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Restaurants from your childhood that don’t exist anymore


Longboard Horn

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1 hour ago, Bojack said:

From Southeast Texas during my childhood, Channel Inn, Dorothy's Front Porch, Boondocks, Shep's.

From my early adulthood in Austin, I used to love Cafe Spiazzo in the little strip mall by 2222 and Mopac. It was a great place to bring dates.  

They made a chocolate chipotle tort that remains my wife's favorite dessert of all time.

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14 hours ago, deadshank said:

Wasn't  that where Molina's on Westheimer is now located.  Went there a few times. 

yes they are a great buffet all you can eat crab and lobster and right up the road old san francisco steakhouse had that chick on the swing

Ruby Reds off i-10, loved being allowed to throw peanut shells on the floor

Vargos and their swans

Charlies Hamburgers

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

 

When they opened on 6th street in Austin, they were Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck -- I distinctly remember reading the description of their name and "weck" on the menu.  Now, that was 20 years ago or so, and they became BW-3 shortly thereafter, but when they opened, weck was a thing.

Im pretty sure the one in West U was originally a weck as I distinctly remember wondering wtf was a weck 

Edited by Smax
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There was a little Italian place at Steck & Mesa when I was in college (mid-90’s).  At lunch, for $5, you got a pasta entree, soup, salad, and bread.  Not hard to turn that into two meals.  I have no idea if it’s still there, but I miss the fuck out of that place.

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57 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

There was a little Italian place at Steck & Mesa when I was in college (mid-90’s).  At lunch, for $5, you got a pasta entree, soup, salad, and bread.  Not hard to turn that into two meals.  I have no idea if it’s still there, but I miss the fuck out of that place.

Little Italy.  It was great.  Next to Wallys.   

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Im pretty sure the one in West U was originally a weck as I distinctly remember wondering wtf was a weck 


Charlie's hamburgers, there's a blast from the past. Think there's still one in fountainview but it was ass a few years ago.

That west U bw3 is danny goeb's place.
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3 hours ago, Bender Bending Rodriguez said:

Black Eyed Pea seems to have disappeared from Texas.

Are Captain D's still around?

There's one right off of 635 in Balch Springs.

How do I know this?

Because in a fit of what was clearly self-loathing, I stopped there and picked up road food heading home from a client meeting.  Batter dipped fish, hush puppies and fried okra.  Eaten with my free hand, seasoned with shame.

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3 hours ago, Bender Bending Rodriguez said:

Black Eyed Pea seems to have disappeared from Texas.

Are Captain D's still around?

There’s a Black Eyed Pea in SA on Fredericksburg Rd.

I passed a Captain Ds just the other day, I think it was in Baytown.

Edited by formermav43
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There's one right off of 635 in Balch Springs.
How do I know this?
Because in a fit of what was clearly self-loathing, I stopped there and picked up road food heading home from a client meeting.  Batter dipped fish, hush puppies and fried okra.  Eaten with my free hand, seasoned with shame.


Yep 635 and Elam. I worked there a bit in high school
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3 hours ago, relapse98 said:

Looks like it may still be around in Florida, if the same chain, PoFolks. We used to eat at one it seemed like every week. They had a folksy hillbilly schtick in the way they wrote the menu. Drinks came in a Mason jar. Miss that place 

Holy shit. There's still a Po' Folks???

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5 hours ago, relapse98 said:

Looks like it may still be around in Florida, if the same chain, PoFolks. We used to eat at one it seemed like every week. They had a folksy hillbilly schtick in the way they wrote the menu. Drinks came in a Mason jar. Miss that place 

I learned from Wikipedia that Po' Folks has shrunk from an empire of 102 restaurants to a remnant of 8, almost all of them owned by one guy in the Baja Alabama part of Florida.

As a broke ute I used to survive off their red beans and rice and cornbread. If you left the sausage out of it, you could get a meal for couch change.

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19 hours ago, elfenix said:


 

 


Charlie's hamburgers, there's a blast from the past. Think there's still one in fountainview but it was ass a few years ago.

