Thursday, November 29, 2018

Searching for Richard Woodruff



Found him!

These increasingly wintry days of late fall serve as an annual reminder to me of one autumn during my childhood in which my father’s Chevy Cavalier developed a coolant leak originating from the heater core, which due to its difficult to access location, is a labor-intensive and costly part to replace. My father, being frugal and not terribly technically inclined, balked at the quote he got from the mechanic to repair the leak, and upon hearing the mechanic reply that he could simply bypass the leaking heater core with a nice cheap length of rubber hose, jumped at the opportunity to save a few hundred dollars, perhaps not fully understanding that the hack would leave him without a heater in his car.

My younger brother’s fifth birthday came a few weeks later in early December. At the time, he was obsessed with trains, and my mother made arrangements for my brother and a few of his friends to take a short ride on a train pulled by a vintage steam locomotive. The plan was that my mother would haul the preschoolers in her toasty warm Ford Taurus wagon, to the rail yard where the train departed, while my father and I would show up early in the aforementioned heatless Chevy and purchase tickets for the group.

We left the house early that morning, which just happened to be the first bitterly cold day of the season with temperatures in the single digits (Fahrenheit), apocalyptically cold by Central Kentucky standards. My father and I got in the car and shivered our way to what turned out to be a deserted railyard outside of Versailles, Kentucky (pronounced by locals as Vur-sails). We sat and waited for someone to show up. I was ten years old, and had been enjoying this chilly adventure with my father, until we had been sitting in the car waiting for twenty minutes or so, and noticed how cold I was becoming, even in my puffy blue winter coat and acid washed Bugle Boy Jeans. I regretted not wearing more layers, and my father was pretty clearly regretting not having his car fixed properly. It was a solid hour of sitting in the frigid car before someone showed up to sell us tickets, and good while longer before my mother showed up with my brother and his friends to board the train.

To this day, I remember that day being the coldest I have ever felt, and I say that having lived in Michigan and Montana for the past ten years. Following the ordeal of enduring the frozen car, my father rewarded my suffering with breakfast at the nearby Shoney’s restaurant, where we lingered, grazing from the weekend breakfast buffet until feeling returned to our extremities so we could brave the frosty drive home. I think it was that day that sparked my lifelong sense that my younger brother received preferential treatment from my parents. After all, he never had to suffer near-hypothermia in an economy sedan to ensure I had a happy birthday, but the ordeal also gave me a memorable experience with my dad, and sparked my love of Shoney’s.

From then on, every time our family went out to dinner for my birthday or as the result of me bringing home an acceptable report card, I’d ask to eat at Shoney’s, where I’d get their spaghetti and meatballs, a side of baby back ribs, or the seafood buffet if we happened to be there on a Friday. My parents were Shoney’s fans too. We’d stop there to eat on several family vacations through the south, and I even remember staying at a Shoney’s Inn motel once back when some Shoney’s restaurant locations had Shoney’s-branded motels nearby, not unlike the Howard Johnson’s locations that sprang up in the sixties. Sadly, my relationship with Shoney’s wasn’t destined to last. Sometime around my late middle school/early high school years, all the Shoney’s locations in and around Lexington closed suddenly.

It’s at this point where readers not in the know are beginning to wonder why I’m talking about Shoney’s during Big Boy month. It may come as a surprise to some of you that Shoney’s founder Alex “Shoney” Schoenbaum was a Big Boy franchisee, and that until 1976, Shoney’s was known as Shoney’s Big Boy. The separation from the Big Boy system came as the result of Big Boy looking to set itself apart from other Big Boy Restaurants, and expand beyond their Big Boy territory which included several southern states.

Eat’n Park, another former Big Boy franchisee with locations mainly in and around Pittsburgh has a similar story. Eat’n Park founders Larry Hatch and Bill Peters became Big Boy franchisees when Bob Wian was looking to expand his empire’s territory. Wian offered many early franchisees a 25 year agreement with a $1 per year franchise fee as a means of growing his brand quickly. Like many early Big Boy chains, Eat'n Park started in a drive-in format before transitioning to indoor table service, hence the name Eat'n Park. When Eat’n Park’s 25 year agreement expired in 1974, management opted to leave the Big Boy system and operate independently.

As a result, both Eat ‘n Park and Shoney’s expanded outside their respective territories, and now have locations within 65 miles of each other in Eastern Ohio. I’d characterize both brands as reasonably healthy regional chains, but given that they’re both pieces that have literally broken off from the then-larger Big Boy chain I’m considering them appropriate to write about here. My goal was to dine at both Eat’n Park and Shoney’s to see if I could spot any Big Boy influence more than four decades after each chain had renounced its Big Boy affiliation.

 There I was driving around, the east side of Ohio,
I asked directions from some no-name chump, he looked kind of like a rhino.
He told me that his favorite warrior princess was Xena
I stomped on his feet, and asked "Where should I eat?"
He yelled "Eat'n Park Medina!" ♬

Eat'n Park Medina.


My first stop was the Eat’n Park located in Medina, the funkiest, coldest town in Ohio. My experience with Eat’n Park is limited. Not since my great uncle Bluto Actionsdower’s funeral in Steubenville in 2008 had I dined at an Eat'n Park location. Come to think of it, that might be the only time I’ve been to an Eat’n Park. I showed up late on a Sunday afternoon for an early dinner, and stood around in the unusually spacious lobby, admiring the pies in the display case below the counter waiting to be seated. I was shown to a narrow booth near the salad bar. I was pleased to see that this salad bar appeared to be of higher quality than the ones I had encountered in the past at both Big Boy and Frisch’s Big Boy. It even sported a sign advising parents to accompany small children. To my left, on the half wall dividing the adjacent rows of booths, there was a vintage printed directory advertising Eat’n Park Big Boy with the Big Boy himself prominently displayed. Likewise, the menu featured an item known as a “Super Burger,” which looked familiar, incorporating the Bob’s/Elias Brothers three piece sesame seed bun and Frisch’s tartar sauce.

