Extinct Gainesville Eateries

I’ve lived in Gainesville long enough (nearly thirty years) to come up with a pretty good list of now-extinct eating places that I liked to dine in. Here are some of them:

Dale’s Roast Beef … NW 13th Street (US 441)
The site that once was Dale’s is now an empty weed-grown lot just north of NW 7th Avenue. Dale’s was a wonderful restaurant that was really fast-food but had a very pretty, comfortable, and roomy dining area. Its specialty was roast beef, which was very good (I am partial to roast beef). Dale's also had one of the first all-you-can eat salad bars (its heyday in Gainesville was during the late 1970s) for a fast-food place. But what I liked the most and had to buy whenever I went there was one of their scrumptious apple turnovers (with a cup of coffee). Dales seemed to be part of a chain of roast beef eateries that just didn’t make it and died out.

Georgia Boys Barbeque …SW Archer Road
In my opinion, Georgia Boys had the best barbeque around. The dining room was cramped, but what I usually did was buy their take-out one-half barbeque chicken special that came with garlic bread, coleslaw, and fries, for a very good price. Unfortunately, Sonny’s Barbeque decided to build their own place directly across the street, and a rivalry between the two blew up in the press in the form of a contest as to which barbeque the public preferred. Nobody asked me my opinion, but soon thereafter, Georgia Boy’s closed down their business. Too bad. Sonny’s is okay, but the Georgia Boys barbeque was better.

Gordy’s Subs … SW 34 Street (now a reptile store)
For about six years, I lived in an apartment complex that was within two minutes of a bicycle ride (cutting through the adjacent apartment’s parking lot) to this establishment. It was extremely convenient to come to this place, buy a sub sandwich (they had the best turkey salad subs), and pedal quickly back home. This was back in the early to mid-1980s. Now, whenever I buy sub sandwiches anywhere, I compare them (usually unfavorably) to Gordy’s.

Primrose Inn … West University Ave
On Thanksgiving in 1977, during my time as a student at the University of Florida when I resided on-campus, my roommate and I stayed behind instead of traveling back home for the holiday. His entire family came up for a visit, and they invited me for dinner with them at the Primrose Inn. The dining there was wonderful, and it was enhanced by all of the gracious, friendly, and generous people in this wonderful family. My roommate’s mother, who as a girl had escaped the Nazis in the western USSR during World War II and spoke Russian, Polish, and Yiddish, presented me with the gift of a book titled Opowiesci Biblijne, a Polish-language book delving into Biblical stories. The next year I did take a course at UF in Polish. I still have the book and would sometime like to use it as a Polish language-learning reader. I’m not sure when the Primrose Inn closed for the final time: one day I just noticed that it wasn’t there anymore.

Brown Derby … US 441
The only times that I ate at this restaurant located on the northern border of Paynes Prairie south of Gainesville were when my sister and her family would visit Gainesville in the early 1980s and take me out to dinner with them. So, I always associate our pleasant reunions with the Brown Derby. This restaurant predated the barrage of later restaurants that invaded Gainesville and provided similar menus. At that time, in the early 1980s, it was the place to go out with others and have dinner, with something there for just about anyone’s preference in food. I don’t know about its final closing, but for a while a different restaurant occupied its location and, if memory serves me correctly, one day it burned to the ground. Nowadays, on the same site, stands a place called the Islamic Study Center.

Cathay Tea House … SW 35 Blvd (Butler Plaza)
I worked for a while at this Chinese restaurant located in a strip shopping center off Archer Road in southwest Gainesville. It was here that I learned of the great diversity of Chinese cuisine that’s out there, far above and beyond the processed La Choy and Chung King products on the grocery store shelves. There are so many Chinese foods I like (especially the way they were prepared at Cathay Tea House) but my favorites are Sichuan eggplant, Hunan duck, hot and sour soup, and fried rice. The dining room there was cozy, dark, and comfortable. Cathay Tea House is, like Gordy’s is with subs, the standard that I compare all Chinese restaurants with. And most come up short, although there are some real good ones around in Gainesville.

