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Greg R.

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Norman Brinker Dies

by Greg R. » Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:55 am

He was a real food innovator and a bit of a folk hero in Dallas. I knew several people who worked for him and they all raved about him....and I'm talking about servers in the early days not other executives. The wheels seem to come off after he stepped down in 2000 (my opinion), but he leaves a legacy...


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 468c5.html
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carla griffin

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by carla griffin » Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:54 am

He really did revolutionize dining in America. If you're under 30 it may be hard to imagine what dining out in Louisville during the 60s and early 70s was like. There were bars and there were a few restaurants but you could count on 1 hand the number of restaurants where you could take the family to dine AND get a whisky sour (or some cocktail). Steak and Ale was one of the first. There were a few earlier places in Louisville but very few and none offered the overall "dining experience" like S&A did.
For a full bar and dining (pre Steak and Ale) I can remember...
The Embassy Room (Club?)
The Essex House
Hoe Kow
Howard Johnsons
maybe a couple of hotel restaurants
Carla
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost
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Robin Garr

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Robin Garr » Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:07 am

carla griffin wrote: I can remember...
The Embassy Room (Club?)
The Essex House
Hoe Kow
Howard Johnsons
maybe a couple of hotel restaurants

Don't forget Hasenour's!
I think there were a few more, Carla, but it's slow coming back to me in the morning. Of course, things broke wide open in the middle '70s (Myra's! Bristol! Jack Fry's) and suddenly we were all foodies. :)
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carla griffin

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by carla griffin » Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:17 am

Oh yeah I did forget Hasenours! It just seems like no one was interested in dining out as a recreation until the salad bar came along. Dupont Sq came around with Steak & Ale (1972 maybe January or February), Victoria Station (1972 fall), and Benningans all at about the same time (1974 ?) Flaherty's III (not sure on the year for that and there was almost no dining there. It WAS a meat market however :wink: ) For then, Dupont was the dining out mecca of the city.
Gawd I feel old.
Carla
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost
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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Robin Garr » Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:26 am

carla griffin wrote:Oh yeah I did forget Hasenours! It just seems like no one was interested in dining out as a recreation until the salad bar came along. Dupont Sq came around with Steak & Ale (1972 maybe January or February), Victoria Station (1972 fall), and Benningans all at about the same time (1974 ?) Flaherty's III (not sure on the year for that and there was almost no dining there. It WAS a meat market however :wink: ) For then, Dupont was the dining out mecca of the city.
Gawd I feel old.


Don't we all! Hey, your computer is working?

I think there were some other places, Carla, but I'm not old enough to remember them, I remember my parents talking about them. Leo's Hideaway, Stebbins, the original Jim Porter's when it was a restaurant downtown ... the Seelbach and Brown dining rooms before they went through their "shabby" period when downtown went to hell for a while. The Luau Room at the airport ...

Point is, sure, it was less "sophisticated" by modern standards, but this has been a fine-dining town right back to our parents' and grandparents' time. The issues that made us an exceptional food-and-drink city - the river culture that linked us to New Orleans, the relatively large Catholic/Ellis Island immigrant settlement compared with more Southern cities, and our status as Sin City amid mile after mile of rural hardshell Baptists who would come here to play ... all these things went together to make Louisville the place to go to dine, drink, find fast women and beautiful horses ... and that goes back a very long way.
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carla griffin

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by carla griffin » Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:54 am

Robin Garr wrote:Don't we all! Hey, your computer is working?


To some degree. It seems to take a while.
Carla
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost
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Jeffrey D.

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Jeffrey D. » Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:46 am

Bauer's
Pine Room (did it have food?)
Old House
Later, Normandy and Hearthstone
Kunz's
Casa Grisanti
Cunningham's
Min's Steak House (now Pat's)
The restaurant at the Executive Inn (Kurt Seigert (sp?) and his strolling strings)
Bill Boland's

And places not usually thought of: Country clubs; somewhat anachronistic now, but a big source of family dining with a drink for many years in the 70's and much, much earlier.
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
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Caroline K

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Caroline K » Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:04 am

Love that list! Many memories are left in those places which are closed-Cheers to those spots which served my father many a Rusty Nails, good food and good times! :D
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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Robin Garr » Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:22 am

Great list! Thanks for the many additions!

Yes, some of those places are dated in style by modern standards. But it's worth remembering that Louisville's emergence as a "foodie" town did not begin only a generation ago. It goes back a long way, certainly to the 19th century. (Anybody ever seen historic menus from the original Galt House, where Charles Dickens stayed over?)

By the way, did the old downtown Mazzoni's have a full bar?

Jeffrey D. wrote:Bauer's
Pine Room (did it have food?)
Old House
Later, Normandy and Hearthstone
Kunz's
Casa Grisanti
Cunningham's
Min's Steak House (now Pat's)
The restaurant at the Executive Inn (Kurt Seigert (sp?) and his strolling strings)
Bill Boland's

And places not usually thought of: Country clubs; somewhat anachronistic now, but a big source of family dining with a drink for many years in the 70's and much, much earlier.
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carla griffin

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by carla griffin » Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:27 am

I was going to quesion the age of Casa Grisanti but you were right on Jeffery, 1959 was their birth year. I had no idea.
Carla
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost
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Fred Kunz

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Fred Kunz » Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:06 am

Jeffrey ....Thanks for mentioning us Kunz's it seems after 114 years in business more people would remember dining with us
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Robin Garr

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Robin Garr » Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:49 pm

carla griffin wrote:I was going to quesion the age of Casa Grisanti but you were right on Jeffery, 1959 was their birth year. I had no idea.

Remember, though, that until sometime in the '70s it was a red-sauce spaghetti joint and pizzeria with a drive-through window. It went upscale without notice sometime in the middle to late 1970s. I remember the first time we went in there and found the decor fancified and the menu about triple its original price range - with vegetables and side dishes charged extra a la carte ...
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Brad Keeton

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Brad Keeton » Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:05 pm

carla griffin wrote:He really did revolutionize dining in America. If you're under 30 it may be hard to imagine what dining out in Louisville during the 60s and early 70s was like. There were bars and there were a few restaurants but you could count on 1 hand the number of restaurants where you could take the family to dine AND get a whisky sour (or some cocktail). Steak and Ale was one of the first.


Well, I'm under 30, but I did grow up in Ashland, which wasn't exactly a culinary masterpiece. I remember eating at the Steak and Ale in Huntington, WV as a kid for special occasions, and it did seem very special, compared to alternative.
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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by Leann C » Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:56 pm

Am I remembering correctly that Steak & Ale was the place with their menus printed on big, fake meat cleavers? My parents used to go to the one in Lexington in the '70s. My mother snagged one of the cleaver menus & brought it home in her purse. I think we still have it in the basement somewhere.
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carla griffin

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Re: Norman Brinker Dies

by carla griffin » Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:18 pm

Good thing the restaurant wasn't at the airport! :wink: :lol:
Carla
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost
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