Note the Smiley cookie on the sign. 

I ordered up a Super Burger, fries, and the salad bar, and began to exercise my primal hunter/gatherer instincts as I piled a plate with salad fixins, another with coleslaw, cornbread, and slices of a sweet cinamony quickbread, which may or may not have contained pumpkin, plus a cup of the potato soup my waitress had recommended. Despite the odd hour and the mostly deserted dining room, it was all fresh and delicious.

Behold Eat'n Park's bounty!


My burger and fries arrived when I was halfway through the bounty I had collected from the salad bar. I was pleased to see that the burger was cooked properly and had patties larger than the standard Big Boy, but smaller than the Super Big Boy. It was also topped with a pickle, like the Super Big Boy I had at Azar’s. The taste was not dissimilar to an increasingly hard to find well-made Frisch’s Big Boy, with the welcome addition of sesame seeds. The fries, and salad bar coleslaw were unremarkable.

Expectation...

...is reasonably close to reality. 

I will! Thanks, cookie bag!


I finished the meal with some fresh fruit from the salad bar and a smiley cookie, both an inexpensive dessert item, and a mascot, introduced in the mid eighties, to fill the void left by the Big Boy mascot. The Smiley cookie is everywhere on Eat’n Park marketing and signage, so it felt wrong not to get one. I found it to be a perfectly acceptable iced sugar cookie.

The cookie mascot is everywhere, including this rare bathroom-based food advertisement. 

While I wasn't officially eating at a Big Boy, I left Eat'n Park feeling like I'd had an especially good Big Boy meal, and gotten a decent value for my money. My bill was a couple dollars less than at Frisch's and at the Big Boy in Michigan, and I feel like I had gotten more food that was of a higher quality. The restaurant felt clean and reasonably modern, and the staff was professional and courteous. My friend, Mike, who runs Houston Historic Retail, recently asked me if Big Boy would be better had Eat'n Park and Shoney's not left the brand. My reply to him was that Big Boy as a whole wouldn't be any better, and that Eat'n Park and Shoney's would probably be worse. Eat'n Park in particular really seems to have taken the basic Big Boy concept and tweaked it to appeal to modern clinentele in a manner that has eluded both Big Boy and Frisch's. Despite the lack of current Big Boy affiliation, my experience at Eat'n Park was my second favorite of Big Boy month, closely following Azar's.



My Shoney's experience on the other hand, was... unique. Having spent the night nearby, I stopped into the Dover, Ohio Shoney's for an early lunch around 10:30 the following morning. It happened to be the day after Veterans Day, and I was surprised to find the parking lot nearly full. It was between the breakfast and lunch rush on a Monday morning, so I was anticipating having the place (nearly) to myself. A sign on the door indicated that veterans could eat for free at this particular Shoney's all morning. The promotion certainly seemed to have drawn a crowd.

Classic, but weathered building. 


Everything about the building was a throwback to the Shoney's restaurants I grew up with. Other Shoney's locations I've encountered recently seem to have been recently renovated with updated facades and signage, but that was not the case here. The building was the same '70s era ranch style structure with a low gable on each side. Likewise, all the exterior signs featured the older puffy letter Shoney's logo. The interior looked to date from the early 90s, and I was instantly transported back to the day I thawed out at that Shoney's in Versailles. The color palette was decidedly pastel, and the faux skylight over the buffet was a distinctive feature I had nearly forgotten about, but the memories came rushing back when I saw it. Predictably, the interior of the place felt a little bit tired. The seats in the booth I where I had been seated weren't attached to the floor. One of the lights in the fake skylight flickered a little bit, and the stuffed Shoney bear toys atop the buffet looked as though they'd been there since the Clinton administration. The other diners didn't seem to care though.

The dream of the '90s is alive at Shoney's. Note the various iterations of Shoney Bear.

The Veterans Day crowd at this particular Shoney's skewed older. I'd guess the majority of them were Vietnam-era veterans, most of whom had opted to dine from the buffet, which seemed to contain an odd combination of breakfast foods and lunch/dinner sides and entrees, along with the typical salad bar fare. I was glad I was there for a burger and I didn't have to brave the buffet crowd. Still, the crowded atmosphere made it tough for me to get many pictures of the interior. The Big Boy influence was a little tougher to spot on the Shoney's burger menu than at Eat'n Park. I ordered up a Double Decker burger and fries, figuring I should at least eat a burger with two patties.


The steak knife is necessary to keep the upper layers from sliding off. 


The sandwich that arrived at my table was monstrous. It's two patties each looked to be half pounders, and there were copious amounts bacon and cheese tucked between them. There was no center bun, and no special sauce. There was little, if any Big Boy influence here. Regardless, I felt compelled to eat the whole thing. I had a three and a half hour drive home, and leftovers in a to-go box wouldn't keep that long on the passenger floorboard of my car. I choked the massive beefy, greasy thing down along with the fries, trying, in vain to draw any similarities between it and the Big Boy burgers I'd been eating the rest of the month. Just as the bun, fully saturated in beef and hog fat began to disintegrate in my hands, I spied the dessert menu, and saw that both strawberry pie and hot fudge cake were offered. Both are longtime dessert items at both surviving Big Boy chains. I had found the Big Boy influence. Overjoyed, I ordered a piece of the strawberry pie, only to be told that despite multiple advertisements for it displayed around the restaurant, the seasonally offered pie was out of season and not available. At that point, I asked for my bill. A light slice of strawberry pie was one thing, but I simply couldn't begin to think of eating a dense and rich hot fudge cake after unhinging my jaw to consume that ridiculous burger. Regardless, I was glad to see that the Big Boy influence at Shoney's extends past the breakfast buffet, and the Shoney Bear mascot, which looks suspiciously similar to the Big Boy in a bear suit. Upon returning home, and recovering from my food coma, a little research indicated that the Shoney's Double Decker was perhaps conceived to be the antithesis of the Big Boy hamburger.

