Martin Restaurant

Culled from: Drury, John. Dining in Chicago, New York: The John Day Company, 1931, p. 220.

Note: The Newberry Library holds the personal papers of author John Drury.

MARTIN RESTAURANT, La Salle Street Station, Van Buren and La Salle Streets

Bankers, insurance men, railroad executives, brokers, manufacturing tailors, as well as the travelling public and an occasional celebrity, lunch or dine in the Martin restaurant, on the first floor of the La Salle Street Station. This is one of the chain of Martin railway depot restaurants operated in eastern cities. If names mean anything to you we may offer those of Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and the late William Howard Taft, as among the notables who have eaten here between trains or otherwise. Fred Frese, the head waiter, has been here for eighteen years and he is as well known at the south end of the Loop as "Bathhouse John" Coughlin. The food is delicious, the service alert, and the atmosphere quiet, if a bit old-fashioned. Plate luncheon 65 cents; dinner $1.50.