Kahiki Supper Club Read online

  Christmas advertisement for Bill and Lee’s “trifecta” of restaurants: the Wine Cellar, the Kahiki and the Top. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Finally, in 1968, the Marriott Corporation licensed the image of Ohio-born cowboy star Roy Rogers for a chain of fast-food restaurants. Based in Fall Church, Virginia, the Roy Rogers Restaurants were unique for the time in that they offered hamburgers, chicken and roast beef sandwiches, going head to head with McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Arby’s, respectively.

  It was in 1967 or so that Bill and Lee, fresh off the success of the Kahiki, opened Saxon’s Sandwich Shoppe. “When Arby’s first started,” Lee explained, “they used inside round [steak]. We tried to buy a Columbus franchise, but it was already purchased. So we decided to start our own.” Bill had become enamored of not only the sandwiches but also the mocha shakes. They hired Coburn Morgan to design the old English-style timber frame buildings, which were quite substantial for a fast-food chain. At a restaurant show in Chicago, they discovered everyone was getting into the business from Jerry Lewis to Herkie Styles. “Who’s ever heard of Herkie Styles?” Lee asked.24

  Unlike the competition, which tended to serve thin slices of a processed roast beef deli loaf, Saxon’s offered the real thing, freshly sliced and heated by a jet of steam. The North High store “took off like a rocket,” Lee said, which presented a problem. To quote Bill, “How the hell were we going to run it? Lee had a friend and put the lad in as president. Built like crazy.” Over the next few years, they opened fourteen restaurants from Columbus to Florida.

  From time to time, Bill and Lee noticed there was a guy who was taking photographs and counting cars at their North High outlet. By 1969, they had been looking to sell the chain for various reasons (including the advice of their attorney), so when they received an offer from Indiana, they took it. The buyer was a man who was already operating a restaurant chain in discount stores and wanted to expand. Within a year, he was bankrupt, but Bill and Lee were far from done.

  After touring Europe with Morgan, the partners returned home to build the Wine Cellar in 1971. Located on a three-acre plot along East Dublin–Granville Road, it was designed by architect Frederick C. Williams and Morgan at a cost of $2.1 million, twice what they had spent on the Kahiki only ten years earlier. Using a Shakespearean theme, they created a five-hundred-seat restaurant that could accommodate another one hundred at the bar. The Knight’s Hall, the main room, was modeled after the Merchant Adventurer’s Hall in York, England. Rubber molds were made of the ceiling beams, which were then cast in fiberglass before being shipped to Ohio. For the sake of authenticity, these were supplemented with wood pilings from the Thames River in London. Various other architectural pieces were salvaged from throughout Great Britain. The completed structure featured wrought-iron fences, earthen-red roofing tiles, oak timbers, buttressed chimneys and herring bone–pattern brick work.

  In many respects, the Wine Cellar was the polar opposite of the Kahiki in concept. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Patrons of the Wine Cellar were greeted by waitstaff in Elizabethan costumes and wine stewards in monk’s garb. The restaurant was further divided up into the Cockney Pub (with an Inglenook fireplace), Chateau Room, Black Swan Bar (where the piano was inlayed with a stained-glass depiction of a griffin) and the Wine Cellar Grotto. Intended to showcase Bill’s vast wine collection, it was unique for the period. “Wine was the rage at the time,” Bill says. “Couldn’t get a decent bottle in Columbus.” Customers could select from thousands of bottles to complement the prime rib and seafood dinners. The Wine Cellar quickly became the largest seller of wines in the entire restaurant industry, dispensing fifty gallons a day. A garden room was subsequently added to the restaurant; it was so far from the kitchen that the waitstaff called it the “Morse Road” station, in reference to the road nearly two miles distant.

  A planning session for the Wine Cellar. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The Wine Cellar featured live music by pianists Charlie Pickens, Dave Powers, Janet O’Brien (with balladeer Ernest Solomon) and Norm Tyack (who played there for eighteen years until it closed), as well as strolling troubadours Hilda Doyle and Shannon Baughman, a former Disneyland mermaid. When Lee decided he wanted out of the restaurant business in 1980, Bill bought his interests in the Top and the Wine Cellar, continuing to operate both establishments. However, the Wine Cellar had cost so much to build that it required $17,000 a month just to keep it going. In 1985, Bill, who needed money to pay off debts incurred in another restaurant deal, asked John Khoury to speak to businessman Mitch Boich about buying it, and he did.