The old Shoney's logo is still on display most prominently at this loction.


But the sexy new logo shows up on the menus. 

Around the time of the chain's separation from Big Boy, some unnamed Shoney's executive derided the Big Boy as "A Depression burger, (with) a lot of bread and no meat." They had a point. The base Big Boy is pretty skimpy by modern standards, but the Shoney's Double Decker is most definitely an over-correction that leans heavy on the meat. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd ask for a single patty burger with a side of tartar sauce or thousand island if I wanted to approximate the Big Boy experience at Shoney's, but maybe that would be cheating the arbitrary rules I made for myself on this expedition to various Big Boy and Big Boy-adjacent chains.

I was glad to have found artifacts of the Big Boy brand at both Eat'n Park and Shoney's. Going looking for the remnants of the Big Boy influence at both restaurants may have been my favorite part of Big Boy Month. This post also marks the conclusion of Big Boy month content, at least for this year. I hope you've enjoyed this series. I may try to make it an annual tradition. I'd like to visit one of the few remaining Bob's Big Boys, and perhaps a formerly Big Boy-affiliated JB's restaurant. Both brands exist only on the opposite side of the US from where I live, though. I have yet to board a plane in pursuit of a broken chain, but I may have to one of these days.


Monday, November 19, 2018

Hail Azar!



Hi guys. Thanks for sticking with me. I know it's been a rough Big Boy Month so far. My last couple of posts have come off sounding like angry Yelp reviews, and everyone knows the true meaning of Big Boy Month is to say nice things about Big Boy. We've all grown up with the stories about how if you maintain a positive attitude regarding Big Boy restaurants all November long, the Big Boy himself will sneak into your house while you sleep and fill your shoes with tartar sauce (or thousand island if you live in Michigan.) I've got to straighten up and fly right if I have any hope of waking up to my good Chuck Taylors brimming with regionally variable special sauce. Good thing I went to the last operating Azar's Big Boy a few weeks back, and had a perfectly acceptable lunch. Thinking back on it really makes me feel the Big Boy month spirit.

I really like the Looney Toons aesthetic this rug brings to the party. 

An old Azar's location built in the Googie style. Look it up. 

The Azar Brothers, David, Alex, and George opened their first restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1954. Their arrangement with the Big Boy brand was unusual, but not unheard of. Azar’s operated as one of at least two subfranchisees of Frisch’s Big Boy, rather than being a direct franchisee of Bob Wian's Big Boy system. As such, Azar's operated very similarly to Frisch’s, offering tartar sauce on their burgers and Buddie Boy sandwiches. There were once around 26 Azar’s Big Boy locations operating in the very noncontiguous territory comprised of Northern Indiana and Colorado. Today, there’s just one Azar’s left, still controlled by the founding family, open for business in Fort Wayne where they started. Longtime readers of this blog and people who know me in real life will know that I can't resist the siren song of the last operating location of an otherwise defunct restaurant chain. Azar's Big Boy is perhaps the Big Boy location that best exemplifies the kind of place I seek out.

Standard Marriott-era Big Boy building with unique Azar's signage. 


The last Azar's Big Boy still has unique menus. I found this exciting, and you should too. 

However, I didn’t have high hopes on my way to Fort Wayne. Since Azar’s was a Frisch’s subfranchisee, what I anticipated was a Frisch’s with a different sign, and my opinion of Frisch’s was not high. Still I was curious enough to make the three hour drive. I arrived midday on a Saturday and found Azar’s tucked away on a quiet corner on Fort Wayne’s south side. It was housed in a 1970s era building with recognizable Big Boy architecture of the era and a vintage Azar’s sign out front. I was surprised to find a decent amount of unique branding in the entryway. Old photos of old Azar’s locations lined the walls, and an Azar’s Big Boy rug decorated the floor. I was shown to a table in the solarium and was surprised to find I had been given a menu with unique Azar’s branding. It resembled an older Frisch’s menu, but the name "Frisch" was nowhere to be found.
The view from my table; I love a good solarium

My waitress was quick and attentive despite the dining room being mostly full of thanks in part to the weekend breakfast buffet. Fearing another Big Boy burger with dry overcooked eighth pound patties, I ordered a larger Super Big Boy, which has two quarter pound patties, plus an extra slice of cheese. I looked around while awaiting my order and found decor that was essentially identical to a modern Frisch’s. The condiments on the table were all branded with the Frisch’s logo. I imagine printing Azar’s sugar packets for one remaining location doesn’t make business sense, and Frisch’s corporate still has a say in the decor package, which felt perfectly pleasant, if a little generic. 

This Big Boy belongs at the end of movie credits after the key grips, because this Big Boy is the Best Boy. 
When my food arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find an extra pickle slice atop my burger, something I had never encountered at a Frisch's Big Boy. I have absolutely no proof that this is the case, but I suspect the extra pickle on top is something that Azar's had always done to set them apart from Frisch's. Even if it's a recent addition it's a nice little extra that makes what is already a unique Big Boy a little more unique. (Not even Cleo McDowell, real person and father in law of Prince Akeem of Zamunda, thought to put a pickle slice on top of his Big Mick burger.) The Super Big Boy was perfectly prepared, with patties that were cooked through, but not dry, and was topped with just the right amount of tartar sauce. It had the flavor of the Frisch's burgers I remember from high school. The fries were standard crinkle cuts, as they are at Frisch's, but were freshly cooked, and a little seasoned salt from the shaker on the table gave them a nice smoky flavor. The coleslaw was functionally identical to Frisch's coleslaw, which is to say it was pretty good. 

