DanH

Thank you! I'm a total newbie and it didn't even occur to me that I might be able to limit a search to a single thread. And thanks for the link to the DS&E forum! I'll check it out.

OMG I think that's it! Cafe Express! And it makes sense that the Cafe Annie owner was involved; the food was really good. Thank you! Huge relief! Dan

No, I remember the Hobbit Hole as being further north, a cozy place mostly of wood (maybe a converted house?). The place I'm thinking about was directly south of Jamail's on Kirby toward Southwest Freeway (essentially right next door), was large and bright and airy, lots of glass, and it was definitely not vegetarian. You ordered and picked up your food at the counter and they gave you a quart-sized plastic tumbler for your drink. I think the drinks station was to the left of the order/pickup counter, and they had blackcurrant iced tea, which I had never had before and thought was delicious. Maybe the name of the place was something like Cafe Jardin? I'm wracking my brain and still can't come up with it for sure! They had really good soups, and my favorite sandwiches of theirs were their chicken salad and BLT's.

I *do* remember! I went in there with my college girlfriend, who happened to be, um, prodigiously endowed, and they gave her a free Udder Delight t-shirt and *begged* her to wear it in public. She never was brave enough to do so; she already got enough unwanted attention. Dan

Yes! And I remember the rumbling! But I don't remember the name, dangit! Dan

Yes!! Zorba's on Yoakum! That was definitely it! *Thank* you!! More memories that came to me: Red Pepper Chinese restaurant, in a strip center on Richmond @ Chimney Rock, if memory serves. They had wonderful, fresh food. My favorite was their cashew shrimp & chicken. Cafe Annie, the first really high-end restaurant I ever went to. I went for lunch and got a simple BLT with fries, but the chef made his own ketchup! I had never heard of such a thing! And it was *wonderful*! I saw the chef standing in the kitchen door, looking at the diners and seeming to be worried about something. I had no idea what he could have been worried about; the food was spectacular. I liked it better than Tony's. T.J. Cinnamon's, my first cinnamon roll shop, next door to the River Oaks Theater. I'm convinced that the number of cinnamon rolls I ate there pushed me over the edge into diabetes! Was there an Asian restaurant, maybe Vietnamese or Chinese, in or near the Rice Village, maybe called The Green Door? I remember they served deep-fried whole fish, arranged in a curve standing up on the plate, head, fins, tail and everything, and that seemed wonderfully exotic to me. I remember back in the day, Kemah was 3 or 4 great seafood restaurants surrounding an oyster shell parking lot. I went back there this past March and was stunned at all the development. It was hard to find The Flying Dutchman amidst all the clutter, but it was still there. Roznofsky's hamburgers, with the disgusting mass of grease and dirt that collected on the fan over the grill, but, man, the burgers were to die for. Speaking of hamburgers, some guy opened a hamburger restaurant in the garage of his house, somewhere off Chimney Rock south of 59. Those burgers were great, too! A repertory comedy troupe that performed in a theater on Kirby north of 59 picked up on that for their show, The Two-Bit Opera. The premise was to explain Houston to a Yankee. One guy said to the Yankee, "There's no zoning in Houston! I have a restaurant in may garage!" The incredulous Yankee said, "Wow! That's amazing! How is it doing?" The Houstonian said, "I have no idea! It isn't mine! I couldn't stop the guy! No zoning!" The Pappas family had an Italian restaurant for a while, called Pappa Mia's, out west past 610 off of I-10 somewhere. I have no idea why it didn't survive; it was as well done as all the Pappas properties. There was some restaurant not too far from Rice, on the north side of 59 somewhere (Richmond? Alabama? Westheimer? Memorial?) which duplicated Babette's Feast while that movie was in theaters. I couldn't afford to go, but I thought it was a wonderful idea. Village Inn Pizza Parlor! I used to love to go there when Boyce & Kramer were performing. They were *great* and I have idea why they never had any more national success than they had. For their show around one Halloween they found a guy who must have been nearly 7 feet tall and was so skinny he had to run around in the shower to get wet. They called him The Stick! They put him in a full-body skeleton costume and had him dance around while they played Monster Mash. Hysterical! They called out pizza numbers between songs; you had to go pick up your pizza at the kitchen window when your number was called. The Velvet Turtle! Wonderful place to take a date in my 30s. Brandy Alexanders for dessert! Victoria Station behind the Galleria! Great prime rib in old refurbished railroad box cars. A steakhouse called something like The Denver(?) Mining Company somewhere on the southwest side just outside The Loop. First time I saw alcoholic drinks in a Slurpee machine. The wonderful lunch buffet at Bombay Palace on Westheimer(?) just inside The Loop. I loved The Bounty seafood buffet, too. I got my money's worth on shrimp & crab alone. There was a wonderful soup/salad/sandwich place next to Jamail's on Kirby that I loved to go to. Can't remember the name to save my soul. They had blackcurrant tea; I'd never had it before and loved it. OMG. What memories. I can just feel the cobwebs in my brain as I try to remember more. Dan

