I’m pretty sure that Godfather’s Pizza has “killed more people and created more misery than the Baron’s entire squadron.”
Stranger
I’m pretty sure that Godfather’s Pizza has “killed more people and created more misery than the Baron’s entire squadron.”
Stranger
In fact, the original reference for Tombstone Pizza was a bar in Medford, Wisconsin, called the Tombstone Tap (it was located next to a cemetery). The Simek brothers, who owned the Tombstone Tap, started making pizza at their bar, and then began to distribute it to other bars in the area, and at grocery stores.
I don’t think they were related to the Simek brothers but one of the families in our tiny town in northeastern Illinois had the distributorship for our area during the Seventies. Their house was the only one in town with a burglar alarm.
I was curious so I was looking up some recent Red Baron commercials and their website and they seem to be heavily pushing the “Red Baroness” a female red baron style pilot. I wonder if that’s a direct result of them wanting to get away from the World War 1 pilot connotations.
The Simeks sold the Tombstone brand to Kraft in 1986; this apparently made them the wealthiest people, by far, in Medford. The Packers had just added the first set of luxury suites to Lambeau Field at that time, and, as the tale was told in Wisconsin back then, the brothers, being Packer fans, bought one of the first luxury suites at Lambeau, and then bought a hotel in Green Bay (the Embassy Suites) so that they had a place to stay when they went to Packer games.
Yeah, that’s more of a WWII thing:
Stranger
They used to make a very good breakfast pizza, which has vanished in all the stores I go to. At one point a guy who stocked pizzas in the supermarket said I could order them on line, but that seemed a bit much.
Plus some of the buildings resembled white castles.
There used to be a family-owned Italian place near me that had been open for decades. When the owners retired, they sold the building and its contents to a Tibetan family that wanted to open an authentic Tibetan restaurant. It was a great place - they made amazing dumplings. But they kept all the original furnishings, which were high Italian kitsch. You’d be enjoying a plate of tsak sha momo, and there’s one of these guys sitting on every red-and-white checkered table.
Also, they kept the pizza oven, and the older restaurant’s pizza menu, unaltered, with no cross-pollination between the cuisines. It was like one of those places that’s a Taco Bell and a KFC in the same building, except instead of giant franchises, it was two different mom-and-pop restaurants.
Which do you thing came first, the name or the castle decor?
Simultaneous, I’d bet. Building to match the brand used to be popular - might still be.
I saw a movie (Soviet) about them once, way back in the summer of '75. Judging from the special effects, I thought it was at least 30 years old.
Nope. Only four, IIRC.
I’ve seen lots of cases where the restaurants were mixed decor (or mixed building styles) because what had been one restaurant moved into where another had been. There was a Chinese restaurant we used to go to that had been a seafood restaurant, so the interior was all fake ship’s fixtures, fishnets, and aquariums. A Chinese restaurant i used to go to in Salt Lake had originally been a Big Barn fast food restaurant, and if you really looked, you could tell (especially from the outside, where it had the shape of a barn). I’ve seen several restaurants that are redone classic International House of Pancakes restaurants, with the high, steep A-frame design.
I’ve seen 3 different Chinese restaurants operate out of old stainless railroad-car type diners. The 3rd one closed down not far away just a few years ago. They had over time covered the original structure with a facade. That one and the first I saw both had excellent food, never ate at the one in the middle. I found it quite a bit more fun to eat at those places, they very creatively matched the interior decor to the cuisine where you would expect the walls now to be decorated with 40s and 50s memorabilia, but otherwise they maintained the look including the counter with stools.
Billy Connolly once told of finding pizza on the menu at a Scottish fish & chips shop. He said they cooked in the same deep-fryer that they used for the fish and the chips. He did not recommend it.
This appears to be the case. As per Wikipedia:
Yep, deep-fried battered pizza. Like deep-fried battered bangers, it’s a delicacy.
That was likely the bizarre Scottish deep fried pizza which is a slice of ordinary pizza battered and then deep fried. I don’t think it’s ever good. The real deep fried pizza has a bottom and top crust with the standard fillings in between and is delicious, but like anything else needs to be fried in decent oil.
Sometimes they are designed thaty way.
Back in the 90s we had a place in town called Pancho Steinberg’s Mexi-Deli. I was exactly what it sounds like! Though I don’t suppose the tacos were Kosher.
Another brand that implies some sort of chivalry like Red Baron is Round Table. Still can’t figure the connection to pizza, though.