  Like he did with the Kahiki, Boich leased the restaurant to Michael Tsao. This time, Bill kept the inventory—he had started the restaurant with his wine collection, and he walked away with another one. By 1989, the Wine Cellar had closed its doors. Two years later, Boich asked Bill how much it would cost to reopen it. When he told him, he opted to tear it down instead. As restaurant historian Jan Whitaker noted, “16 tall carved knight’s chairs” and a “grand piano bar with winged dragon” were among the items auctioned off. Like the Kahiki, it deserved better.

  The Wine Cellar marked the end of Bill and Lee’s partnership, although they remained good friends. Curiously, they also continued in the restaurant business, following parallel paths. During the mid-1970s, Lebanon, Ohio, became the birthplace of Duff’s Famous Smorgasbord when Homer Duff added a sandwich bar to his mom-and-pop grocery. Homer had noticed that a lot of meat had to be tossed out at his deli counter because it became discolored after sitting in the deli case all day. Although there was nothing wrong with it, he couldn’t sell it to his customers. So he began using it in a sandwich bar, offering an entire meal for ninety-nine cents. Soon, Homer sold his grocery to open a “one meal for one price,” all-buffet restaurant.

  Duff’s Famous Smorgasbord featured a circling buffet line, designed and patented by Homer. Customers stood in one place while the food came to them directly from the kitchen. The idea caught on quickly, and both Bill and Lee hopped aboard the Duff’s bandwagon, although separately. “Got the big idea to move to Florida and build restaurants just after the break with Lee,” Bill said. Along with his partners, Bob Isley and Grover Schmidt, Bill built his first Duff’s in Fort Lauderdale in 1979. “We made so much money so fast it made your head swim.” Before long, they had added five more.

  However, just a year later, Bill and his partners ran into financial trouble as the economy “went south.” Despite having 150 restaurants nationwide, Homer also had money woes and, in 1983, sold Duff’s to a company that promptly went bankrupt.

  Lee had also invested in a Duff’s franchise, becoming a silent partner with Hal Field, Bruce Allan and Don Levy. They opened a total of three buffets in the Columbus area, but Lee declined to personally sign any of the leases. As a result, his partners gave him a baseball with “Lee plays hardball” inscribed on it. Unlike Bill, he got out before the whole thing “went belly up.”

  Bloodied but unbowed, Bill opened the Café Martinique in 1988. “It was the best restaurant I ever had,” he asserted. He invited John Wolfe of the Dispatch Printing Company and others to join him. Located on the site of the former Ciro’s, it was directly across the street from the Top. Like the Wine Cellar, it offered an extensive wine selection, matched with the best in cuisine and service. Taking a cue from New York’s 21 Club, the restaurant provided a number of wine lockers for lease. However, there apparently were not enough, for all of them were immediately snapped up (mostly by the original investors). “It did great for five years,” Bill said. “Then people didn’t want to pay French restaurant prices.” Perhaps, the fact that the menu was in French (with English translation) discouraged some midwestern diners. In August 1991, Bill et al. were looking to sell it. A little over a year later, it was out of business.

  The basement of the Wine Cellar featured vaulted ceilings. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Years later, architect Keith DeVoe III praised both the Kahiki and the Wine C
ellar as pioneering restaurants in creating “a sense of place” through their innovative architecture. Unfortunately, most people will have to take his word for it since neither one of these unique buildings remains standing.

  11

  THE MAN WHO PUT THE TIKI IN THE KAHIKI

  People who turn snooty amidst the Kahiki’s faux-Polynesia probably haven’t experienced the faux-Polynesia of Hawaii itself.

  —Steve Stephens

  When Coburn Morgan was hired to work on the Kahiki project in 1960, he was head of the design division for Tectum Corporation, supplier of many of the building materials used in the construction of the restaurant. With degrees in electrical engineering and architecture, he was an accomplished painter, sculptor and decorator. In addition to designing the interior and portions of the exterior, Morgan designed many of the artifacts and fountains as well. And he recommended to Bill and Lee that they hire Design Associates as the architectural firm.

