Evanston Lunch, 5/15, Oldest restaurant (Phoenix Inn)

I've been agonizing over where to plan the next Evanston Lunch. I thought about Bombay Kabab, and a drive-by yesterday showed hand-written signs in the window saying "help wanted," but there's no guarantee when they'll open; I couldn't find a phone number.

I thought about Ninefish, which gets very good reviews, but the group has done a lot of sushi lately.

I thought about the city's newest deli, which gets comments here:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... b0f6324e86

And then another idea occurred to me. Maybe we should go to the oldest continuously-operating restaurant in Evanston. I've done a little research on the topic, and I'll buy the lunch of the first person joining us to identify what that restaurant is.

I can say for a fact you don't go there for the great food. But I think the sense of Evanston history could make it an interesting venue.

Tuesday, 5/15, 12:30 p.m.

If no one has a guess in a day or two, I'll reveal the location.

Hmmm. Do you mean continously operating in the same location, or under the same name, or both? I know Dave's Italian Kitchen claims to be the oldest operating restaurant in Downtown Evanston (I would have thought the Phoenix Inn was older), but it moved from its original location. It was opened in 1972, when Evanston first allowed the sale of liquor in restaurants. That means that if your restaurant is older, it must be outside of downtown (besides, I don't think Dave's is open for lunch). My first guess would be the Sher-Main Grill, since they have stains in that place that are older than I am. However, your statement that "I can say for a fact you don't go there for the food", makes me think it is a primarily non-food venue. Could it be the Dairy Queen? Wait, I guess that is food (in a way). Maybe it is some institutional place. Kendall college moved. Does the YMCA have a dining room? Oh well, I give up (for now).

Dave,

Continuously operating under the same name. A business that identifies itself as a "restaurant." You're vaguely on the right track, but check your suppositions.

HI,

Tuesdays I am in the area anyway. Wednesday is a special trip. If Tuesday works for other people, great. Otherwise I will look forward to the report.

Regards,

Nr706,

I hate to tell you, but Mustard's Last Stand does not actually date back to the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.

Hope this doesn't ruin your plans.

Mike G

Switching to Tuesday ...

Mike G wrote:Nr706,

I hate to tell you, but Mustard's Last Stand does not actually date back to the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.

Hope this doesn't ruin your plans.

Mike G

You mean they actually had mustard prior to 1876? Damn.

(Wait a minute - I think I have a jar of the stuff in my pantry older than that ...)

Boy, all the places I used to eat are gone -- Yesterday's, the Huddle, B&G Snacktime, Hoos Drugs, Peacocks. Fanny's lives on only in her salad dressing and meat sauce, I believe. The only place I can think of that actually even dates back to my college years is Blind Faith.

Cynthia wrote:Boy, all the places I used to eat are gone -- Yesterday's, the Huddle, B&G Snacktime, Hoos Drugs, Peacocks. Fanny's lives on only in her salad dressing and meat sauce, I believe. The only place I can think of that actually even dates back to my college years is Blind Faith.

Don't forget Polly's and the Toddle House.

The Orrington hotel has always had a restaurant on the ground floor, but I think it's changed names over the years.

I've heard a few times that it's Bill's on Asbury/Western.

Judging by the architecture, it's surely been there since at least the 40s, so I'd say that's probably a very good guess.

The place dates back to the 1920s.

I'm out of town that day, but I'll vote for the Sher-Main.
>>Brent

nope

Tom

You should repost this in the Guess the Restaurant section.

Was the Toddle House a regional/local chain? I know there was one in Winnetka.

From what I and the research staff at the Evanston Public Library have been able to determine, this has been an independent restaurant operating under the same name since the 1920's (the researchers guessed that there's always been older dining places in the Orrington Hotel, but they've gone by different names over the years.)

Is it the Sherman Restaurant?

