Talk about striking a cord. It seems that nothing brings people out of the woodwork like the opportunity to remember past dining and drinking experiences. Lots of folks emailed in their recollections of the restaurants that I missed last month in my first stab down memory lane (Dearly Departed Restaurants, Moonshine Ink, V. 6, N. 8).
Robert Frohlich figured out the chronology for the current site of Lakeside Pizza. It started out as ‘Pelican’s Wharf, which opened in the summer of ‘77. It was shortly followed by Pelican’s Pier, which built the deck specifically for Polynesian dancing.’ Then came Gatsby’s, Bodacious Bar-B-Que and the Waterfront. Fellow Moonshine Ink writer ‘Fro’ also mentioned that in the space above the current location of Syd’s, there was the Off Shore Bar and Grill then Truffala’s. What is now the Tahoe Yacht Club was once Charthouse, followed by Grazie’s and later the Mackinaw Inn.
Longtime Tahoe City local Steve Swigard pointed out that ‘My wife Kathy and her twin sister Pat, worked for Dot Cody & Dot Brisbane, the ‘Double Dots,’ one summer when they were in high school.’ The Double Dot restaurant as noted earlier in the first installment was located at the current entrance to The Cobblestone. When construction on The Cobblestone began in 1966, Swigard says, ‘Double Dot moved from Tahoe City to just south of the Firesign Cafe in Tahoe Park where it reopened. That building was later moved up to Alpine Meadow Ski Area, where it became the ‘’Chalet’’ just below the Yellow Chair lift.’
Steve also remembers, ‘Before Izzy’s Burger, it was an Orange Julius.
‘Before LaQuesta, it was Jack’s Left Bank.
‘Before the Harvest Moon, it was the Chicken House.
‘And in what is now the large gray building on Mackinaw in Tahoe City, the Haufbrau and then the Stereoscope were popular. (And later I spent many hours getting pounded on in karate class in that same building. Perhaps that is why I was always hungry in class?)’
Julie Rackey wins a prize for coming up with the chronology of restaurants at the current location of Sawtooth Ridge. It started with Sambo’s, followed by Denny’s, then Pizza Hut, then Humpty’s, and Elevation, before eventually becoming Sawtooth. There may have been one or two more in there as well.
Mike Linnett said, ‘I operated the TeePee in 1969/70 when Loren Homewood had the lease on the ‘A’ frame, which later became Izzy’s Burger, I am not sure what other names it might have had in between. Upstairs in the Hendrickson Building was Wood, Coal & Rabbit operated by Dave Friberg in the early ‘70s.’ Mike also added that the Elegant Attic was in line just ahead of the Off Shore Bar and Grill.
Another one that I missed was the Aardvark, which once occupied the site later held by The Harvest Moon, which is currently occupied by McClintock Accountancy.
What about Taco City, which was before Fast Eddie’s, which of course became The Backcountry and Gear and Grind Café?
Monica Grigoleit was happy to point out that I must have had the munchies in the 1970s so I couldn’t remember that Captain Munchies was located in The Boatworks. What?
Bill Merriam wrote in to say, ‘My all time favorite that only I and two other people remember was Nectar Madness – a vegetarian/health food restaurant with bands on the weekend.’
Another missed departed was Za’s behind Pete and Peters. We used to eat there pretty frequently, but it seems to have disappeared without much fanfare. Not everybody gets sent off into restaurant haven like O’B’s did. Now that was a restaurant wake to write home about.
Chris Werfel moved to Tahoe in 1988, and he remembered ‘Peppers,’ which was located next to Porters, and was quite popular in the early ‘90s.
One request for a correction was received from John Sproehnle, one of the owners of The Hearthstone. Last month’s article mentioned that The Hearthstone was a very popular place and at the time a lot of folks ‘kept crashing their vehicles’ into The Big Tree. Sproehnle said, ‘We were instantly successful as the first real aprés ski place in the area. Later we added folk singers, rock & roll bands, and finally became a disco. Our reputation for running a responsible operation was born out by the fact that we had no, repeat no Alcoholic Beverage Control violations for more than 18 years of operation. NONE OF OUR PATRONS RAN INTO (‘kept crashing their vehicles’) the tree. In fact we actually treated folks coming from other places who did hit the tree.’
No offense was intended, I do know that it was a fairly regular occurrence for folks who had imbibed a few too many to run into the tree. Now where they came from I don’t know. In fact, perhaps they didn’t know either.
~ Tim Hauserman fondly remembers eating at a lot of these places. He wrote the guidebook to The Tahoe Rim Trail.