There can't be many of these Azar's signs left. 

When it came time to pay, the cashier had the decency to leave the register after we had concluded our transaction, thus enabling me to swipe a complimentary lollipop from the basket near the register. I assume they're mostly meant for kids, but I never pass up a free lollipop whether I'm at Big Boy or the bank.

(I had no such luck with the lollipop basket back at the Port Clinton, Ohio Frisch's. After the manager saw fit to mock the way I ate my pumpkin cheesecake, he lingered at the till, daring me to grab a free lollipop so that he could taunt me a second time. It's worse at the Michigan Big Boys. They don't even offer free lollipops.)

The depth of field in this picture symbolizes the deep history of the Big Boy brand, or something. 

I walked out the same foyer adorned with old photographs of old Azar's locations with my lime green complimentary confection and receipt in hand as I walked the perimeter of the building to take my final photos of the exterior as senior citizens dining inside pointed and gawked at me through their tableside windows. I didn't care. I had found a Frisch's worth eating at, and it wasn't really a Frisch's at all. It was an Azar's, the last of its kind. This is where I'll be stopping for my Big Boy fix from now on. I'll be back often. It's the perfect lunch stop if I'm on my way to Evansville for dinner at G.D. Ritzy's.



Sunday, November 11, 2018

Heartbreak on the Lake



Hi everybody. How’s your Big Boy month going so far? Mine’s been pretty good. I’ve mostly been hanging out, driving around, eating at Big Boy. I’m in Ohio today, so naturally, I ate at a Frisch’s Big Boy.

Frisch’s was the only Big Boy I knew for the first couple decades of my life. I grew up hearing my dad telling me about how he and his friends didn’t have cars during college and used to have to walk from their dorm to the local Frisch’s Big Boy for dinner when they felt like living it up, and eating food that didn't come from the university dining hall. I’m sure he was trying to use stories of his simple lifestyle and limited means in his college days to illustrate to me how I should appreciate the things I have, but I mostly just fixated on the part about Frisch’s and how they put tartar sauce on their burgers. That and the giant fiberglass Big Boy statues out front of the restaurants intrigued me from an early age. I was a weird kid. I remember eating at Frisch’s a handful of times during my early childhood and finding it generally favorable. Later, when I was in high school, a brand new Frisch’s opened up nearby, and my friends and I would often hang out there. I quickly became a fan of the aforementioned tartar sauce-topped Big Boys and the weekend breakfast buffet. I left Frisch’s behind when I moved to the land of the Big Boy chain formerly known as Elias Brothers, but I would occasionally stop in when I was travelling through Frisch’s territory, and usually found they offered pleasant experiences with good food at a reasonable price. 

In 2012, I moved to Montana and didn’t eat at Big Boy for four years. Upon my return, I visited a Frisch’s, I found something was very wrong. Prices had increased and food quality had decreased. Staff were less courteous. The once sparkling dining rooms seemed dingy. The shiny new Frisch’s that opened when I was in high school went out of business not long after my ten year class reunion. I tried visiting a few different Frisch’s locations, stretching from Toledo to Cincinnati to Columbus, and while some locations put too little tartar sauce on the burger and others put too much on, none of them could find the sweet spot, and I couldn’t get out the door for less than $15. Something had happened to my beloved Frisch’s while I was in the wild west. The beloved burger joint from my father’s stern lectures was no longer worth visiting.

Cincinnati restaurateur Dave Frisch was the original franchisee of Bob Wian’s Big Boy. Seeking to establish a national presence and prevent imitators from using the Big Boy name outside of the Southern California market, Wian offered Frisch the territory of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Florida for a franchise fee of one dollar per year. Frisch would make the Big Boy sandwich his own by ditching Wian’s red relish and adding tartar sauce and pickles. He also got rid of the sesame seeds on the signature three piece bun, not unlike the bun of the Big Mick created by Cleo McDowell, who by the way, is absolutely a real person and not a fictional character portrayed by that guy who played the dad on Good Times. In Frisch’s early days, even the Big Boy mascot took on its own look, often portrayed with red or blond hair and striped overalls rather than the dark hair and checkered overalls of his west coast counterpart. Frisch’s proved a valuable asset to Bob Wian’s growing empire, serving as an aspirational example and an influencer to other newly-minted Big Boy franchisees in the eastern U.S. Frisch’s weathered the various ownership changes of the Big Boy brand and enjoyed a high level of autonomy over the years. With the bankruptcy of Elias Brothers and their acquisition by Ligget Restaurant Enterprises in the year 2000, Frisch’s became a fully independent chain, losing the all but the Kentucky/Indiana/Ohio territory in the process.

Through all of the myriad changes, Dave Frisch or one of his descendants remained in charge of Frisch’s, at least until 2015 when Frisch’s was acquired by NRD Partners, a private equity firm based in Atlanta. I was in Montana from 2012 until 2016, and returned to find Frisch’s Big Boy was Frisch’s in name only. Still, an ownership change doesn’t necessarily mean a chain would fall into decline. I mean, ownership by private equity firms has worked out great for retail chains like Sears and Toys Я Us. Just kidding, both of those companies went bankrupt, and while Frisch’s doesn’t seem to be in imminent danger of a similar fate, the magic seems to be gone. These, days 96 of the 121 Frisch’s locations are corporate owned. A few have closed here and there, but there hasn’t been a major wave of closures yet. At this point though, it only seems like a matter of time given the noticeable drop in quality.

