the smörgåsbord swedish buffet stow, ohio 1960s Vintage Postcard Unposted

Description: C-25673 the smörgåsbord Route 91, Stowe, Summit County, OhioFor over 25 years, People from all corners of the world have visited our Smorgasbord at Stow and enjoyed over 100 selections of tasty food. Write or phone for reservations: Akron Exchange.Published by GRAPHIC PRODUCTIONS, Alliance, Ohio Ohio Genealogical Society: The Ohio Story Radio [transcripts] Scripts: "Lillian Jae's Smorgasbord"https://ogsarchive.org/files/original/01776cd64d5d63c4bf598c393cd9b423.pdf DescriptionThe history of one of Ohio's most unusual restaurants, The Smorgasbord at Stow, which is now famous. Ms. Lillian Jae got her start working for Mrs. Mahorter and the Parke Tavern Hotel in Wadsworth and then branched out to start her own restaurant in Stow which opened in 1939.Creator: Siedel, FrankSource: The Ohio Story Radio ScriptsVolume 3. Number 3.: July - August - September 1949Publisher: The Ohio Bell Telephone Company, WTAM Radio, Cleveland, OHDate: Friday, August 19, 1949 6:30 - 6:45 pm https://www.ogsarchive.org/items/show/200 Local history: The Smorgasbord of Stow served up feast of memoriesStaff Writer | Akron Beacon JournalIf any patrons ever left hungry, it was their fault. The Smorgasbord restaurant offered a sumptuous feast in Stow. In fact, there were too many choices. More than 100 dishes were served each day on a bountiful table that introduced customers to the concept of buffet dining. Food that wasn’t imported from overseas was prepared in a basement kitchen by a coterie of cooks. The Smorgasbord opened in 1939 at 3983 Darrow Road in a stucco building that was the former site of the Motor Inn, a popular roadhouse. “People traveled on Sundays to the Motor Inn or the Smorgasbord,” said Ken Shuman, 91, of Stow. “The highways got busy. … They called them tin-can tourists. They had cars with running boards. They had trunks on the back.” Shuman’s uncle, L.E. Stanford, owned the Motor Inn building, whose main section was a 100-year-old home. In 1929, a worker was trying to change a tank for the kitchen range when the cap blew off. The furnace ignited the escaping natural gas. “It burned to the ground,” Shuman said. The building was a total loss at $10,000. A new Motor Inn was built but it didn’t last long and a new restaurant rose from the ashes. Lillian Jae, a New York native who grew up in Cleveland, opened the Smorgasbord after operating the Park Hotel tearoom in Wadsworth. She envisioned a fancy restaurant with exotic foods. Capitalizing on the Scandinavian custom of presenting appetizers, the Stow restaurant set up a long table and filled it with plates. Some of the fare included Norwegian sardines, Nova Scotia lox, Oysters Rockefeller, Clams Casino, caviar, pickled herring and smoked salmon. Guests could feast on the smorgasbord and order off a regular menu, which had such dishes as chicken, ham, steak, lobster, fish and lamp chops. Food was prepared in the basement and sent upstairs on a dumbwaiter. Decorated with a Scandinavian motif, the restaurant had four dining rooms, white tablecloths, an open fireplace and candlelit ambience. It was open six days a week and closed on Mondays. Cars jammed the parking lot. Reservations were preferred, but drop-in guests were welcome to wait. They helped themselves to complimentary punch served in a crystal bowl. Stow resident Arleen Shuman, 86, the sister-in-law of Ken Shuman, worked at the Smorgasbord for about three years during World War II when she was a student at Stow High School. Her mother, Marie Cross, and two sisters also worked there. “Oh, it was fancy,” she said. “It had to be just right.” Lillian Jae ran a tight ship, but she was a good businesswoman and kind to workers. “Every Monday, she would take her employees to a real nice restaurant so that we could see how they served,” Arleen Shuman said. “It was kind of a training thing.” Her sister Jean Theiss, 82, of Coventry Township, was 9 or 10 years old when she started to help out at the restaurant for 25 cents an hour. “That was a lot of money,” she said. “I wasn’t a server. I was just a ‘do it all.’ Pick it up. Bus tables. I wasn’t old enough to serve. “There was no playing around like there is in a lot of places today.” Theiss fondly recalls the Smorgasbord corn fritters served with maple syrup. “I make those today,” she said. In close quarters of the hot kitchen, workers occasionally got into squabbles, proving the adage that too many cooks can spoil the broth. “I remember the cooks were always quitting,” Arleen Shuman said. “Mrs. Jae would have to come and do the cooking — or talk to them and have them make up.” She won’t ever forget that day in 1943 when she learned that her boyfriend and future husband Ted Shuman, a sailor, was shipping out to war. “I was working and he said he was leaving,” she said. “Everybody wanted to know why I was crying.” Founder Lillian Jae died in 1949 at age 49 after a two-month illness. Her brother Leonard Simon and his wife, Virginia, operated the Smorgasbord for several years until Lillian’s son Hugh Jae assumed control in the 1950s. Tallmadge native Don Howard, 80, of Suffield Township, worked at the Smorgasbord for three years in the early 1950s. His mother, Olia Howard, was a cook there for 27 years. Howard washed pans, polished brass, brewed tea, made punch, cut potatoes, carved watermelons, cleaned shrimp and operated the deep fryer. He cut slots in shrimp, inserted bacon pieces, rolled them in batter, and fried them. “They couldn’t hardly keep it on the buffet table,” Howard said. He remembers the sweet rolls made with cinnamon and butter and coated with crushed pecans and a glaze of Karo syrup, pure maple syrup and brown sugar. “Their sweet rolls were just out of this world,” he said. Pat Renta, 78, of Cuyahoga Falls, was a Tallmadge High student in the early 1950s when classmate Don Howard told her that the Smorgasbord was hiring waitresses. “We were expected to do the best,” Renta said. “And we were just not allowed to go out there and wait on people. They took us to a back, side