Update: See the other restaurant, the Bavarian Inn, that was also owned by the Eisele family in this post from May of 2020.
Do you remember dining at the Black Forest back in the day, or any of the old German restaurants in South City? I’m interested, as there really doesn’t seem to be much of a written record for these vanished but venerated institutions.
We have a bunch of matchbooks from Eisele's Black Forest!
I *knew* there had to be a story behind that building.
Man to contact on the Black Forest: http://www.stdominicsavio.org/prod/newsletters/savioSceneOct2004/index.shtmlScroll on down to the story about Hermann Eisele – lots of info and contact stuff. The page is from 2004, but based on the info, he should be easy to contact.Hey – he's gotta be a good guy and quite intelligent, too (despite having a JD…); he went to CBC !
This comment has been removed by the author.
The son of the Eisele's owner is a lawyer in practice in St. Louis and an accomplished accordian player.And we gave our California nephews their own baseball gloves after a Cardinals game at a dinner at the Bavarian Inn.Before that the Bavarian Inn was the place for clandestine business lunches with gangsters and other questionable characters..
It used to be Joe Hrdlicka’s years ago. Joe played the accordion and was a man of many hats. He played the Irish Shillelaghi song and wrote a German version called the Schnitzelbach. He had large charts and you would have to sing along. He would take the whole restaurant out the side door and then back through the front door doing the bunny hop. He then sold the whole place to Hermann and Theresa Eisele. They made it a classy German restaurant with a band playing on weekends. My Mom worked for both employers and my brother and I worked as busboys for Herman 1970 through 1973. Those were the good old days!
When my father took the family to Hrdlicka’s for dinner it was a wonderful event. We, mom and dad and six kids, would find a place at one of the long tables where one sat with the other patrons elbow to elbow. We would order our wurst and kraut and much beer, kids got sips of beer too, and it was difficult to eat because Joe would dance in amongst us and demand that we sing German drinking songs (scripts provided) and the victims would have to perform additional silly tasks…it was great fun with much laughter that everyone shared in. Great times, late 50s, early 60s.