Wuv’s Hamburgers … NW 13th street near UF
Wuv’s was a Florida hamburger chain that lasted from the late 1970s until it filed for bankruptcy in 1981. It was known, not only for its burgers, but also for its fries with the skins on them, chili, and fried chicken. It should have been a bigger success than it was, but I guess the quality of the product is only one factor in whether a business ultimately survives. When Wuv’s closed its doors, Granny’s, a fried chicken eatery, replaced it. After that closed, Maui Teriyaki moved in. Now the entire west side of 13th Street, from University Avenue and up to NW 3rd Avenue, has been torn down in order to build more condo units (yes, that’s all we need in an already overcrowded area. Way to go, Gainesville!).

Lum’s … SW 13th street
Lum’s was an old restaurant chain. I remember one in Hollywood as well. They always advertised hot dogs steamed in beer, although I never took them up on that delicacy. I mainly used Lum’s around 1979-80 to have occasional breakfasts. The restaurant that replaced them was Cedar River Seafood, a good place to eat in its own right.

(old) Krystal … West University Ave
Right across the street from UF, this 24-hour establishment was my most oft-visited restaurant during the period when I lived on campus. They didn’t just serve those dinky almost nonexistent Krystal burgers, but also sold full breakfasts, big hamburgers, fried chicken, and chili. And their coffee was pretty good, too. Most of all, I liked just being able to sit in there with some books and study in that ambiance with a view of the campus. That particular Krystal shut down, and for a while there wasn’t any in Gainesville. Then, a few years ago they came back, with great fanfare, to a new location about three miles north on NW 13th Street. But the only hamburgers they were serving were those puny Krystals and minor variations thereof, with the rest of their former menu wiped out. I’ve noticed that they’ve lately begun to diversify their menu some, but they're still not the same as the 24-hour Krystal I grew to enjoy eating and studying at.

Sambo’s … SW Archer Road
This is the restaurant with the unfortunate name. The allusion for the name is meant to be to pancakes, of course, but a lot of people think the story of Sambo is racist. I didn’t think so when I was a kid, but then again, I guess it’s all in the way that one tells it. Anyway, I liked this restaurant, which was close to my apartment in the early 1980’s. I liked to sit up at the bar and have some coffee there and, occasionally, breakfast. After it closed for good, a similar restaurant called Season’s took its location; then a Jerry’s replaced Seasons for a brief time. Other restaurants (and a building-gutting fire) followed. Now the location has been rebuilt to house Starbucks, Moe’s, Panera, and Coldstone Ice Cream.

Jerry’s … NW 13th Street
Jerry’s had a similar menu to Sambo’s, but was closer to what was originally an all-night zone on NW 13 Street that had several stores and restaurants. I remember they had some kind of tettrazini dish that I liked a lot. Its location is now occupied by a restaurant with the strange name “The 43rd Street Deli on 13th Street”! I worked for a few months once as a cook at a Jerry’s in Leesburg, Florida. That Jerry’s went out of business soon after I left. I guess they couldn’t handle the loss!

The Eatery … NW 69th Boulevard
Between the Oaks Mall and I-75, just off Newberry Road was this great seafood restaurant. Its main attraction was its incredible seafood buffet, the likes of which I have not seen since. I remember dining there during the late 1980s. After it closed, a Red Lobster took its place.

Ryan’s Steak House … North Main Street
Simply the best all-around buffet I’ve seen in Gainesville, plus great to-order steaks, if that’s what you want. This was a place my family and I went to a lot in the 1990s. I think another restaurant took it over, but I’m not sure if it’s in business anymore.

Rax Roast Beef … SW Archer Road
I loved their roast beef sandwiches and baked potatoes. There was another Rax on NW 13th Street as well. I don’t know what happened to roast beef places like Rax and Dale’s. But I can’t speak for everyone else’s tastes, I suppose. The Rax location on SW Archer Road is occupied now by a Chick-Fil-A.

I could go on and on with this topic. But I did go over the restaurants I missed the most. There are some that are gone that I don’t miss, though, but it’s probably for the best that I don’t bring them up.