Remember Hunts? I’ve got a question for you!
From an email: I’m a former Peorian now living in Kansas City. The other day, I was dreaming of the clam chowder they used to serve at Hunts Restaurant on Farmington road. I know that the restaurant is long gone, but I was wondering if you would ask your readers if anyone knows what happened to the recipes for clam chowder and the red relish they used to serve with tenderloins? You’d think the owners would have sold the recipes to someone, as they were pretty well known in town. Maybe someone knows of another place in town that is serving one or both of these things?
{photo borrowed from Douglas Coulter’s Photostream}
July 29th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I have no idea, but I’d give my left foot for a dozen or so of their hamburgers, especially those made from their brief downtown location at Main and Adams.
July 29th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
My understanding is that when Don Crusen bought the land, he also got the recipes. Now that Don has passed away I’m going to assume that the Crusen family has the recipes.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:27 am
Yes, that’s my understanding too — the Crusen family has the recipes.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:16 pm
OK, well I guess everybody who still lives in town knows who Don Crusen is but I’ve been in Chicago going on twenty years now–during which time I’ve been thinking about Gordon Hunt’s hamburgers & Mrs. Hunt’s huge pork tenders & that red sauce on a regular basis–so how do we track down the Crusen family & Gordon’s hunt’s secrets?
For that matter, who knows the whereabouts of Ferd Sperl’s recipes from the old Peoria Room in the Pere Marquette? I waited tables for six years while I went to Bradley–I was a slow learner–and during that time, I collected a whole drawerful of bound, mimeographed booklets with detailed preparation instructions for every single thing on the menu, which Mr. Sperl would hand out as part of the three-day training course he held the first week of August every year, the week before the Peoria Room reopened after a month-long vacation.
Mr. Sperl’s view was that we couldn’t believably recommend a dish which we’d never eaten, so for three solid days, the entire staff of the restaurant had to sit in the swanky celadon-&-gold LaSalle Room, trying–and discussing–every single item on the menu & tasting all the featured wines. It was brutal, I tell ya, especially since I had to eat double helpings of everything–mine as well as Zora’s, the world’s oldest waitress, who had started as a waitress in the Hotel’s coffee shop when the Pere was brand new in the 192Os and who had switched to the elegant Peoria Room when there was a shortage of waiters during the war. She’d never worked anywhere else in her life. She was officially 84 years old when I started, but she told me in confidence one time–I think the statute of limitations on my promise of secrecy has run out–that she was actually 86, which would have made her 89 or 90 when she finally retired. Anyway, Zora knew every dish on the menu by heart, and in her croaky stage whisper, she kept up a running commentary on the endless series of dishes arriving at our table. (”Lands sakes!” she’d say. “That’s not “new”–we had that on the menu in 1962 or 1963, and I think I served three orders all year long. It’s not going to go any better this time around. But it’s good, so you can have mine. I’m on a diet. And enjoy it while you can because ten-to-one it will be off the menu by Christmas.” And she was right).
Anyway, Ferd Sperl’s food was great and in later years, I tried recreating it at home from his slowly fading instructions, with greater or less success. Mrs. Sperl’s Pinelake Salad–prepared tableside, like Steak Diane–was so good that one time two busboys got into a fistfight in the kitchen, over who had the rights to the leftovers in the big wooden bowl. Now, THAT’s a salad. I managed a pretty good version of that, and I learned to make a killer Veal Oscar from Mr. Sperl’s recipe & after a bunch of failed attempts that turned into sweet scrambled eggs, I finally mastered sabayon sauce with fresh blueberries & marsala, but somewhere along the line, I’ve lost all my Peoria Room recipes. But there has to be another set of them out there somewhere. Ideas, anyone?
howall my recipes got to : it was that good. had to sit to eat We had to course in ed instructions ammss I used to have a whole file amimeographed the recipes ’s gotthe ose recipesose recipesTenders with more of that red stauace, so .ginor
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Ok, that last incoherent papragraph: maybe I had few too many tastes of those wines, or maybe I just forgot to clean up the crumbs before I hit “Submit Comment.” What’s it to ya? Where’s those recipes? And Pics? Who’s got photos?