room where we were trained with a tray and a glass to practice lifting the glass.” She wore a white uniform and a color-coded apron that determined which dining room she would serve. The place was immaculate and the operation ran smoothly. One of the things she remembers most is the giant baked salmon with the tail and scales still on it, a regular feature of the buffet table. “He was called Freddie. I mean, he had a name,” she said. “He was as long as the board was wide.” The Smorgasbord was so fancy that it perplexed some customers. Take the caviar. “People thought it was blackberries and they put whipped cream on it,” Renta said with a laugh. Following meals, waitresses brought a finger bowl with a linen napkin in hot water. Some mistook it for soup. “They were in a different world,” she said. Renta worked at the restaurant until she graduated from Kent State in 1957. She taught English at Stow High School, moved to Wyoming, raised two kids and returned to Ohio in the 1970s. To supplement her income as a substitute teacher, she returned to the Smorgasbord. By then, John Baran and his wife, Ann, a former Playboy bunny, were the owners. Business had fallen in recent years and they were hoping to restore the Smorgasbord to its former glory. Sadly, it didn’t work out. Renta remembers New Year’s Eve 1973 as the final night. John Baran announced that the place was closing, fed the staff and opened the bar. “Then we threw our glasses into the fireplace and made a toast,” she said. The Smorgasbord shut down after 34 years. Anthony Parasson bought the building, and it’s been a Parasson’s Italian restaurant ever since. Although it’s been gone for decades, the Smorgasbord provides a feast of memories. “All of the food was just wonderful,” Ken Shuman said. “That was an elite place,” Arleen Shuman agreed. “Oh, gosh it was nice,” Jean Theiss said. “It really went over big,” Don Howard said. “The Smorgasbord was like family to me,” Pat Renta said. Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. "https://eu.beaconjournal.com/story/lifestyle/2014/05/18/local-history-smorgasbord-stow-served/10606261007/ "Smörgåsbord (Swedish: [ˈsmœ̂rɡɔsˌbuːɖ] ⓘ, directly translates to "sandwich-table") is a buffet-style meal of Swedish origin. It is served with various hot and mainly cold dishes. Smörgåsbord became known in the US at the 1939 New York World's Fair when it was offered at the Swedish Pavilion's Three Crowns Restaurant.[1] It is typically a celebratory meal, and guests can help themselves from a range of dishes laid out for their choice. In a restaurant the term refers to a buffet-style table laid out with many small dishes from which, for a fixed amount of money, one is allowed to choose as many as one wishes. A traditional Swedish smörgåsbord consists of both hot and cold dishes. Bread, butter, and cheese are always part of the smörgåsbord. It is customary to begin with cold fish dishes, which are generally various forms of herring, salmon, and eel. After eating the first portion, people usually continue with the second course (other cold dishes), and round off with hot dishes. Dessert may or may not be included in a smörgåsbord. EtymologyIn Northern Europe, the term varies between "cold table" and "buffet": In Norway it is called koldtbord or kaldtbord, in Denmark det kolde bord [2] (literally "the cold table"), in the Faroe Islands, kalt borð (cold table); in Germany kaltes Buffet and in the Netherlands koud buffet (literally "cold buffet"); in Iceland it is called hlaðborð ("loaded/covered table"), in Estonia it is called Rootsi laud ("Swedish table") or puhvetlaud ("buffet table"), in Latvia aukstais galds ("the cold table"), in Finland voileipäpöytä ("butter-bread/sandwich table") or ruotsalainen seisova pöytä ("Swedish standing table/buffet"). In Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans, it is a called "shvedskyj stol" or "shvedskyi stil" ("Swedish table") (Cyrillic: шведский стол / шведський стiл) or "zakusochnyj stol" ("snack table") (Cyrillic: закусочный стол) or "kholodnyj stol"("cold table") (Cyrillic: холодный стол). In Central and Eastern Europe each language has a term meaning "Swedish table". In Japan it is referred to as バイキング / ヴァイキング (baikingu / vaikingu, i.e. "Viking"). The Swedish word smörgåsbord consists of the words smörgås ("sandwich", usually open-faced) and bord ("table"). Smörgås in turn consists of the words smör ("butter", cognate with English smear) and gås (literally "goose", but later referred to the small pieces of butter that formed and floated to the surface of cream while it was churned).[3] The small butter pieces were just the right size to be placed and flattened out on bread, so smörgås came to mean "buttered bread". In Sweden, the term att bre(da) smörgåsar ("to spread butter on open-faced sandwiches") has been used since at least the 16th century. In English the word smorgasbord refers loosely to any buffet with a variety of dishes (as well as a metaphor for a variety or collection of anything, particularly an extensive or disorganized one), and is not necessarily used to reference traditional Swedish cuisine. In Sweden, smörgåsbord instead refers to a buffet consisting mainly of traditional dishes. The buffet concept remains popular in Sweden even outside of its traditional presentation. Buffets are for example commonly served at larger private gatherings consisting of any type of food, or at fika with a variety of pastries. For restaurants in Sweden of various types of Asian cuisine it is common to offer an all-you-can-eat buffet (in particular for lunch customers), which is referred to with the more generic term buffé ("buffet"). In an extended sense, the word is used to refer to any situation which invites patrons to select whatever they wish from an abundant selection, such as the smorgasbord of university courses, books in a bookstore, etc."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smorgasbord

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End Time: 2024-12-29T09:47:08.000Z

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