  According to Jan Whitaker, his “flamboyant design of the Kahiki” may well have launched his career as a designer of themed restaurants and related structures. He soon moved onto

  the Aztec-themed Thunderbird Restaurant (Lima), a red-fronted prototype for the Bob Evans chain (Chillicothe), McGarvey’s Nautical Restaurant (Vermillion), the Wine Cellar (Columbus), Jack Bowman’s Steak House (Columbus), the Brown Derby (Columbus), the 18th-century-themed Old Market House Inn (Zanesville), the Tangier Restaurant (Akron), Mawby’s (Cleveland), and the “Western Victorian–style” Judd’s (Cleveland).

  One of several tiki statues incorporated into the décor of the Kahiki. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  He also worked on other Columbus restaurants, including the Jai Lai and Sands Supper Club, as well as the original Bob Evans and Casa Lupita chains.

  Lee Stratton of the Columbus Dispatch wrote about Bernard Gerson’s home overlooking a ravine on the far east side of Columbus. Designed by Morgan in 1964, the 2,800-square-foot ranch house was considered ultra-contemporary at the time of its construction:

  Stepping through the orange front door is akin to stepping back four decades. The original travertine tile floor, sculptured ceramic tile wall and gold foil wallpaper highlight the foyer. A variety of definitely 1960s light fixtures and grass-cloth wall-coverings remain throughout the home. The original parquet floors are there, as are the pocket doors with acrylic panels sporting red, lime and yellow circles. The kitchen cabinets are red, avocado and orange. The Formica counters are red. The dining and living areas feature brighter tones of the same colors in bold stripes. The guest bath has blue foil wall-coverings and a distinctive geometric pattern in ceramic tile.

  They hired Columbus architect Leon Seligson, a follower of Frank Lloyd Wright, and Morgan, a personal friend. An abstract sculpture of an embracing couple—the Gersons—carved in feather stone (a porous volcanic rock) is mounted on the front of the home. Volcanic rock was also used in the construction of the fireplace and a desk in Gerson’s African-themed office. Morgan painted two murals, one of an elephant herd and the other of a Spanish bullfight, as well as a portrait of Marion Gerson, although he changed her black hair to brown for artistic reasons.

  Owing to his work on the Kahiki, Morgan suddenly found his services as a restaurant designer much in demand. Just a year later, Bob Susi opened a quality restaurant and steak house in Graceland Shopping Center at a time when all the best fine-dining establishments (the Kahiki excepted) were downtown. “People told me it would never work,” he told restaurant reviewer Doral Chenoweth of the Columbus Dispatch. Susi called it the Fontanelle Restaurant, and to many people’s surprise, it succeeded. He was already running a little bar at the corner of Hudson Street and McGuffey Road, but he felt that the new strip mall would be just the place for an upscale eatery and bar. To make it stand out from the other storefronts, Susi hired Morgan, who transformed it into a landmark with the addition of a distinctive yellow brick front, blue mansard roof, white shutters and fancy ironwork.

  According to Barnet D. Wolf (also of the Dispatch), Bob Evans came calling a few years later. Evans, the “Sausage King” from Gallipolis, Ohio, worked with Morgan to design the prototype for a proposed chain of Bob Evans Farm Restaurants. The first, built in Chillicothe in 1968, became the ubiquitous red-and-white barn “with Western accents, including the keyhole cutout at the top.” It was a countrified version of the Fontanelle.

  Originally known as the Linden Party House, Joe Asmo rechristened the East Fifth Avenue restaurant Yolanda’s, after his sister, when he purchased it in 1956. A dozen years later, he hired Morgan to redo the interior. Although it was ornate, Morgan managed to keep it tasteful as well, which no doubt contributed to its popularity. It finally closed in 1995, after a thirty-nine-year run.

  In 1974, Morgan was hired by James L. Adornetto to remodel a former farmers’ market in Zanesville, Ohio. Using the oldest riverfront pub in London, England, as inspiration, he undertook an extensive nine-month renovation of the historic building to create the Old Market House Inn. The same year, Morgan completely redesigned the former Betty Crocker Tree House at 1321 Morse Road in Columbus, transforming it into the thirty-fifth entry in a nationwide chain of Brown Derby restaurants. The total cost of the project was $2 million.

