Lloyd Center food memories

[Alberts]

I was taking a walk down memory lane with my wife discussing the "old days" at Lloyd Center, back when there were actual restaurants in the mall, instead of the generic food court.

I am certain I could still recognize the smell of walking into Goldberg's... some mixture of corned beef, lox and dill pickle. Do you remember the burgers at Mr C's Hippo? or the macaroni and cheese at Manning's?

Thank god for Joe Brown's Caramel corn, still the same fully hydrogenated recipe as thirty years ago.

Do any of you have any other memories to share? Put yourself 30 years back.

[duckduck]

Just Joe Brown's caramel corn...always a must, as a child and to this day. It's good that some thing's stick around!

[nightscotsman]

Best. Caramel corn. Ever.

What was the name of the nut shop that was near the ice rink? [something] House of Nuts? I always loved that place as a kid.

[Alberts]

Wasn't it Morrow's Nut house, or House of Nuts. That seems to ring a bell.

Also, do you remember the doughnut shop just as you entered at street level, near M and F, with the deep fat fryer in the window and the machine that dropped the dough into the fat?

I assume that in those days, every food place was individually owned. Quite a change.

[mamster]

I don't remember the specific businesses very well, but I would like to go back to the topless days. Er, before they put the roof on.

[Alberts]

Yes, I agree. When it was open air, it was unique, certainly for the time. There was an "air lock" on the door at Meier and Frank, and fountains in the courtyards.

The minute the roof went on, it became like any mall anywhere. Another sign of the generic times.

[Jim Dixon]

When I was growing up in Roseburg, the company my dad worked for was owned by one of Portland's old Jewish families. When we'd come up with him on a business trip, we often ate at Goldberg's. Roseburg was, and may still be, diversity-challenged, and one of my first real-life encounters with somebody who didn't look just like me was at the end of the Goldberg's buffet line. I started to lift my tray, loaded with a French dip sandwich and slice of cheesecake, when an elderly black man in a red coat gently took it and said, "I'll carry that, sir."

I was about 6 or 7, and I protested that I could carry it myself. But he led me to the table where my parents were sitting, laid out my lunch, and slipped away. I don't really remember what happened when I tried to get the adults to explain exactly why that man carried my food, but I do know that I began to realize that there were a few other black men in red coats, all doing the same thing, and that was all they did.

Jim

[Alberts]

Wow, the guys in the red coats at Goldberg's! I had forgotten all about that.

When I was 9 or 10, my mom would drop me off to skate with my brothers while she had a "luncheon" with her friends overlooking the rink at the Alladin restaurant. (Does the word "luncheon" even exist anymore?) I remember going up there to see that they were eating things like chef's salads and open face tuna sandwiches, while we would go to Mr C's for burgers.

Childhood, food, freedom. Can't separate them.