Preserve The Family Restaurant and Steak House - The Golden Steer

A brilliant banker, writer and culinary journeyman, Steve Jordan, lamented the manic idiocy that passes for Food Shows on cable television.  He noted that what had once been a comfortably informative sharing of recipes and food prep techniques is now a mere rat-race of reality TV tryting to beat the clock.

Cable has done more to kill history than Howard Zinn - witness the History Channel Lineup: Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Counting Cars.  Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall is  the greatest holistic consideration of an epoch of history and the History Channel is a cartoon station with very rare exceptions. So too. have become  Cookin Channel Food Network treatments like Chopped, Rev Runs Sunday Dinners, Cupcake Wars, and Cutthroat Kitchen.

People who relish these television servings of shallow and empty I.Q. calories, also tend to flock to LongHorn Steakhouse, Chipotle, Applebees, Chilies, Olive Garden and other trick-name ( PTSD McNugget's Shamrock Pub Grubs) big-box swill troughs.  Family owned restaurants offer better food and often better parking, service and mosty certainly atmosphere.

Yesterday, I treated my lady friend to dinner at Forest Park's. Golden Steer*.

This is a family owned and operated steak house run by the same family since 1969,  "Owners/Chefs Kiriakos (Charlie) and Gus Tzouras bring more 35 years experience in creating meals that will warm up your stomachs and your souls."

Tell me about it.

We arrived at 4:30 P.M. and were greeted by two lovely women who have worked at this restaurant for more than two decades. The hostess informed me that she also works as a soda jerk in an old fashiones icecream parlor during the day.  Our waitress was a decades long veteran who said," We love coming to work here and if we get fired, we are hired back the same day - go figure."

Loyalty begets great service.

I ordered a T-Bone medium rare with baked potatoe, roasted asparagas and Roqueford salad and the exquiite Miss Sullivan ordered the broiled scrod, baked potatoe and house salad and shared the broiled asparagas.  After we placed our order the Owner/Chef Charlie asked if we would mind moving to another table, as a large family had come in with more guests than the reservations taken - it was big Mexican American family celebrating a young lady's graduation from Dominican University in River Forest.  We were only too happy to jump tables.

By 5 P.M. the restaurant was filled to capacity and the bar was thick with people waiting for a table.

The food was wonderful and our waitress was attentive and sweetly salty with me, " Want me get a wheel chair to roll out after tucking away the grub, Honey?" Truth be told, I took home 3/4the of the T-Bone and Miss Sullivan carried away half of her scrod.

Before I could call for the bill,  the owner and our lovely waitress put a thick slice of Tiramisu between us and order us to do it justice.  I did most of the heavy-lifting.  This was Chef Charlie's thank you to us for moving to another table.  Family means much to a family business.

Will family owned and operated restaurants be around for future generations?

I rather doubt it.  Look at what passes for television and look at the forest of Applebees, Longhorns, Chili's and DT McPtomaine's.

*Get to Golden Steet - there are no on-line reservations - you must call in 

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708-771-7798

Pope Kiril Quinn - The Shoes of the Ninian Edwards

Kiril Lakota: [the shadow of the cross is on the Pope's empty chair during this exchange of dialog] Leone, how does a man ever know if his actions are for himself or for God?
Cardinal Leone: You don't know. You have a duty to act. But you have no right to expect approval, or even a successful outcome.
Kiril Lakota: So, in the end, my friend, we are alone?

The Shoes of the Fisherman

I had a great chat with veteran banker Steve Jordan, who worked in Boston, Singapore, New York and San Francisco for some of the leading banks in America. Mr. Jordan is disgusted by the destruction of banking in this country and most especially by the idiotic and gutless trend to nationalize our banks and lending institutions.

Steve Jordan reminded me of the novel by Australian Morris L. West - The Shoes of the Fisherman in which the Pope sells off all of the Vatican's assets to stop a World War sparked by famine in China.Pope Kiril I had been confined to a Soviet Gulag until he was named to replace the Pope. Jordan pointed out that this fictional Pope needed to do What Jesus Would Do, which makes for fine and inspirationally uplifting fiction, but bad economics and worse management -'What about the next Famine? Who's the next Vicar of Christ and what's he got left? Think Red China will buck up?' Nope.

Bankers quit being bankers and made themselves pawns to politicians - politicians are pawns to Programs and Programs come from Taxes. Taxes come from the Wealthier citizens and primarily from the Middle Class and also largely from businesses that pay the wages that can be taxed.

Here in Illinois, political semi-exile recluse, Governor Pat Quinn is playing Pope Kiril Quinn the First - filling the Shoes of Ninian Edwards 1826-1830( 1st Il.Guv). Ninian did one term - a full one though.

Here is Pope Quinn's Encyclical:

Quinn's proposal would raise the individual income tax rate from 3 percent to 4.5 percent and boost the corporate rate from 4.8 percent to 7.2 percent. At the same time, Quinn would shield lower-income families from the tax bite by increasing the personal exemption from the current $2,000 to $6,000. In all, the higher income taxes would generate about $3.1 billion.

He contended 5 million lower wage-earning residents would pay no increase in income taxes or get a tax cut due to the higher exemption.

Quinn also is considering doubling the $10 cost of a four-year driver's license, adding $20 to the $79 cost of a basic license plate fee and increasing vehicle title fees as part of his "Illinois Jobs Now!" proposal—a $26 billion public works program that he said would create 340,000 jobs over several years. The higher fees on motorists would fund $18.6 billion in transportation projects, including road repair and mass transit, and 10 percent of the new income-tax revenue would pay for school construction and unspecified "economic development" projects.

Additionally, the governor is backing a plan that would boost the current 98-cent per pack cigarette tax by 50 cents in the next budget year to help pay down a backlog of long-overdue bills from health-care providers to the poor. The tax could go up another 50 cents a pack the following year.

Quinn outlined his plans in a meeting Tuesday with Democratic lawmakers, who praised the new spirit of openness in contrast to their contentious budget battles with Blagojevich. Still, many lawmakers were warning that several of Quinn's plans were non-starters—including one concept which would deny cities and towns a share of new income-tax revenue.

This is Class Warfare - corporations will leave the State; Programs will bloat; More Taxes without Cuts. The Middle Class will bear more burden. Pope Quinn is not selling off State Assets to pay bills, meet debts, and cover expenses - that, Pope Quinn leaves to the Taxpayer -Pope Quinn loots the citizens and businesses that will leave Illinois.

In Morris L. West's novel the Bells Tolled for Joy - at noon today, Governor Quinn, the bells toll for Thee. Fiction and this Tax Scam are cousins.