UFO of brick and stone

I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Frisch’s, but it’s Big Boy month, and in the spirit of the season, I planned a drive down to Port Clinton, Ohio to visit a Frisch’s location that struck me as unique when I viewed it on Google Maps. Constructed out of stone and irregularly laid brick, and sporting a prominent solarium, the Port Clinton Big Boy resembles a spaceship from a civilization made up entirely of inebriated bricklayers. Likely constructed in the 1970s, this style of Frisch’s building is increasingly rare as the chain is largely made up of later builds. The uniqueness of this location continues when you look behind the building, as the parking lot is bordered to the north by Lake Erie, placing the Port Clinton Frisch’s at the top of Ohio.

The condition of the sign is indicative of the condition of the chain as a whole. 
It's tough not to love hamburger wallpaper though. I would put this in my house. 

It was early afternoon on a Sunday when I stopped in for a late lunch, almost exactly a week after I had visited another Big Boy in Warren, Michigan. Unlike the packed Warren location, the Port Clinton Frisch’s was nearly deserted. I chalked this up to the restaurant being located in a tourist town with a population that waxed and waned seasonally. My visit in the middle of Big Boy Month was decidedly off-season in Port Clinton. I noticed that even the Super 8 Motel across the street had closed for the winter as I pulled into the lakefront parking lot. I walked in, and stood alone by the sign instructing me to please wait to be seated as the manager, wearing pants with an elastic waistband and an American flag necktie, and looking like hot sauce magnate and notorious Donkey Kong cheater Billy Mitchell’s less successful brother, made eye contact with me. He proceeded to chat with a regular as if I weren’t standing there eager to spend money. A full minute later, a waitress serving as hostess came to greet and seat me, showing me to a booth not on the restaurant’s north wall with a lake view, but along the east wall, where I had a view of the Burger King next door.

Flavor to table is like farm to table, but without the implication of quality ingredients.


Expectation...


I perused the menu and noticed a larger than life photo of a Big Boy on the first page. I knew that’s what I was having. I was beginning to consider getting the salad bar as well when I looked to my right and noticed an unattended young boy struggling with tongs to build himself a salad. He was far too short for the sneeze guard to be effective, and he was hacking up a proverbial, and perhaps literal lung, as if the stresses of second grade turned the little guy into a two pack a day smoker. Something about seeing a tubercular child retching directly into the romaine made me decide against the salad bar, and when my waitress came, I ordered my Big Boy with onion rings and coleslaw instead of unlimited leafy greens.

...Reality

While my experience at the Port Clinton Frisch’s was fair at best, my waitress was a real standout. She sensed I was ready to order food after I ordered my drink, and was prepared to take my food order. My glass of Diet Dew was never less than half full. She was quick to bring my order from the kitchen, which showed up hot, straight out of the fryer and off the grill. While the table service was impeccable, the food had some deficits. The onion rings were unusually light in color. I overheard another waitress telling a customer the reason for this was they had just changed the oil in the fryer. Okay. No big deal. At least they change the oil, and while the presentation wasn’t great, the onion rings tasted pretty good, sweet with a thin, crispy breading, as they are at every Frisch’s. The Big Boy was another matter entirely.

Perfectly decent slaw. 

Last week, at a former Elias Brothers Michigan Big Boy, I had mediocre service and a perfectly decent burger. Frisch’s in Port Clinton was the complete opposite experience. While my waitress was at the top of her game, the Big Boy burger I received had two tiny dry patties. While its imitator, the Big Mac, uses 1.6 ounce patties compared to the Frisch’s Big Boy’s pair of 2 ounce patties, the Big Mac somehow manages to taste beefier. Maybe the Big Mac has a little less bread, or uses leaner beef, but I suspect overcooking by Frisch’s is the main culprit. What little meat is there tastes like it’s been on the grill too long, prepared by either an inexperienced line cook or under the eye of a manager fearing an e coli outbreak caused by undercooked meat. Additionally, this was a Frisch’s that uses too little tartar sauce, so I ended up with an unpleasantly dry burger that tasted of bread, pickles, and shoe leather. On the bright side, the coleslaw was pretty good. Unlike the Big Boy in Michigan, this slaw actually had decent flavor. That’s what really cemented the Port Clinton Frisch’s as the exact converse of the Warren Big Boy. Imagine if there could be one Big Boy to rule them all, with the Warren, Michigan Big Boy sandwich and the Port Clinton Frisch’s waitstaff and coleslaw. It would be perfect if they could figure a way to keep the kids away from the salad bar. The prospect of eating vegetables was more than enough the keep me away when I was a kid.

Easily the most autumnal thing I've eaten this year


As I finished up my waitress and new best friend asked if I cared for a slice of the seasonal pumpkin cheesecake. I told her she had read my mind. She laughed and returned with the confection quickly. I try to have one slice of pumpkin cheesecake every fall, and this one was a perfectly decent annual treat. I ate it a bit more ravenously than I should have, and of course, my new worst enemy, the manager in the flag necktie, saw fit to flout any semblance of professionalism and comment on my enthusiastic cheesecake consumption as he was running the register where I paid my bill. Somehow the meal I’d just ordered came to 16 bucks and change before a tip. I could have gotten something of roughly equal quality and quantity next door at Burger King for less than half of what I ended up paying after tipping the best waitress ever. For the record, Burger King is perhaps my least favorite national fast food chain, and I still prefer them to the overpriced disappointment of present-day Frisch's.

