Recently in Restaurants We Like Category

8:00 p.m. March 25

Its Opening Day!
At least it is in Japan, where baseball's Oakland A's are hosting the Boston Red Sox. But this one almost got by me. March 22 was the 50th Anniversary of the opening of Lefty O'Douls, 333 Geary Blvd. in San Francisco. Lefty's may be the longest running sports bar in America.
According to file reports from the San Francisco Chronicle, Mayor George Christopher showed up for the 1958 opening with two Pan American Airlines flight attendants (Lefty was one of the first liasions between Japanese and American baseball) and elder actor Eddie Nugent wore a coachman's uniform and carried a trumpet. Lefty was there. A box of home plate dirt was imported from his beloved Polo Grounds.
It makes me want to go to O'Douls for a beer. RIght now.
But since I am in Chicago, I'll revisit this edited version of an August, 2003 report I filed for the Sun-Times........,

SAN FRANCISCO--One long ago morning after seeing Tom Jones get slammed by brassieres at the House of Blues nightclub in Los Angeles, a friend and I were hit by road fever. We decided to take a day trip up Highway 101 to San Francisco. It's not unusual to see the Golden Gate Bridge. And have dinner in North Beach at Ristorante Fior d'Italia, 601 Union, the oldest Italian restaurant in America (est. 1886). Or laugh at the hippies playing hackey-sack in the Haight.
But our destination was Lefty O' Doul's, the last great sports bar in America. The California sky was as blue as our Advil. She had the top down on her red Mazda and music from Tom Jones' "Live in Las Vegas" tumbled into the air like lucky dice. By the time we reached Santa Barbara, I was feeling so good I began regaling her with stories of Lefty, who opened his San Francisco restaurant and bar in 1958.
Lefty was born in 1897 in San Francisco. He always dressed in green. He had green suits, green pants, green hats and green socks. He had green eyes. Lefty is the only major league player ever to hit more than 30 home runs and strike out fewer than 20 times in the same season. He had a lifetime .349 batting average in 970 major league games.......

2:20 p.m. Feb. 23

Its never too early to start planning the road trip from Chicago to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. One mandatory stop is Chamoun's Rest Haven Restaurant in Clarksdale, Miss. I called yesterday to make sure they are still open. They are.
Here's an edited version of a story I wrote from a visit in early 2004. I was hungry. I had spent half a day talking to musician-producer Jim Dickinson at his North Mississippi compound. Then I went to this classic diner to eat Lebanese food. I think Mississippi is an underappreciated state.

CLARKSDALE, Miss. -- The parched terrain surrounding Chamoun's Rest Haven Restaurant is best-known for nourishing the blues. John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters all came from this part of the Delta, 75 miles south of Memphis. Blues are not usually linked to Lebanese cuisine. But the Rest Haven has been serving kibbies in the Delta since 1947........
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4:15 p.m. Feb. 8
Spring Training starts next week. People always ask me about the Pink Pony, a staple of Cactus League Spring Training and one of my favorite baseball restaurants and bars in America. I've been to the Pink Pony a dozen times, but truth be told, I've had dinner there just once. Here's my edited backstory which originally appeared in the March, 14 2004 Chicago Sun-Times.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Gwen Briley misses her husband, Charlie.
Charlie died in the winter of 2002, but every time spring comes around he is as near as the crack of a bat and the crease in a glove. Charlie died of complications from pneumonia at age 87. Charlie had a great life, but that goes without saying. He was a baseball fan........

Date: 09/10/06

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The hottest restaurant in Nashville, hands down, is Prince's Hot Chicken Shack. Harold's Chicken Shack in Chicago was the king of hot chicken until I tried Prince's.
If you want it "hot" at Prince's, you order "medium." A pickle slice on the side calms the effect. You also avoid Coca-Cola or Mountain Dew. I quickly learned carbonation accents the heat. Nashville food writer Pat Embry -- whom I've known for years -- brought two glasses of backup water during our visit to Prince's. Then I got my own water........

Another Favorite Restaurant,
Feb. 29. 2004

SIKESTON, Mo. -- I have been to Paris once. It was during a honeymoon on the Ile Saint-Louis. My wife and I stayed in a little white hotel on the banks of the Seine River. After an afternoon of sightseeing, we returned to the hotel only to find our bed had not been made. I called the front desk and requested fresh linens. Several minutes later there was a knock on the door. I opened it. A hotel employee threw the sheets across the room. My wife screamed. I ducked. (We got divorced six years later.)
Hey, you don't have to go all the way to Paris to get treated like this.
The original Lambert's Cafe is at the junction of Interstate 55 and I-57 at Sikeston in rural Missouri. Every day a server walks through the restaurant pushing a cart of 72 hot rolls. If you request a roll, he will throw one at you. No one screams. No one ducks. Everyone is happy. That's why Lambert's Cafe is America's "Only Home of Throwed Rolls.".......

May 5, 2002

COLUMBUS, Ohio--The Chef-O-Nette restaurant in the Upper Arlington suburb of Columbus is an American classic. Its charm can be attributed to the triumvirate of 1960s architecture, comfort food and a name that is obviously free of focus groups.
The restaurant with squiggly Formica tables and surfboard-shaped chandeliers is on the west side of the Tremont Shopping Center. All 16 stores in the mid-20th century limestone center are independently owned. There is not a chain operation in sight. So there are a few real good things already going on here.........