That was my first thought. We ate there on my one trip to Baltimore. Full of old-fashioned furniture & European oil paintings. I wasn’t hungry enough to take full advantage of the enormous German/Southern/Seafood menu. Hoped I’d make it back some day…
Captain John’s had nothing-special seafood; but in its last years they remodeled or restored the oyster bar to chromy Art Deco splendor. I fondly remember chilled oysters & sherried lobster chowder & martinis–with friends who died in the AIDS epidemic…
Gundlach’s Hofbrauhaus was a very good German restaurant in Plainville, MA. alas, it closed years ago. I never got to eat at Luchow’s (NYC)-also German. And my favorite (The Student prince, Springfield, MAS) closed last year.
So no German restaurants left in the area.
I miss Bill Knapps. Got hooked on 'em after moving to Michigan as a kid in the 1960’s, and was sad when they vanished. Loved their bean soup, onion rings, and au gratin potatoes, along with their desserts.
Perusing a copy of their menu brings back some vivid memories.
The Southern Kitchen on the Circle in Dallas. There were two of them, but this is the one i remember. Sumptuous food and plenty of it. Friends and I ate there in the early '70s when we could afford it. Here’s a pictureand the comments here will give you an idea of what the food was like.
When I was a very little girl whenever anyone asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I’d say Hawaii Kai, a Polynesian restaurant in Times Square . That place was too fancy for us poor folk with 8 kids and 3 adults to feed, so I never got to go. Until I was a teenager and a date, trying to impress me, took me. All I remember really was that the food was terrible. My duck dish was a puddle of grease with bones in it. Th place was on its last legs my then and I don’t think there was much of a floor show. Still, I was impressed. Ended up marrying the guy.
When I was a kid, we’d visit my grandparents in Sacramento, and a highlight of every trip was going to The Nut Tree. It was on I-80 heading toward San Fran and was the only thing around for miles. I think it had started as a water stop in the horse-and-wagon days and there was an actual nut tree to take shade under. Had a gift shop, toy store, and a small train that ran out to its own airport. Once I grew up, I always wanted to fly there for dinner and nostalgia. I was in the area a few years ago; an outlet mall had been built near the restaurant. The place had been in the same family for generations, but the current generation didn’t want to run it anymore. There were some reminders of it, but it’s gone.
Also, Shakey’s Pizza. Not only was it the go-to pizza place when I was a kid, but I literally owe my existence to them. My parents met at the first Shakey’s in Sacramento. According to Wikipedia, there are still a few locations in the U.S., but they’re quite successful in the Philippines.
Good heavens, they are! Looked up their menu online; I haven’t had a proper Black And White sundae in ages.
I heard good things about The Student Prince, but never went. In Boston there’s Jacob Wirth and a new place in Somerville called Bronwyn. I’ve tried both; not as good as the real thing.
My first real job was as a busboy/dishwasher in the Brittany Restaurant in West Texas. It was a hugely popular place. The gimmick was each booth and table had a telephone, and you phoned your order into the counter. Then the counter would buzz you to come get it when it was ready. There were three or four locations. I think I was at the main one. Quite busy after football games. The menu was mainly a wide variety of charcoal-broiled hamburgers with a couple of hot-dog sandwiches thrown in. Good times.
Carrols; basically like Burger King but with some differences and better (IMHO) food. They won a special place in my memory after the flood in 1972 (Hurricane Agnes). The chain basically airlifted in everything to reopen the Kingston PA location, brought in staff when needed from outside the flood zone, and offered us meals (their deluxe burger, fries and a drink) for a buck. And this went on for weeks. After a day of mucking out mud from your basement, throwing away almost everything you owned, and ripping apart your walls it was a Godsend.
PS – Spud - I was around Purdue several times a couple years back and enjoyed quite a few of the local places although XXX Burgers was a little disappointing. With a name like that I was expecting -------- something a little different.
I had to laugh when I read about “Noble Roman’s.” The Noble Roman was the name of one of the first (so far as I know) gay bars in St Paul back in the early '70s. IIRC, it was on Grand Avenue, and it was huge and ornate (at least that’s how it looked on the outside). I was out cruising with my high school buddies one night and asked if we could stop so I could make a phone call; they thought it would be funny to pull up in front of the Noble Roman and tell me they’d wait while I went in. (I caught on to what was happening just in time.) A few years later, it was transformed into a straight buffet-style restaurant that was nice but cheap; I ate there a couple of times when I was in college. (The name had been changed, but to what, I don’t remember.)
There was an ice cream parlor called Farrell’s out in Roseville; I don’t know if it’s still there. They had something called a pig trough that was filled with fourteen or fifteen scoops of ice cream; if you ate it all, they’d have a drummer and trumpet player blow you a fanfare. We went to Farrell’s for the wrap party after our all-school play my senior year; one of the stage hands (I’ll call him “Brendt,” 'cause that was his name ) ate three pig troughs in short order while our director (“Shelley” ) turned six shades of green. (Not surprisingly, Brendt was morbidly obese at the age of 15 and suffered from flat feet and high blood pressure.) When the server asked Brendt if he wanted to set a new store record and eat a fourth, he replied (and I swear to God, this is absolutely true)…
Funny… we stopped there on our way home. I had seen it on Food Network and it was also in someone’s list of top 10 burger places in America so I had been wanting to try it. It had atmosphere since it had been there since 1929, but the burgers were just a notch above Steak-N-Shake at best.
And on top of that… not a single person was naked (although looking around I’m kind of glad).
In the 60s/early 70s Monroeville Mall (Dawn of the Dead mall) featured an ice skating rink. There was a SteakHouse type restaurant where you could eat and watch people skate.
The Monroeville Mall persists, but the skating rink became a “food court” and the restaurant is long gone.
Howard Johnson’s restaurants? Plenty of people remember them. In the 1950s-1960s they had a “lock” on a lot of the rest stops on turnpikes and the like. I grew up eating at them on trips. Nowadays McDonalds and other fast food places have taken over.
They also had plenty of places off the interstates, serving their 28 flavors of ice cream, and many with nearby motor lodges. They started closing them in the 90s. Today there are two restaurants left – Lake George NY (Which, I think, is only open seasonally) and Bangor, Maine.
If you look on the internet there are tribute sites to the place. A couple of years ago a book on the chain was published.
The first ‘real’ restaurant I remember (with silverware and tables and people taking your order) was when I was 5-6 years old. Milich’s Villiage Inn in Norton, Ohio. Known for their Chicken, they were always crowded. As a kid, I most remember the bread they brought out before dinner (we never had brown bread in the house, so I always ate it there), the huge pile of french fries, and watching the cooks toss the chicken parts into the fryers (youo could see much of the kitchen from parts of the dining room).
And you know what? Fifty plus-years later, it is still in business! I stopped there a couple of weeks ago when life brought me back to N. Ohio, and while they were supposed to close last year, some folks had bought it from the family and is keeping the tradition (and the menu) alive.
) ate three pig troughs in short order while our director (“Shelley” 
) turned six shades of green. (Not surprisingly, Brendt was morbidly obese at the age of 15 and suffered from flat feet and high blood pressure.) When the server asked Brendt if he wanted to set a new store record and eat a fourth, he replied (and I swear to God, this is absolutely true)…