OMG! 45 pages and counting on this topic! Please forgive my repetitions; I need to not get fired from spending all my time reading everything that has gone before. I lived in Houston 1967-92, so these are from that era, and I'm going to take the liberty of expanding the geographic area for some notable memories. Since I haven't lived there in so long, some of these may still exist. San Jacinto Inn, near the Battleship Texas, for all-you-can-eat shrimp, crab and sherbet (everything else was forgettable), in a cavernous building with linen tablecloths and impossibly efficient waiters, who would write cryptic hieroglyphs on the tablecloths. I never figured out what they meant. Athens Bar & Grill, especially when a Greek ship was in port and all the sailors came there. Belly dancing and breaking plates! Opa! Shanghai Red's, perched above the Turning Basin. Mediocre food, but spectacular views through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Cottonwood Inn, in LaGrange, just across 71 from the county airport. I used to rent a Cessna and fly there from Hobby for dinner, and *always* planned my drives to Austin to include a stop there for a great steak dinner. I remember the amateurish mural of the patriarch roping a sheep(?). Both the airport and the Inn are long gone. Los Troncos on Westheimer. Paella in a tree! The ideal place for a "snow date" (to snow = to impress a girl). Jamie's Hamburgers on South Main. Linen tablecloths and big copper chargers that they took away before serving your "gourmet" hamburger. The Ninfa's somewhere around Kirby & Richmond, where I developed my lifelong addiction to Tex-Mex. Tacos al carbon, queso a la parilla, sopapillas, and even chile con queso dip. All completely unheard of here in Silicon Valley. All my friends liked Spanish Village, but I much preferred Ninfa's. There was a Der Wienerschnitzel, also near Kirby and Richmond, and the woman who owned it would violate her franchise agreement to make spectacular hamburgers for us. If you wanted one, you had to be college age (we were all Rice students) and order a "Joe" (the name of her son). If some other customer saw it and wanted one without knowing the secret word, she would just tell them, "Sorry; can't do it. I just make these for my son and his friends." I wish I could remember the name of the place in the Montrose that was run by a Greek family and served the best friend shrimp I've ever eaten, to this day. Brenner's steakhouse out off I-10, with that lovely manicured back yard. I'm remembering a water wheel? The Brownstone, with their wildly mixed patterns of china and utensils, no two the same. Mile High Pie! My most memorable meal there was when they were playing Barbra Streisand's "Classical Barbra" album, which I was hearing for the first time, and loved. So that must have been 1976. James Original Coney Island, who made their own buns with slits that left the ends closed so the chili wouldn't run out. Nick's Fish Market, in the basement of some bank downtown; the best seafood meal I've ever had, and the best lounge piano player, Ariel, who was Russian, I believe. I heard they had to close when Exxon management sent a memo around that they would no longer reimburse business meals at Nick's, since it was so expensive. I spent the summer of 1969 learning, at the Steak & Ale on OST near the Astrodome, that I am, hands down, the world's *worst* waiter. Menus printed on meat cleavers! Ever since that disastrous summer, I have always tipped at least 20%, since I have a clue what it takes to give even minimally competent service. Antone's poor boys, of course. Youngblood's fried chicken! KFC put all those old great chicken restaurants out of business, and we're the poorer for it. So many more! But I have a doctor's appointment I have to get to. Thanks for the memories! Dan