That west U bw3 is danny goeb's place.

 

Cliff's is on Fountainview and it was amazing back in the day.  I've heard it's gone downhill.

Charlies was on Bunker Hill and I-10.  "Over 2 Dozen served."

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Joy Luck in Carillon Center on Westheimer West of Gessner.  Chinese food was average at best, but they sure did love serving us 16 year old kids cocktails.  I remember 20+ of us going there once with that many fake IDs (all of which were one of 3 of which we had made color copies and had a buddy at Blockbuster laminate for us).  Waiter comes out and says, "Who wants Zombie!"  20 hands shoot up.

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There was a Giovanni's in the Brazos mall in lake Jackson when I was growing up. It was mall pizza but it was awesome - much better than the standard food court stuff. At least that's how I remember it. I always assumed it was a chain but I've searched and searched on the Internet and can't find any mention of it. My search is complicated by the fact that Giovanni's is probably the most common name for a pizza place.

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Didn't see Leslie's Chicken Shack mentioned. We would stop there on all trips from Ft. Worth heading to the coast or any where in south Texas. I thought it was great as a kid, hell even until they went of business. I know they had a few other locations but only ate at the one in Waco. How I did the locals not support that place? Oh, and I'm not a fan of gizzards but damn my Mom loved theirs. Insert your mom/gizzard joke here cause I know you want to.

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My first job was at the GW Jr’s on Southcross Blvd near Goliad Rd in SA. Pretty tasty bacon cheeseburgers and footlong chili dogs, if I say so myself. They were owned by Church’s Fried Chicken and went away after about 5 years when CFC declared bankruptcy circa 1980. 

Edited by ImissWallyPryor
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When I was a kid, we used to stop by The Barn restaurant in Huron, SD. There was a carhop there named Cheryl Stoppelmoor who became Cheryl Ladd. I was too young to appreciate her level of talent, but my dad always claimed he remembered. This photo was after they expanded and did away with the carhops.

card00130_fr.jpg

R.I.P. 1962-2002ish

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On 8/16/2018 at 2:13 PM, Brisketexan said:

I can go Houston old-school here.

Yamin's pizza on Gessner just north of the SW fwy -- owned by a family of one of my long-time school-mates.  Pretty good damned pizza, first place that I put away a whole (small) pizza by myself, as a growing boy.

Ludy's pizza -- damned sure nobody knows about this one.  It was at the entrance of my neighborhood -- Braeburn Valley West -- when we moved in, circa 1974.  It was great, in a strip center next to Sunny's food mart, and was the first restaurant that I remember being upset about it closing.

Danver's hamburgers on Gessner just before the SW fwy -- think Fuddruckers before Fuddruckers.  Good, thick burgers, and a huge fixings bar so you could make it the way you liked it.  My dad LOVED that place, as did my wife's dad -- we didn't know each other back then, but we can guarantee that we were there on the same Saturday night at least once, probably much more than once.

Mr. Steak -- a cheap steak joint.  Really cheap.  But when I was little, my family was pretty po, and my dad liked steak.  So, we went there a good bit.  I think it was on Fondren, between Westpark and Westheimer.

Holy shit we grew up in the same neighborhood.  Haven’t thought about Yamin’s in decades.  Ludy’s. My God.  I lived on the other end, right by where they later put Scoops N Games.

Speaking of SW Houston pizza you ever go to Lalo’s, the Argentinian pizza place farther up West Bellfort - past Fondren?  I was there the day that Argentina won the World Cup and they fave me a glass of wine. Fucking great pizza. 

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On 8/16/2018 at 6:32 PM, Smax said:

yes they are a great buffet all you can eat crab and lobster and right up the road old san francisco steakhouse had that chick on the swing

Ruby Reds off i-10, loved being allowed to throw peanut shells on the floor

Vargos and their swans

Charlies Hamburgers

Im pretty sure the one in West U was originally a weck as I distinctly remember wondering wtf was a weck 

It was. IIRC, it took over the old Dan & Nick’s - the bar owned by Dan Patrick when he was Channel 11’s sports guy. And the one on 6th was a bw-3 for sure.  The one time I was there I kept asking what the “3” was for and I joked about how it stood for their rating on a 1-10 scale. 

