sabasushi

To anyone who has lunched at Grand Lux in the Galleria area, I have a couple of questions. How well-lit is the resturant at lunchtime, and do you remember what is the price range of the lunch menu (if they have one)? I've looked at the website, but the online menu doesn't show any prices. Thanks in advance.

Yep. I think Cardet's became the Latina Cafe when it changed ownership - at some point it was sold it to an Asian family who pretty much kept the menu (and some of the cooks) the same as it had been previously. I haven't been there in ages, but it used to be a favorite haunt - a friend lived within walking distance of it for several years. I can't remember when the name change happened, but I believe it was sometime in the late 80s or early 90s.

Sorry for replying toa  rather old message, but I've been meaning to ask this. Also at 1972 Fairview, next door to what is now the restaurant Roost, is an apartment building. I noticed the entrance to that building is on a diagonal corner, with a pair of French doors cut into it. Since you usually don't see that kind of entrance in residential buildings, I wondered if it used to be a business, like a grocery store or something like that. Anyone know? All I could find out is that the building was built in 1930's or 1940's.

Speaking of old supermarkets....what did the building at Kirby and Alabama that currently houses Bed, Bath and Beyond use to be? The building definitely looked very "supermarket-y" :-)

Agreed. What is the sense in saying it is illegal to use a mobile in a school zone, but it is OK anywhere else?

Also, I doubt a driver who is busy gabbing away on his phone would notice that he's in a school zone, anyhow.

I kind of hate these "illegal in a school zone" things -- it's like a lawmaker doesn't have the balls to make an outright ban, but thinks he might get it passed if children are involved.

Hmm....I"m surprised anyone haven't mentioned the tunnels with all these restaurants (mostly fast food last time I visited) down there. It seems there are so many that you could eat at a different one everyday in a month and not run out of options. :-)

Don't have an address, but it was at Hutchins and McGowen.

Thanks! For grins, I looked at a satelite map of that area, but don't see anything that would have housed an ice rink, so I guess it's already gone.

Hiya, folks...I know I'm coming into this thread really late, but does anyone know where the ice rink used to be? All I could find out was that it was on Hutchins Street but no street number. And I presume the building is no longer there? When did it close down? Thanks...

Cool house!

However I have to say I got a chuckle out of the first 2 pictures in the gallery -- the way the chair was centered in the shot made me think "throne room". :-)

Now that I've seen the interior pictures of that place on Facebook, I"ll say one thing for sure...Bill List had lousy taste in interior design. :-) It was just like a standard 60's70's middle-class suburban house, just with many more rooms and an indoor swimming pool. Check out that living room with gold shag rug, low ceiling and rock wall. And these staircases with ironwork banisters that I presume were intended to make the house look fancy but did the opposite -- they just looked tacky. (As I recall, fancy ironwork bainsters were already considered passe by late 70's when I understand that place was built.) To sum it up....Mafia meets Brady Bunch.

Hmm... so this house isn't lacking for interested buyers, but nobody can swing financing for it. Are people eveyrhwere just having a hard time getting financing for houses (given the fact that we're in a recession), or is there something about this house (foreclouse, too much fixing up required, whatever) that is scaring banks off?

[quote name='sevfiv' date='Thursday, March 12th, 2009 @ 12:59pm' post='311804'

My employer does, however pay for a large percentage of my monthly premiums..

Just wait, your percentage will increase over time. Mine has since the late 90's. All of ours have.

If you think your employer-subsidiarized premiums are high, try self-insurance -- trust me, it ain't cheap. And you'de be amazed at all sorts of reasons that insurance companies would give for not insuring you, no matter how healthy you are....like deafness. (Yes, I know this is supposed to be illegal, but we're talking about health insurance companies here....modern-day mafias.)

I'm kinda of undecided about universal health care. For one thing, I'm skeptic that the US government would run such a program efficiently. After all, people aren't exactly raving about Medicare. (When my father was alive, he carried a private insurance in addition to Medicare because he thought Medicare wasn't good enough.) But on the other hand, our healthcare system, as it is now, is pretty screwed up -- for one thing, Americans are bascially using heatlh insurance as poor man's socialized medicine. I mean, 30 years ago or more, health insurance was something you got for major emergencies, but nowdays, people expect health insurance to pay for *everything*, such as birth control.