The view from my table. Tragically, the interior decor of this location was likely updated sometime this century


Sadly, despite being housed in a striking building on a piece of lakefront property and staffed with at least one stellar server did not save this Frisch’s from the creeping sub-mediocrity that has slowly engulfed the entire chain. I left wondering wondering why I had bothered. The slow decline and eventual demise of Frisch’s has begun. Unless NRD Partners starts studying Bob Wian and Dave Frisch’s methods for running a restaurant, Frisch’s Big Boy seems doomed to the fate of so many other long-gone Big Boy franchisees with names like Marc’s, Kip’s, and Azar’s….


What do you mean there’s an Azar’s still open? Well, I’ve GOT to go check that out!



Monday, November 5, 2018

The Warren Redemption






This is a post about the chain, Big Boy, formerly known as Elias Brothers' Big Boy which has locations primarily in Michigan, not to be confused with Frisch's Big Boy, or any other legacy or current Big Boy chains. For more information on the complicated history of Big Boy, see the previous post, Your Chain of Chains, or the Big Boy Wikipedia page


It was a chilly, rainy evening in the fall of 2010 when I decided to stop going to the Big Boy locations in Michigan that were once owned by Elias Brothers. I was a regular at the now defunct location at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Telegraph road in Dearborn. I met a few friends there for dinner, and ordered myself an open-face hot turkey sandwich. What was brought to my table was an open-face abomination. A slice of bread that was simultaneously rubbery and soggy formed the foundation for layers of soupy instant mashed potatoes, gray TV dinner-grade turkey breast that had been warmed up on the flat top grill, and instant beef gravy whose bovine flavor clashed nauseatingly with the turkey, rendering the whole thing a runny, gamey, inedible mess. I attempted to order a slice of pecan pie to take my mind off of the plate of prison food I had the privilege of paying $9.95 plus tax and tip for, but the waitress whispered that I really didn’t want to order the pecan pie, because the pie had been sitting for “more than a week.” I thanked her for her honesty, paid my bill, and left that Big Boy, never to return.

Not long after this unfortunate meal, I moved to Montana, a state hundreds of miles from the nearest current Big Boy location. (Though the former Big Boy franchisee, JB’s, does still have a restaurant open in Great Falls.) I had all but forgotten about Big Boy when I moved back to Michigan in 2016 to find that the Dearborn Big Boy that had soured me on the entire brand had closed and was sitting empty, along with several other Detroit-area Big Boy locations. I thought that maybe the weakest locations of the chain had been culled, leaving only the best locations open.

I decided to give Big Boy another shot. I stopped at the still open Big Boy in Lincoln Park, Michigan for lunch. The restaurant, likely built in the early 1970’s, was an outparcel of a long-dead shopping center that had been completely razed, except for a 1950s-era Sears store, that despite all odds was still open, and is only now, following the bankruptcy of Sears Holdings, in the process of closing. It was another chilly, rainy day, this time in early spring when I walked into the dated and well-worn dining room. I was shown to a table near the center of the restaurant, after being informed that the seats in the two solariums along the perimeter of the building were closed, I suspect due to either leaky glass seals, or the restaurant’s skeleton crew not wanting to wait on customers seated on the periphery of the dining room. The marquee out front, mounted below a Big Boy statue that once rotated on its platform, mounted on a high pole advertised hot baked potatoes on the salad bar. A potato, a cup of soup, and a salad sounded like the perfect rainy day lunch so I told my waitress that I’d simply have the salad bar.

What greeted me at the salad bar was a selection of wilted greens, potato salad and coleslaw that looked questionable at best, a couple of soups with the consistency of half dried Elmer’s glue, and a glaring absence of baked potatoes. Seeing no point in complaining to what I assumed to be completely checked out restaurant management, choked down what I could, paid my 12 bucks and change, and left, again vowing never to return to a Michigan Big Boy.


My birth happened well after the 1970s ended, but I imagine the '70s looked and felt a lot like the floor of the Warren Big Boy, a color palate of earth tones caked in nonspecific grime and conveying an overwhelming malaise. 
Big Boy Restaurants International LLC, the corporate entity that controls the no-name Big Boy locations in Michigan, along with the five surviving Bob’s Big Boy locations in California, plus a few other odd stragglers, seems to be slowly phasing out U.S. operations in favor of expanding in Japan where it operates 279 locations, nearly four times the number of Big Boy International LLC-controlled Big Boys in the US, most of which are painfully outdated. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Michigan Big Boy that has opened in this century, and most of the Metro Detroit locations seem to be 1970s builds, dating back to the Elias Brothers era. Menus, buildings, and staff all look tired these days. It’s clear that US operations are slowly winding down, not unlike Ponderosa-Bonanza in the past few years. With the long term future of the Michigan Big Boys looking increasingly bleak I decided to give them one last chance, and seek out the best possible Michigan Big Boy experience I could.


Warren Michigan is home to Big Boy Restaurants International LLC, as well as this particular Big Boy restaurant. 

Big Boy Restaurants International LLC’s corporate headquarters are located in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan. I figured it would stand to reason that the Big Boy in Big Boy's hometown would be among the best run locations in the chain, so with cautious optimism, I made my way to Warren, Michigan’s Big Boy at the corner of 12 Mile Road and Hoover Road. It was 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon when I first stopped by, and I was a little surprised to find the place packed. 

Warren Michigan is home to Big Boy Restaurants International LLC, as well as this particular Big Boy restaurant. 
On weekends, Big Boy offers an all you can eat breakfast buffet until 2 PM, and the buffet proved popular at this location for a combination of people I took to be a combination of churchgoers and late risers scrambling to get in the door before the buffet closed. I walked in to find the area around the “Please wait to be seated” sign crowded with around ten people in patient obeyance. I stood around for a few minutes, long enough to note that there was no dedicated hostess and that none of my new hungry comrades were being seated or even acknowledged by the busy staff. I suspected I was there at the busiest possible time, and the only time where an employee whose sole duty is to greet and seat customers, and perhaps take names and offer estimated wait times for tables would make sense, but no one running the place had seen fit to hire such an employee. Not seeing a point in standing around impatiently, I left, and drove to the nearby Kmart, that is surprisingly not yet slated for closure, to kill an hour or so and let the late breakfast crowd at Big Boy die down. 