  When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt bought a house in Bexley in 1976, it was big news. It wasn’t so much for the fact that the Columbus-based pornographer was moving into a $375,000 mansion in one of city’s toniest suburbs but that the location was directly across the street from the Columbus School for Girls. “Flynt will be out in front of the school handing out lollipops,” one local resident joked. Only a year earlier, he had made headlines by publishing nude photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Flynt and his magazine had come a long way with monthly sales soaring to 1.5 million from 160,000 less than two years earlier. His fledgling publication was already third behind Playboy and Penthouse.

  However, Flynt did not intend to create a midwestern version of the Playboy Mansion. Rather, he wanted only to provide a home for his fiancée, four daughters and himself. So he turned to Coburn Morgan of Functional Planning, Inc., to undertake $1 million in renovations. Since the house already had a projection room, library, wine cellar, six bedrooms and numerous bathrooms, Morgan’s focus was to be on a courtyard and an indoor-outdoor swimming pool. Presumably, he had nothing to do with the publisher’s remarkably tasteless bedroom apartment on the second floor of the downtown Hustler Club.

  The village of Kensborough is an eighteenth-century English village just north of the Columbus suburb of Mount Air on State Route 315. Modeled after Groombridge Place, a castle in Kent, England, Kensborough features a gatehouse, a cobblestone street and gaslights, all concealed behind a mounded stone wall. This upscale housing development, which opened in 1990, was drawn up by architect John Reagan with interior design by Morgan. Just three years later, on June 23, 1993, Morgan passed away of liver failure at the age of seventy-one.

  12

  PASSING THE TIKI TORCH

  Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.

  —Peter Drucker

  Of the two partners, Lee was more interested in building restaurants than running them. In 1978, he persuaded Bill to accept an offer from Michael “Mitch” Boich to buy the Kahiki. Boich was the founder of the Boich Companies, a privately held coal mining and marketing company headquartered in Columbus. “He was a good customer of ours,” Lee said. Bill agreed, “Mitch was a great guy.” One of Boich’s favorite pastimes was playing backgammon. During 1977–78, a backgammon club met in the basement of the Kahiki.25 In the 1970s, Oswald Jacoby, author of The Backgammon Book, hired Marcy, Bill’s wife, to travel around to shopping malls, teaching people how to play the game.

  A native of Steubenville, Ohio, Mitch Boich had attended Ohio State before entering into construction, coal mining and related industries in the late 1940s. When he passed away on August 25, 2000, Representative Robert W. Ney
of Ohio eulogized him on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as “a man of tremendous vision who never lost his sense of tradition” and “a man known for his pizzazz and his strength.” What Ney left unsaid was Boich’s role as a kingmaker. Boich and his family were contributors to the campaigns of many politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Governor (later senator) George Voinovich and Governor Richard Celeste. In exchange, he expected them to support legislation that would benefit his financial interests.

  Margaret Newkirk of the Akron Beacon Journal wrote about an incident that occurred in 1988 when state representative Jerry Krupinski of Steubenville ran into Boich at the Galleria restaurant in Columbus. At the time, Celeste and New York governor Mario Cuomo had recently proposed a national tax to assist Ohio with the cost of cleaning up its coal-fueled power plants. However, Boich and other coal mine owners didn’t support it. So he told Krupinski he was about to head “across the street to the Statehouse to ‘kick [Governor] Dick Celeste’s ass.’ Krupinski said, ‘I was pretty impressed.’”

  “Mitch got around to every place,” Lee said. “He saw [Michael] Tsao at Trader Vic’s.” They hit it off so well that Boich thought that if he bought the Kahiki, he could bring Tsao in to run it. He would then lease the restaurant to him with a buy option. However, the sale nearly didn’t happen. The partners had agreed to sell the Kahiki’s inventory to Tsao for $100,000. On the day of the closing, Tsao told them he didn’t have the money. Bill wanted to walk away from the deal, but Lee didn’t. So they let him have the inventory for free. “We were sorry within two weeks that we sold it,” Bill said. “We had this great big gong, like four to five feet across, that went bong, and right after we sold it, they replaced it with this little thing that went ting.”