Well I know it's not the Sherman since it's now a Cosi -- and it was only 30-some years old. Bill's was built in '49 according to their logo. Tom, I think it's time for another hint. Is it visible in this photo of Fountain Square from 1923?
>>Brent

I recuse myself from the contest, since Tom accidentally let it slip...but I'll be there, hopefully in the right place...

brotine wrote:Well I know it's not the Sherman since it's now a Cosi -- and it was only 30-some years old.

Shows how much the Sherman was on my radar. No great loss. I knew it dated back to around 1972, but I thought since it had such a generic name, there may have been a previous incarnation. Along the same lines, I might guess the Central Restaurant or the Evanston Grill, but somehow I suspect those are wrong also.

Hard to rell from Brent's photo. However, it was mentioned briefly upthread, and incorrectly dismissed.

nr706 wrote:Hard to rell from Brent's photo. However, it was mentioned briefly upthread, and incorrectly dismissed.

The Phoenix Inn?

Ding Ding Ding!

The Phoenix Inn claims to date to 1924, we could only verify it back to 1929, but there's no reason not to believe their 1924 claim.

It's a fairly generic menu, and not the best Chinese in Evanston, but it's managed to stay in business 83 years, and there's a $4.85 lunch special, so I thought it might be interesting nonetheless.

Tuesday, 5/15, 12:30 p.m.

Phoenix Inn
608 Davis Street
Evanston, IL

nr706 wrote:The Phoenix Inn claims to date to 1924, we could only verify it back to 1929, but there's no reason not to believe their 1924 claim.

Wow, unbelievable. I guess that says something about the longevity of mediocrity. Aim low, son. You'll live longer.

I knew the place is old, that is why I was suspicious about the Dave's Italian claim. I had no idea it had been operating under the same name for all that time. Was it always a Chinese-American "chop suey" restaurant? Now I am almost intrigued. Besides, how could I miss LTH at the Phoenix Inn? The place is like the anti-LTH. Everything comes in a salty-sweet brown sauce (although I seem to remember a rather disturbing Egg Foo Young photo).

I have to admit that when I worked 1/2 block from the Phoenix Inn, I would occasionally have lunch there, even though the far superior Szechwan Palace was only a block further. I would go there for the funky-old school seediness but definitely "not for the great food". My favorite was the Egg Foo Young lunch special (which I think cost $2.95 back then).

HI,

The Chinese American Museum is trying to ID Chinese restaurants of this vintage with the same family owning them. Do you know the ownership lineage?

Regards,

That's really interesting -- I'd also really like to know if they were serving "Chinese" food in the 1920s, and if it had a Chinese owner. Chinese restaurants were already fairly common in New York and in San Francisco in the 1920s, but then they were confined to the Chinatowns of those cities, and in the case of New York's Chinese restaurants, drew a large Jewish clientele. That's hard to believe in 1920s Evanston. How does it show up in the city directory? Sounds like you've done your research, so I suspect you know. I'd like to try and join this lunch, but may have a meeting that conflicts -- will let you know in a few days.

Interesting questions we can ask next week. I don't know what the place was like in the 1920s, but I'm guessing it had a typical chop suey menu.

from http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodasian.html

Chinese food became popular with young cosmopolitans in the 1920s because it was considered exotic.

and

By the 1920s, Chinese restaurants dotted the American landscape, and one was as likely to find a chop suey' parlor in Kansas City as in New York or San Francisco, even though the typical menu in such places bore small resemblance to the foods the Chinese themselves ate.

Chinese restaurants were already fairly common in New York and in San Francisco in the 1920s, but then they were confined to the Chinatowns of those cities, and in the case of New York's Chinese restaurants, drew a large Jewish clientele. That's hard to believe in 1920s Evanston.

It never gives precise dates, but 1950's Chicago Confidential by Mortimer and Lait has an extensive discussion of the earliest Chinese settlements in the Loop consisting of "importers, merchants and wholesale grocers who supplied the chop suey restaurants in other parts of the city and the Middle West." The modern Wentworth Chinatown sits on what was part of the old Levee, the vice district, which was cleaned up circa 1912, so that sure seems to imply that there were Chinese restaurants being served by a Chinatown which moved shortly thereafter to the Wentworth area.