Not only is this place still open for business as usual, people actually seem to be shopping here. 

Photographs of old Elias Brothers Big Boy locations hang in the entryway.... 


...while below, this adorable, pudgy child smiles as you wipe your feet on his face. At least he's not as creepy as the mascots at Kewpee.

Despite the visible seasoning, this tasted like nothing more than soggy, raw cabbage. 

Upon my return the place had emptied out considerably, and I was immediately seated in a booth, where a waitress took my order. All month long, my plan is to order roughly the same thing at every Big Boy and former Big Boy affiliated location I visit, the a Big Boy (or the closest facsimile thereof), fries, and coleslaw. The coleslaw arrived first, it was topped with a generous portion of paprika, and an odd leaf I couldn’t identify that was either a garnish or the result of a mishap in the kitchen. I waited to dig into the slaw. I wanted a picture of it alongside my burger and fries, which arrived a few minutes later on a curious round plastic tray with a paper liner.


For ten bucks plus tip, a real plate would have been nice. 
This iteration of the Big Boy, prepared as it has been for decades in Michigan Big Boy locations, bears perhaps the most resemblance to its more successful imitator, the Big Mac. Both have sesame seed buns and a Thousand Island-based sauce, The Big Mac simply gained pickles and onions to set it apart, not unlike the way real and most definitely not fictional Queens, New York restaurant owner Cleo McDowell sold a burger known as the Big Mick at his restaurant, McDowell’s, with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a bun with no seeds. McDowell’s existent and not at all a throwaway gag from an ‘80s movie burger was merely a copy of a copy, perhaps even a copy of a copy of a copy since Burger Chef’s own Big Boy imitator, the Big Shef beat the McDonald’s Big Mac to market.

The Elias Brothers' interpretation of Bob Wian's gift to the world. Still a transcendent burger experience. 
While I’ve recently enjoyed the occasional tartar sauce and pickle-topped Frisch’s Big Boy when driving through Ohio, this was my first Michigan Big Boy in years. I remembered it being akin to a Big Mac in flavor, and while it wasn’t dissimilar, the sauce had a much stronger, and slightly tangier taste with a decidedly savory, almost cinnamony finish. It was better than any Big Mac I’ve ever had, and on par with some of the better Frisch’s Big Boys I’ve enjoyed. It made me fall in love with the Michigan version of Big Boy, descended from the Elias Brothers operation, all over again. I instantly forgave the putrid turkey sandwich in Dearborn and disappointing salad bar in Lincoln Park. I even overlooked the tepid and slightly soggy fries and utterly flavorless coleslaw (which my waitress repeatedly and annoyingly referred to as cold-slaw) that came with my burger. The balance of flavors and textures of the Big Boy, a sandwich served today just as it was 60 years made the annoyances of enduring construction traffic on I-696 and wasting time in Kmart fall away. Despite the hit or miss nature of the Michigan Big Boy experience, and the increasingly anachronistic atmosphere in their restaurants, they still make a pretty good Big Boy. They probably wouldn’t have survived this long if they didn’t. 

More branded decor featuring different iterations of the Big Boy character.

Admittedly, I entered into the Warren Big Boy biased by abysmal experiences at Big Boys elsewhere in Metro Detroit, but I left in a much better mood, and with a much better opinion of the operation than when I entered thanks to a burger that despite a crowded field of imitators manages to be unique enough and tasty enough to carry a historical but clearly struggling restaurant brand through decades of turmoil. I’ll be back occasionally. It’s only a matter of time before I find myself craving another Elias Brothers-style Big Boy.



Sunday, November 4, 2018

Your Chain of Chains




In 1908 the Sunshine Biscuit Company introduced a new cookie consisting of two round chocolate wafers, each embossed with a decorative pattern, sandwiching a layer of sweet white cream filling. They named their product Hydrox after the constituent atoms of a water molecule to signify purity. Four years later, their competitor, the National Biscuit Company introduced a blatant knockoff of the Hydrox cookie with drastically similar round chocolate wafers and cream filling. National Biscuit Company, later known as Nabisco, called their Hydrox knockoff the Oreo, and with it, proceeded to dominate the market. Today, Hydrox cookies barely even manage to have a cult following. They go in and out of production sporadically, depending on which conglomerate owns the rights to the name. Even when they’re being made, they can be tough to find in stores and even online. The few people who are even aware of the Hydrox cookie today would likely consider it to be an Oreo imitator, even though it was actually the Hydrox that inspired the Oreo. The Hydrox cookie shows us that being first to market with a new product does not guarantee success or marketplace domination, especially when competitors are lurking in the shadows ready to imitate your good ideas, and learn from your missteps. This kind of thing happens constantly in the chain restaurant industry. Wendy’s is a prime example. They got their start shamelessly imitating Kewpee just as Kewpee was fading into obscurity, and eventually emulated Rax with their in-store salad and hot food bars in the ‘80s and ‘90s. However, Wendy’s culinary plagiarism seems insignificant when you realize that the most famous burger from the world’s most prolific burger joint, is nothing more than a cheap copy.

