Lost Restaurants of Columbis, Ohio by Doug Motz

Author:Doug Motz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

A 1909 Alice Schille painting, Café at Night, from her February 1932 Maramor one-woman show. Courtesy of Keny Gallery.

Alice was also a dear friend of Parisians Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. In 1934, the pair visited Columbus, and according to Jan Whitaker, the Maramor was likely the restaurant they described when they wrote: “In Columbus, Ohio, there was a small restaurant that served meals that would have been my pride if they had come to our table from our kitchen. The cooks were women and the owner was a woman and it was managed by women. The cooking was beyond compare, neither fluffy nor emasculated, as women’s cooking can be but succulent and savoury.”

The team that Mary Love put together included Mary Pegg. Mary Pegg met Mary McGuckin in the Pi Beta Phi sorority on the OSU campus. She started out as a hostess in the Maramor and then went on to being McGuckin’s assistant. Then she was just “in charge” of the Maramor.

Mary Pegg insisted on the finest ingredients in the kitchen—nothing canned or frozen. She guarded the famous “Maramor recipes.” She often borrowed recipes from her friends and named them after her friends on the menu.

Mary Pegg stayed on with the Sher family’s ownership but left when Danny Deeds took over. She moved to the Columbus Dispatch, in charge of its food pages on Wednesdays and in the Sunday magazine. She retired in 1972 after working in the food business for forty-five years.

In 1946, the McGuckins sold the restaurant to Maurice Sher. In 1948, Sher decided to add cocktails to the mix and created Maramor Lane.

It has been written that he “toyed with Maramor Terrace, Pavilion, Patio and Promenade. He liked Maramor Lane because the letters also stand for Mighty Lovely.”

There is a funny story that Alexander Woolcott of Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin Round Table and the New Yorker demanded a Manhattan while visiting the Maramor under Mary Love McGuckin’s ownership and was told they did not serve cocktails. He sassed back that he had never heard of a restaurant that did not serve cocktails, and it was suggested he try the Athletic Club bar across the street and then return to dinner.

Apparently, he stormed out and ordered a ham sandwich and a beer at a bar nearby, never to return. When Mr. Sher opened Maramor Lane, many suggested he dedicate the first cocktail—preferably a Manhattan—to Mr. Woolcott.

Then, in 1953, a terrible tragedy befell the Maramor: its guest book was stolen! “It just disappeared into thin air. It was here one day and gone the next,” according to Mrs. Goldie Otstatt, who had been a cashier at the Maramor for many years.

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