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13 hours ago, dcbc said:

Joy Luck in Carillon Center on Westheimer West of Gessner.  Chinese food was average at best, but they sure did love serving us 16 year old kids cocktails.  I remember 20+ of us going there once with that many fake IDs (all of which were one of 3 of which we had made color copies and had a buddy at Blockbuster laminate for us).  Waiter comes out and says, "Who wants Zombie!"  20 hands shoot up.

August Moon in Dallas. 

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Mander’s Pizza on Federal.

Denver/ Westminster

has been out of business for quite some time, but it was easily our favorite place to go when it was our vote as kids

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On 8/15/2018 at 8:53 AM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Shoneys Big Boy restaurants.

I think there are still about 5 or 6 of them off of 95 around the Richmond area .  I know one is down on the NC line in Emporia.  Friends and I would tempt fate and do their breakfast buffet years ago and then within an hour have to stop again for what we called "The Shoney's Shove".    

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Holy shit we grew up in the same neighborhood.  Haven’t thought about Yamin’s in decades.  Ludy’s. My God.  I lived on the other end, right by where they later put Scoops N Games.
Speaking of SW Houston pizza you ever go to Lalo’s, the Argentinian pizza place farther up West Bellfort - past Fondren?  I was there the day that Argentina won the World Cup and they fave me a glass of wine. Fucking great pizza. 

My childhood best friend lived at that end of the neighborhood, at the dead end of Spellman. Blew through a lotta quarters at Scoops and Games.

As for Lalo’s, that was the first place I had linguini al pesto....and I went to high school with the son of the family that owned it, the Portos.
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Pancho's. No shame. I only know of two still in existence. 

I remember a Boston Sea Party on Preston, just north of LBJ sort of across from Valley View. First time I had a whole lobster.

There was a Feed Bag on Forest Lane near Central. Hamburger steak and big slab cut ranch fries.

Big Boy used to be everywhere it seemed. Vanished from me in an instant. 

There was a place called Olympic Pizza on Greenville at Walnut Hill. I miss the lunch buffet slam.

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2 hours ago, PilotsError said:

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The San Antonio location is still there, I think. 

Another campus area restaurant we used to go to for a late night drunken CFS was the Lazy Daisy. 

Unless I missed it, no one has mentioned Mad Dog and Beans. The name Mad Dog was later co-opted and corrupted. Thanks, Mack. 

Edited by ImissWallyPryor
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On August 16, 2018 at 4:36 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Axed myself "the fuck is weck?" Googled it.

Buffalo Vild Vings und Veck.

Short for Kimmelweck, it's basically a kaiser roll topped with sea salt and caraway seeds. Beef on Weck was a roast beef sandwich but I always thought it made a great bun for a burger. And they used to make great burgers at bw-3. 

What really sucks is that I found a local market that made Weck rolls in their bakery but they closed down last year. Their rolls were really good. Not as good as the ones at bw-3 but really good and more photogenic. It's Imgur so you'll have to click the link. 

https://imgur.com/a/2DEjE

I don't know if that's going to show up as a clickable link or not. (Have they not fixed their Imgur conflict yet?) Anyway, I need to find another source for Weck rolls. I don't want to drive all the way down to German Village but I will if I have to. 

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9 hours ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

My first job was at the GW Jr’s on Southcross Blvd near Goliad Rd in SA. Pretty tasty bacon cheeseburgers and footlong chili dogs, if I say so myself. They were owned by Church’s Fried Chicken and went away after about 5 years when CFC declared bankruptcy circa 1980. 

Worked at the Church's on Wm. Cannon and there was a GWs next door, IIRC, they set a record for being built although it was a modular building.  We always swapped out goodies between us.  

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