Ask the average person who invented the double deck hamburger, and they’re likely to say it was McDonald’s with the Big Mac. It’s easy to see why someone would assume this. The Big Mac with its two beef patties, special sauce, and three piece sesame seed bun is ubiquitous in North America. It’s perhaps the best known menu item from the 14,000 U.S. location-strong cultural icon. The truth is, McDonald’s wasn’t the first to serve a double deck burger. Bob Wian pioneered the concept at his Glendale, California restaurant, Bob’s Pantry in 1937. Seeking to wow, and perhaps flabbergast his customers who requested something new and spectacular, Wian constructed the burger that would become known as the Big Boy, a sandwich Bob Wian constructed to look like a ridiculous tower of bread and meat. His depression-era customers, used to skimpy single-patty burgers, and decades from today’s Thickburgers, Baconators, and Double Downs were floored by his creation. The hamburger that Wian built as little more than a joke between him and his regular customers became an overnight sensation. Wian would eventually name his creation the Big Boy, after a nickname he had given to Richard Woodruff a six-year-old customer at his restaurant. Likewise, a restaurant mascot was designed based on young Woodruff’s likeness. These were the humble beginnings of the Big Boy brand.

At this point, those of you reading from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Southern California, and perhaps even Japan are exclaiming something to the effect of “Zap, Big Boy isn’t a broken chain! They’re everywhere!” I generally assumed the same for a long time, having lived in Big Boy country for most of my life, but once you’re more than 100 miles from the I-75 corridor, or south of the Tennessee/Kentucky state line, the fiberglass Big Boy statues suddenly disappear. This proves that Big Boy is far from a national brand, as it occupies only a relatively small specific region of the US. But how did a brand born in California end up with such a large presence on the other side of the country with only a few token locations on the west coast? Large gaps in operating territory are a hallmark of a broken chain, and a good indication that there’s a story of former greatness.

Bob Wian’s single restaurant had grown to a local chain by the early fifties when he began franchising the Big Boy sandwich, mascot, and name to other existing restaurant operators, who would add the Big Boy elements to their menus and restaurants. Some of Wian’s earliest franchisees were Dave Frisch from Cincinatti and brothers Fred, John, and Louis Elias from Detroit, who began operating their existing restaurants as Frisch’s Big Boy and Elias Brothers' Big Boy respectively. This practice of franchising a brand to already-established restaurants spawned a series of Big Boy chains with different names in different markets, effectively creating a large national chain, composed of smaller regional sub-chains. Individual Big Boy franchisees had significant differences in their restaurants and menus, aside from the double deck burger and Big Boy signs and statues. In fact, even the burger bun and toppings varied depending on which Big Boy chain was serving it. For instance Bob Wian’s Big Boy was topped with red relish, a mixture of ketchup and pickle relish, whereas David Frisch’s Big Boy used tartar sauce, and the Elias Brothers used a thousand island-based sauce. These differences persist to this day. All told, there were around 29 separate regional Big Boy chains with names spanning the alphabet from Abdow’s Big Boy to Yoda’s Big Boy. This loose affiliation of regional Big Boy franchisees effectively made Big Boy a national brand, with each regional franchisee paying fees back to Bob Wian’s Wian Enterprises. In 1967 Wian Enterprises was purchased by Marriott, who at the time was looking to expand their restaurant business. Around this time, all Marriott-owned locations adopted the Bob’s Big Boy name. The chain grew through the seventies to somewhere north of 1000 locations in 1979. It was around this time, though when things started to fall apart. As the initial 25 year franchise agreements began to lapse, regional franchisees left the Big Boy chain to become separate, entirely independent chains. Southern franchisees Shoney’s, and Pittsburgh-area franchisees Eat ‘n Park, and Elby’s all left Big Boy at around the same time. By the late ‘80s Marriott wanted out of the restaurant business, and sold the Big Boy name, and all remaining corporate locations to Elias Brothers in 1987. Elias Bros would go on to declare bankruptcy in 2000 and be acquired by Robert Ligget Junior’s Liggett Restaurant Enterprises. At the same time, Frisch’s became a completely separate corporate entity, linked only to the other Big Boy chain by name, and confined to Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

Big Boy came into existence, established itself as a drive-in restaurant chain, and later a sit down chain, just as the fast food industry as we know it today was finding footing. Seemingly every fast food burger chain had an imitation of the Big Boy sandwich, and I’ve sampled quite a few of them for Broken Chains. In addition to the Big Mac, the Burger Shef Big Shef, the Dog n Suds Texas Burger, the Frostop Orbit Burger, and the Jerry’s J-Boy were all Big Boy imitators. In fact, Jerry’s in particular seemed to be a pretty blatant copy of Frisch’s entire operation. None of the triple bun wonders had the staying power of the Big Mac, though. McDonald’s thrived with the Big Mac on their menu while Big Boy quite literally fell apart, firmly cementing the Big Boy as the Hydrox of hamburgers.

Big Boy today is a literal broken chain, fractured into multiple, barely related pieces, with Big Boy Restaurants International LLC, a descendant of Liggett Restaurant Enterprises operating 77 US locations, mostly in Michigan, simply called “Big Boy,” plus five surviving Southern California Bob’s Big Boys. It’s estranged cousin, Frisch’s Big Boy, as of 2015 a subsidiary of parent company NRD Capital, operates 121 locations in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Both chains have significantly shrunk recently closing multiple locations. Big Boy and Frisch’s Big Boy locations I’ve visited in the past couple of years have deteriorated noticeably in terms of overall appearance as well as quality of food and service. Additionally, several former Big Boy franchisees still exist today as separate regional chains. There’s quite a bit to unpack and experience with regard to the Big Boy brand and its remnants. In order to explore the modern legacy of Big Boy fully, I’m going to declare November 2018 Big Boy Month. All my blog posts this month will be about my experiences at locations chains related to the fallen Big Boy empire, so pull on your red and white checkerboard overalls, hoist your burger tray high, and embark with me on a journey through chain restaurant history.