurants, food, popular restaurants, proprietors & careers, restaurant prices

Tagged as Eliza C. Winn, Mark Langdon Winn, restaurant failures, San Francisco restaurants, The Fountain Head

November 13, 2022 · 11:52 am

Digesting the Madonna Inn

The Madonna Inn complex in San Luis Obispo CA, including a fantasyland motel, wedding venue, shops, and restaurants, represents the genius and determination of a rugged male individual – assisted by his wife — conquering all obstacles to build a dream.

Alex Madonna had been planning his project from 1953 if not earlier. The motel opened in the full sense of the word in early 1959, but it was not until a couple of years later that the complex was furnished with eating facilities.

Although all along it has had plenty of overnighters, honeymooners, lunch and dinner patrons, banqueters, and gawkers who love it, the place has also had detractors. Among their assessments: “a fantasy run amok,” “the epitome of lousy taste,” and “a crazy, outrageous Hansel-and-Gretel complex.”

Madonna Inn lore credits its unorthodox design to Alex and Phyllis Madonna’s untutored creativity. Alex, according to legend, speedily dismissed the architects he initially consulted. Yet, up until the end of 1958 Madonna worked with plans developed by Beverly Hills architect Louis Gould, a former Hollywood film set designer. And as late as 1966 an advertisement for an apartment complex Gould designed credited him with other “outstanding landmarks . . . including the famed Madonna Inn.” To the extent that the Inn’s exterior achieved any coherence, it may be due to his early influence.

Yet there was a point where no professionals guided the design, as revealed especially in the striking – to me jarring – use of large stones and boulders. The two most celebrated rooms – a men’s public bathroom with a urinal flushed by a waterfall and the Caveman Room [shown above] – prominently feature these materials.

Throughout the interior, the combination of stones and boulders with bright primary colors, artificial flowers and vines, gilded cupids, figured textiles, and plush carpeting is disturbing. The Inn’s eating places exemplify the common observation that many American restaurants are more about decor than food. This was especially true of the primary dining room, the Gold Rush Room [shown below]. Its jangling decor, superficially suggesting luxury but not allowing the eye to rest, is out of keeping with fine dining where food is the star.

A Los Angeles Times reviewer said he lost his appetite in the Gold Rush Room after viewing the giant tree with “fat, glossy, grinning cherubs, spray-painted gold and swimming in Pepto-Bismol.” Alex Madonna responded with a letter defending the room’s centerpiece. The 25-foot tall tree, he pointed out, had been “hand-crafted” on the spot out of “electrical conduit and copper remnants left over from building projects.” The pink, he wrote, was inspired by a visit to Hawaii where it was used lavishly in hotels and restaurants. At one point, even the Inn’s bread and sugar were pink.

The images of the Madonna Inn shown here are difficult to date, but most are probably from the 1960s and 1970s. Everything was subject to change and frequently overhauled. As a 1973 story in the Los Angeles Times observed, Alex Madonna perpetually thought up new ideas, one being an indoor lake featuring a floating cocktail bar that patrons would reach by canoe. The room would have been furnished with a snowflake machine and a three-story fireplace that burned entire trees. That dream did not materialize, nor did the plan to build another motel complex atop the San Luis Mountain behind the Inn that he bought from the city of San Luis Obispo in1972.

The Inn’s basement Wine Bar below the Gold Rush Room featured boulders incongruously festooned with vines and blooming flowers, a beamed ceiling, and chairs fashioned from barrels. If the wine list was anything like the coffee shop’s, it too would have specialized in Lancers and Paul Masson selections such as Rosé and Sparkling Burgundy, along with Port and Sherry aperitifs.

Lunch and supper specials on a ca. 1960s coffee shop menu were also uninspired. They included low-calorie choices such as Ground Beef Patty with Cottage Cheese, and entrees like Top Sirloin Steak with Cottage Cheese and Peaches. “Chilled” Tomato Juice as an appetizer.

The 1960s and 1970s were not distinguished decades gastronomically, and in that sense the Inn was typical. Patrons might be thrilled with the oversized pastries available in the coffee shop, but otherwise the fare did not receive many comments. A few observed that it was nothing special and overpriced. Recent photos taken by guests are not flattering, though it’s only fair to admit that they may reflect Covid-era staffing issues.

The Inn was hailed in the 1970s by fans of vernacular roadside architecture, such as John Margolies, as well as some influential writers and scholars. Not only did Margolies declare the Inn’s meals “delicious,” he considered the complex “a labor of love” designed to make people happy” and “a place where things that don’t go together go together.”

Hmm. I’d say that in the Gold Rush Room’s Christmas scene, among others, things could never go together.

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Filed under decor, food, odd buildings, Offbeat places, popular restaurants, proprietors & careers

October 30, 2022 · 10:42 am

Halloween soup

Although the food-page story in a New Orleans newspaper said that this photo showed a jack-o-lantern just carved by Chef Gunter Preuss for his children, I can’t help feeling a little bit spooked by it. Is it how he’s holding that knife, or his serious gaze?

Never mind, because the story was about the Harvest Cream Soup he makes out of the pumpkin’s insides. (See recipe below.)

At the time of this story, 1976, Gunter Preuss and his wife Evelyn were owner-operators of the Versailles Restaurant in New Orleans. Eight years later they acquired a part interest in Broussard’s, which they took over from 1993 to 2013.

The Versailles received a glowing review in Richard Collin’s “Underground Gourmet” column in 1978 — although it was definitely not a restaurant for the price-conscious diner. Collin declared it “spectacular,”and “about as fine a restaurant as one can imagine.” He singled out many dishes as “platonic,” meaning they could not be more perfect. Among them were Bouilabaisse Marseillaise, Rack of Lamb Persillades, Ris de Veau Grenobloise, and Pears Cardinal. Chef Preuss was also featured on the show Great Chefs of New Orleans.

The recipe for pumpkin soup does not give amounts for every ingredient. It calls for a pumpkin’s interior, seeds removed, to be cubed and washed. Then sauté the cubes with onions and celery until glazed. Add flour and a half quart of chicken stock. Simmer the mixture over medium heat for 45 to 60 minutes, seasoning with salt, white pepper, powdered ginger, and white wine. Then strain the soup and add three eggs yolks and a cup of light cream. Simmer on low flame for five minutes, then pour into cups and serve with a whipped cream topping and a touch of ginger. Serves six.

Enjoy Halloween!