GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) - Three historic Greenville restaurant owners have passed away in the past month, leaving a legacy of memories, anecdotes and stories that continue to flavor the community.
On Dec. 10, Marvin Hambleton, the longtime owner of the Red Baron restaurant, which was located at 118 N. Main St. for more than a decade, passed away at the age of 81.
A week earlier, on Dec. 1, Maureen Luke, the owner of the popular Maureen’s Delicatessen, passed away at the age of 65.
And on Nov. 26, Noah “Rick” Lowe Jr., the owner of the beloved Falls Street Café, known by most as “The Cat Dive,” passed away at the age of 85.
While the places the three restaurateurs owned have been gone for more than a decade, the memories were swirling on Facebook. Daughters recalled fathers stopping into the Cat Dive for coffee every morning, former employees recalled Maureen’s Delicatessen’s one-of-a-kind German potato salad and other’s lamented the loss of the Red Baron as a daily lunch spot.
“The Red Baron made the best Beer Cheese Soup,” Greta Fortenberry wrote. “Loved it. It made you feel like you were eating lunch in a small German town.”
Hambleton opened Red Baron in 1974, according to his obituary. The restaurant regularly hosted live entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights and grew to be a popular lunch spot downtown.
Hambleton opened a second location at McAlister Square as well.
Janis Hall was a regular at Red Baron in the 1980s, when she worked at the 13th Circuit Solicitor’s Office. A coworker introduced her to the restaurant.
“I could never decide because it all looked so good so usually ended up with the sampler,” Hall recalled in an e-mail.
But besides that, it was the spirit of the place itself that kept Hall coming back.
“The family feel,” she said. “You felt like you mattered, not just a number or a dollar that came through the door. “
That spirit resonated with Nancy Anne McCarrell and her sister, Joyce, too, and it is something the two have tried to establish at their own restaurant, The Café @ Williams Hardware.
“I think some of it had to do with the way places are run,” McCarrell said. “Like down there at Savoury Corner, Susan Harrison might not know your name but she knew what you ate.
“We’ve been open eight years and there’s a girl, everybody that walks in, she knows their order. Their order is already in when they get to the cash register. I think people appreciate that.”
Back in the 80s, McCarrell worked in patient accounts at Greenville General Hospital, and she and her coworkers would often come downtown to eat. McCarrell was a big fan of Red Baron’s German sampler plate, as well, which she recalled as having a half a knockwurst, a half a bratwurst, red cabbage, sauerkraut, German potato salad and mustard. But, she said, she also had a soft spot for the turkey club sandwich at Maureen’s.
“I can still remember specific meals I ate there,” McCarrell said. “I was with my girlfriends from work and we always had a good time. It’s the people you’re with the food that you’re eating that make a place be so good.”
Today, Lester Erwin gets the same feeling of family every year when the Camperdown Mill Historical Society puts on its annual “Back to the Cat Dive” lunch. For the past decade, the group has recreated the restaurant’s famous chili dogs. Last year, Erwin said, they had so many people attend that they had to go buy more buns and hot dogs mid-lunch.
“It’s about the food, sure,” Erwin said. “But it’s about the people coming back and spending time together and enjoying the fellowship that they used to have at the Cat Dive.”
It’s the same feeling Erwin said he got when he was a kid and his dad would take him to the café to eat lunch. And the same feeling that he later had as an adult, when he’d stop in to order a Big Boy (a cheeseburger plate) or a franks and beans, or a cheeseburger steak with gravy and onions.
“Looking back now, the Cat Dive reminded me of the old TV show, “Cheers,” Erwin said. “When you walked in, everybody knew your name. Well, when you walked into the Cat Dive, most of them knew your name, but it was like you were family.”
For John Warner, it was not so much the long gone restaurants, but the conversations surrounding them that gave him pause. The founder and CEO of the innovation stimulus company, InnoVenture, moved to Greenville 36 years ago to take a job with what is now KPMG. Then, Warner said, there were about five places to eat downtown, and Warner rotated through them each day of the week.
At Gene’s you’d get the meat and three plate, at the hot dog shop, you’d get a hot dog or chili dog, the sandwich shop inside the Daniel Building, located on College Street was good for a quick bite, Maureen’s did great Cobb salads and Red Baron had a solid pastrami sandwich.
But for Warner, more remarkable than the memories of those meals he ate at places long gone, is the way those places act as a reminder of what Greenville once was and what the city has become. Through his work, Warner works with lots of young entrepreneurs, many of whom are from other places.
“We’ll talk about the renaissance of Greenville, and I’ll always start with, those were the places you could eat lunch, that was it,” Warner said.
After the Hyatt was built, then came more. The Peace Center, the Poinsett Hotel, Liberty Bridge, the Greenville Drive stadium.
“I’ve seen the whole thing develop and it’s really hard to believe when you think back how it all started,” Warner said.
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Information from: The Greenville News, https://www.greenvillenews.com
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