Lehr’s Greenhouse in San Francisco/Diego used to be a wonderful spot with an amazing buffet/salad bar. The SF location went south years ago, and the SD site is now an all-you-can-eat sushi/seafood joint.
EDIT: It was called Hausener’s. :smack:
Fuckin’ A!
My memory isn’t as bad as I thought then!
I don’t remember that place - I must not have been born yet. Anyways, that just made me think of Smokey Robinson’s.
That was a BBQ joint in Durango, CO. Yes, it was really named that. A little hole in the wall joint. Great hickory smoked chicken. I was probably 12 years old (that’s right, foodie for life!) the last time I ate there and I could put away a half a chicken there easy. The chicken was probably its downfall. Because of their smoking process, the meat was still pink in the middle, leading many people to believe it was undercooked. I remember them putting stuff in the menu that basically said “No, really - the chicken is cooked!” Unfortunately that didn’t save the restaurant. 
I recall it was in a really bad location as well.
Any of the Bostonians around here remember a French restaurant in Arlington, MA in the late 1980’s, with the forgettably mundane name of “Coffee Coffee”, which it later changed to the forgettably pretentious name of “The Gourmet Club”? Near the center of town right on Mass. Ave.
It actually worked as a dining-club setup as well as a restaurant; you could enroll for the, I think it was Tuesday night, weekly (or semimonthly?) club dinners. Or you could just go there whenever you wanted on other nights, as with any ordinary restaurant, and score some of the best French food I’ve ever encountered.
I’ve always wondered what happened to that chef; IIRC he was Asian, and he seemed to be a trailblazer on the Asian-fusion-cuisine thing. I’ve also wondered why it ever closed; I think Arlington’s being a dry town didn’t help them any, although you could BYOB.
Pete Harmon is my grandmother’s uncle (her mother’s baby brother). When the first KFC opened its doors in SLC, my grandmother worked there. She was there every single morning at three am. Her job?
Killing and plucking chickens for the day’s supply. The restaurant opened in 1952, so she would have been 12 or so.
Colonel Sanders was a guest at my grandparents’ wedding (which would have been in 1956). It might just be me, but I think that is unbelievably cool.
Incidently, Pete’s brother, Jake, started the Harmon’s Grocery chain here in Utah.
I’m pretty sure that what killed it was that the owners were Born Again Christians, and as such, refused to serve beer. It’s too bad. They had awesome BBQ, and had deep fried corn-on-the-cob. Just an ear of corn, shucked, skewered, and fried until it caramelized a little. Really yummy.
And BBQ Bill’s was long gone before you were born.
It just closed in the last year or so, but there was a restaurant in Alexandria, VA, right near the Metro station called “Stella’s”. It was done up in a style to invoke the 40s, with old Life magazine covers on the wall. I never ate dinner there, although I heard it was supposed to be good, but they had this amazing Sunday brunch I’d go to about once a month.
I doubt it’s a chain, or the restaurant you are thinking of, but there’s a BBQ Bill’s in Bishop, CA which is always a good place to stop on the way to Mammoth. They’re a pretty good BBQ joint, but I wouldn’t put them in the world class category. They’ve been open since 1966 and it’s a funky rustic place.
Hausner’s, actually. It closed in 1999, I hear. Too bad. I liked that place.
I miss the old midwest chain, Bill Knapp’s. Yeah, I know, it was old people’s food, but I loved it anyway.
Also Zantigo’s, a mexican chain far superior to Taco Bell.
I also miss the John Ernst Cafe in Milwaukee. Great sauerbraten.
King Arthur’s Pub, downtown Chicago. Had a great carpetbagger steak.
Sherlock’s Home, near the Water Tower. When they opened (early 70s), they gave away free clay pipes and had a rack over the bar for storing them. In addition to their street entrance, they also had a discreetly marked “secret” entrance in an out-of-the-way place from a hallway in the building they were in.
Booby’s on Milwaukee Ave. in Niles. An online review said Hillary used to go there. IIRC they have a burger called the “Big Boob”. 
I just remembered one other favorite restaurant, The New York Hero House in Isla Vista. It was run by some guys who were sort of pseudo tough New Yorkers in a laid back Santa Barbara kind of way. One of them kind of looked like Fat Freddy of the Freak Brothers. They specialized in marinara sauce type hero sandwiches which had names. The Melvin was Italian sausage maybe, the Marvin a meatball sandwich, and the Marvel half sausage and half meatball (?). I’ll have to take a poll of my friends to try to reconstruct the menu as it closed too long ago to get any decent Google hits. They had the world’s greatest eggplant parmesan sandwich. Delicious! It broke my heart when it went out of business.
Thread from last year on defunct restaurant chains. (Surprising how many there are somebody thought were defunct but which are still holding out somewhere.)
I’m putting that on the list next time I’m up the 395. We go camping up that way once in a while. I think it’s time for a trip, I’m jonesing for a turkey pot pie from Schatt’s.
Hausner’s is closed?! Damn! Went there when I was little – the main attraction for my brother and me was the giant ball of string in the basement. Went back in my '30s and I could better appreciate the Continental (mainly German) cuisine and the delightfully-authentically tacky Old World art on the walls.
That’s a good thread. Don’t know how I missed it. If nothing else, it’s about chains, and this one is about restaurants in general, so at least mine is broader in scope.
From that other thread:
Is this true? Has anybody been to Vegas lately and driven through Baker? Upon googling, it appears to have happened so Bun Boy is no longer with us. I’ve got fond and anti-fond memories about Bun Boy. We were coming back from Vegas the year that UCSB beat UNLV twice. I was driving the RV which had 180° of play in the steering wheel. There was a howling wind and it was about 20° F. I was actually driving in a down sleeping bag. Once we arrived in Baker in the Bun Boy parking lot, my pal Big Jim was sleeping on the floor and Brian’s dog Astro had shit next to his head. He jumped up and ran outside and barfed, causing a minor chain reaction of a couple more barfs by others. The next morning as we left, there was a significant chunk of frozen solid barf next to the RV. Sorry about that, Bun Boy, but it wasn’t me.
I wonder if they could be related. The place in my childhood past was in Lancaster, CA.
I loved that place. It was the closest you could get to a real East Coast sandwich in town. Years later Norton’s opened downtown which is just as good but not quite the same.
There’s still an Olga’s at Saint Clair Square Mall in Fairview Heights IL. Outside of Saint Louis,MO
Been there…done that! 9live in the area) Not that great.
tsfr