Hiya...did someone mention "One's a Meal" here? I was just reading my bank statement that came out today, and I saw an entry for a "One's a Meal" restaurant (!) from last month. Since I didn't remember eating at a resturant of that name, I checked in my checkbook, and guess what? It's the Biba's restaurant, the 24-hour Greek place on West Gray street. Not sure if that is the same restaurant someone was talking about, but the coincidence is certainly interesting.

Does anyone know what this was? It looks like the world's biggest golf tee to me.

No idea exactly what it is, but since it looked like it might be related to religion, I poked around and found this

place named Chong Hua Sheng Mu Holy Palace‎ at 3695 Overture Dr. I don't know if that's the right one, since Google Maps shows it a bit more to the north on Overture Dr., but I"d say that's the most likely match, due to the "palace-y" apperance of the front facade.

I think it was realigned when Montrose was built as a suburb.

Ah, okay.....that makes sense. I didn't realize that the area to the west of the "diagonal" area might be older than the "diagonal" area. I was kinda assuming that Montrose was built, progressing in a westernly direction (not sure if that sentence makes sense, but you know what I mean. :-) )

Also, here is the Westheimer-Hathaway-Elgin alignment (which was a little disjointed) c. 1925:

This brings up a question I've been meaning to ask for a while. If you look at what is now Westheimer on the map above, you'll see that it runs west and all of a sudden, it runs diagonally, to southwest. It goes like that for several blocks and then turns west again And it's not just Westheimer -- streets north of Westheimer, going up to just near Gray Street -- also run diagonally. I've always wonder why that area is like that. I don't see any obvious reasons (like bayous, et cetera) that might dictate that kind of layout. Does anyone know?

I worked there for a couple of years at Palais Royal in the 70's. Got to see and experience the upper part of the mall. All the stores warehouses were on the second floor. Trucks (from bob-tails to 18-wheelers) would drive up a ramp on the south side of the mall. It was a good layout because it was easily accessible and out of the publics view. I believe it was the only mall in Houston with that feature. That's one reason they never completely covered the mall. They didn't believe it could handle the additional weight.

Hiya, being a relative newcomer to Houston, I never visited Meyerland until last year. I noticed that JC Penney's building seems old, compared to most of the buildings in that center. Was it part of the old mall back then? Also, I noticed that the shipping bays at one side of the building are at a weird level -- higher than street level. Are these what you talked about above?

I was at the Hobby airport several days ago, and when I stopped at the Wendy's fast food place in the central concourse there, I saw a framed large black and white photo of what looks like an old Wendy's restaurant hanging there. (It is on the side wall to your right when you face the counter for ordering.) It looks like it was taken in the 70's, judging from the cars in the photo.

What got my interest about this photo was that the restaurant wasn't your standard stand-alone restaurant, but was at the end of some old strip mall that looked as if it was built in 30's, 40's or 50's. The restaurant's roofline had a round corner, which would have been Art Deco-ish, except that there were a series of panels lined along the roofline, the front and the side. Also, the sign from the front roofline was vertical -- I can't remember if it was a vertical panel like on old A&P grocery stores or just a vertically hanging sign like old movie theaters. (Sorry, this is a bit hard to describe, since I didn't take any picture of that photo, and that photo is kinda hard to get to -- you'd need a Southwestern ticket to get in and see the picture. :-) )

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this photo also, and if so, do you know the location of the restaurant? I'm presuming it was some old Houston location of a Wendy's, since it doesn't seem to make sense to have an old photo of Wendy's in a different town.

You might want to check out Mi Luna, a tapas place in Rice Village -- it has many vegetable dishes (along with a few cheese dishes if you eat cheese). Their eggplant dish -- I can't remember the Spanish name, but it's cooked in olvie oil with garlic -- is to die for!