ADDENDUM: Encyclopedia of Chicago agrees with this general timeline: The first Chinatown was established in the 1880s near Clark and Van Buren, and, though it was not a major residential enclave, it was home to several Chinese family associations, Tong organizations, groceries, and a Chinese Baptist Mission. Rising rents and internal factionalism led Chinese leaders to expand to a second Chinatown, located near Wentworth and 22nd Street (Cermak Road), around 1910, and in the next several decades the community continued to expand its boundaries and attract businesses and residents.

Incidentally, I believe Won Kow in Chinatown is the last surviving restaurant mentioned in Dining in Chicago (1933). As the cover shows, Chinatown was quite well established by then.

Never would have guessed it. Tom, you have a great bar bet going.
>> Brent

Mike G wrote:

Chinese restaurants were already fairly common in New York and in San Francisco in the 1920s, but then they were confined to the Chinatowns of those cities, and in the case of New York's Chinese restaurants, drew a large Jewish clientele. That's hard to believe in 1920s Evanston.

It never gives precise dates, but 1950's Chicago Confidential by Mortimer and Lait has an extensive discussion of the earliest Chinese settlements in the Loop consisting of "importers, merchants and wholesale grocers who supplied the chop suey restaurants in other parts of the city and the Middle West." The modern Wentworth Chinatown sits on what was part of the old Levee, the vice district, which was cleaned up circa 1912, so that sure seems to imply that there were Chinese restaurants being served by a Chinatown which moved shortly thereafter to the Wentworth area.

ADDENDUM: Encyclopedia of Chicago agrees with this general timeline: The first Chinatown was established in the 1880s near Clark and Van Buren, and, though it was not a major residential enclave, it was home to several Chinese family associations, Tong organizations, groceries, and a Chinese Baptist Mission. Rising rents and internal factionalism led Chinese leaders to expand to a second Chinatown, located near Wentworth and 22nd Street (Cermak Road), around 1910, and in the next several decades the community continued to expand its boundaries and attract businesses and residents.

Though not large by NY or SF standards the number of Chinese restaurants in Chicago exploded in the very late 19th/very early 20th centuries. According to a January 1902 article in the Chicago Daily Tribune, ". . .now there are twenty times more Chinese restaurants in Chicago than when Moy began [somewhat after the Exposition]. . ." Many of these places were around Clark & Van Buren but they weren't confined to that neighborhood. Even in the very earliest years of the 20th century there were plenty in the Vice District, a bit east of the current Chinatown: "There is a renaissance in chop suey in Twenty-second street, between Wabash avenue and Clark street."

One well-known establishment, King Yen Lo at Clark & Van Buren, opened on the upper floor of Hinky Dink Kenna's saloon before 1910. Incidentally in Dining in Chicago, Drury mentions Foo Chow Chinese Restaurant as the "sole survivor of Chicago's old 'Chinatown' in South Clark Street." He talks of their "chop suey and chow mein, those popular American dishes." Of course this enclave held on well beyond the 1930s, with Shanghai Restaurant being one of the last to close (in the 1980s?).

There was also strip of more upscale Chinese restaurants in the north Loop in the early 20th century. Among the earliest was King Joy Lo which opened on Randolph in 1906 but it definitely wasn't the first on that street. I believe these places were patronized mainly by non-Chinese theater-goers.

Mike G wrote:Incidentally, I believe Won Kow in Chinatown is the last surviving restaurant mentioned in Dining in Chicago (1933). As the cover shows, Chinatown was quite well established by then.

Won Kow is the oldest surviving Chinese restaurant in Chinatown (1927) but a couple older non-Chinese places are mentioned by Drury: Berghoff and Phil Smidt's. You can argue the Berghoff no longer exists but I'd say since the restaurant is still owned by a Berghoff and is at its old address it qualifies. I think they continue to serve one of the dishes mentioned by Drury (thueringer). As for Phil Smidt's, back in the days when Phillip ran it they just called it Smidt's. Drury mentions perch but not frog legs