Restaurant names 2

Restaurant Names 1

Carefree International Restaurant - Carefree, Arizona.

So where's lunch? How bout the Carefree?

Dining in Carefree, Arizona in The Sixties was pretty damn cool. Apparently there was this restaurant with six (or seven?) themed dining rooms arranged radially around a central kitchen, all in a mid-century modern purpose-built building that wasn't just a repurposed out-of-business hallmark store in a strip mall, which is mostly what we get, here in The Future.

This postcard scratches the surface, but the Ultranet is pretty much made of rabbit holes, and a simple search led the Phil Are GO! Research and Googling Team to the Carefree, Arizona Cave Creek Museum's site (...of course, and why wouldn't it?) which had an exterior shot of the restaurant and a floor plan. It looked like a groovy space station on the desolate moonscape of the moon, instead of the desolate Arizonascape of Arizona.

Oh yeah. That North America.

The post card boasts about seven distinctive yet interconnected dining areas, but we can only see six on the map. Nordic, Asian, African, South American, North American (you know: mac & cheese), and Mediterranian. Where' sthis phantom seventh dining room? The wine cellar? Hmm. They may have been on to something...

Naturally, any really cool looking restaurant doesn't want you to ask about the food. It was probably okay, or at least non-lethal. Or, it was probably better than trying all day to catch a road runner with your rocket skates.

If you're stranded in the desolate Chicagoscape of Chicago and you feel like having a similarly absurd dining experience, there are still places you can go for a heavily themed inoffensive meal served by a disinterested staff.

Shef Shangri-la! It's right near the Brookfield Zoo, so you can stagger out of the jungle just like a lost explorer and stagger up to a table and order a drink in a ridiculously-shaped glass, just like a lost suburbanite.

P.S. You will not live forever before or after eating at Chef Shangri-la, and that's probably best.

Cafeteria names.

Los Amigos - Gone, but not digested.

Way back in "yore", most any restaurant, motel, or foot and ankle clinic sold postcards featuring pictures of the restaurant, motel, or foot and ankle clinic near the cash register. Presumably this was to help you remember that time you visited the establishment, whether because that's where your flat tire left you stranded for a few hours or you dropped in to get some corns frozen off while you did a load of whites at the laundromat next door.

Today's random blow on the ocarina of time brings us to 1970-something (the postcard had no date on it), when the Los Amigos restaurant was the undisputed king of the intersection of West Ballard road and Milwaukee Ave in Niles, Illinois!

In the early seventies, the Ladder Crisis had left thousands of restaurants unable to change their zip letter marquees for months. This led to some restaurants being forced to serve pepper steak long after reliable sources of beef had run out. Others had no choice but to feature the exotic rhythms of Lloyd and Debbie every night for the duration of the shortage.

The proprietors of Los Amigos had solved their signage problem by overcoming the force of gravity, enabling the implementation of their hoversign technology. Somehow, they had found the time to complete the unified field theory while still serving top quality Spanish and Mexican food at reasonable prices. Their unique hoversign allowed the manager to bring their sign within reach, to easily change the marquee as needed, sending the sign back to appropriate promotional altitude when the zip letter change was complete. This technology put the restaurant on top of the Niles Spanish/Mexican food scene during this difficult time.

In keeping with the seventies' obsession with velvet paintings, the Los Amigos commissioned this oil-on-velvet work depicting Santo Gordito, the patron saint of affordable Latin cuisine, performing "Danza de los Dos Estómagos" or the Dance of Two Stomachs. This brought the faithful to the Los Amigos from as far as Berwyn to pay tribute and take advantage of the Wednesday combo platter special.

Unlike their competitors, the Los Amigos provided house instruments for their entertainers. Luis Lopez and His Latin Band were a frequent feature of the Friday dinner experience at Los Amigos. They shared the Golden Curtain stage with the Giant Wooden Pillar, since they had no choice. It did keep the drum kit from scooting off the end of the stage, though.

Behind the bar was displayed a rare artifact of Pope Giant the First: a 24" diameter sunburst ornament from the top of his Holy Whapping Stick, which, according to legend, he used to drive his predecessor, Pope Medium, from St. Peter's Basilica in 1946.

The proprietors of Los Amigos never revealed how the ornament came into their possession, but the staff held prayer meetings before the ornament daily, chanting "bigger portions mean bigger tips".

Sadly, the Los Amigos era came to an end in 1979, when high winds blew the hoversign out over Lake Michigan. Patrons never again knew where to find their favorite entrees, The Three Burrito Feat and the Quesedilla Mi Dios.

Google maps shows that a strip mall now occupies the approximate location. If you use Street View to see the strip mall, you can see "Burrito House". Coincidence? Probably! Interesting? Possibly!


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Charles Contnental House - Effin classy, baby!

In 1974, if you had a couple of hours to kill at Chicago's Midway airport, you could find an Ihop, or eat at Jack-In-The-Whatever, or you could get classy by dining at the Charles Continental House, pretty much at the foot of the runway. It was located at 5400 South Cicero, near 55th street and Archer Ave.

When I am elected Supreme Ruler of the Universe, all restaurants will be hideously overdecorated by a member of the Gambino family. It doesn't matter which one. I bet even the Gambino's dog would have had a certain flair for paneling. One could say that the Charles Continental House (or CCH) had a color scheme, but one would be pretty wrong. Yes, it had a color scheme in that they hatched a scheme to use color.

"Let's see. We got your blue squishy divider thing there, and your kinda corpuscle-red carpets. Byootyful, byootyful. Good start. Howsabout some of them green water glasses there, just to make sure people don't think we only know blue and red, hah? And order us up a couple gross of them fancy statuaries there, you know, to give the place a nice schmear of class."

Accessorizing their dining room was handled with similar restraint.

"We needs us a chandelier. None of the ones in this catalog looks nice enough. Order me up a couple two three of them and we'll stick em all together into one big nice chandelier, yeah!

"Roll through the rest of this restaurant stuff catalog, and if you'se see something that's got gold on it or looks like a Greek wit no arms, you buy it!"

In the lounge, you'd be pampered with the best of the carpet that was left after the fire at the Condessa Del Mar. If you were dining in the lounge, you'd be insulated from the exuberance of the bar area by a completely soundproof patio railing. Meanwhile, your mood would be complete, with the help of the light filtering through the colored plastic wall divider thingy, enchantingly. Music was provided by the complete catalog of Sergio Mendez and Brasil 66.

So, the next time you've got a layover at Midway in 1974, please drop by the Charles Continental, won't you? The atmosphere makes the food seem undercooked, and nobody cares how you smell in an airport.