The Bonfire
Restaurant Story
1965
A
true story written 2010 rewritten 07/2015
Howard Yasgar
This
true story about Bonfire Restaurant were related to me by my good friend
Richard Schneider who actually had reopened the restaurant.
However the beginning of this story is based
on common knowledge, known by anyone that was living in South Florida at the
time, around 1965. By 1965, I had already been living in Florida for well over two
years, having arrived in Miami in November of 1962.
At the
time you couldn’t help but notice, every evening on TV, that there was a particular
restaurant that was always seemed to be mentioned on the local news, it was
called the “Bonfire Restaurant”. And, for some reason unknown to me, The
Bonfire was mentioned on the news as being one of the best barbecue restaurants
in all of South Florida. I always thought that the hype over the restaurant appeared
excessive. Any time some famous entertainer or a politician came to South
Florida, the news channels would always mention that they had eaten at the
Bonfire Restaurant. You just had to wonder why this particular restaurant got
so much free advertising.
I had heard the name Bonfire so often
that I no longer paid attention to it, but for some reason I always thought the
restaurant was located somewhere on Miami Beach.
Back then my family often drove to South
Miami Beach because my mom lived there, so as we drove, I always kept half an eye
out looking for the Bonfire, barbecue restaurant, but for some reason, I just never
seemed to run across it.
One day while we were driving to Miami Beach
by the way of NW 79 Street, we passed through a small town called “Sunny Isles.”
Now Sunny Isles is hardly more than a wide strip of land that attaches the mainland
of Miami, to Miami Beach, It only had lots of upscale condominiums and
restaurants, but there was another reason the town of Sunny Isles was famous,
it was because it was constantly in the news, always involved in one scandal or
another, usually it was something involving gangsters or their corrupt police
force.
At one time I remember, Sunny Isles hit
the headlines because there was a Mafia style hit that happened on the main
drag, in a restaurant called, “The Place for Steak”. They said some mobster was
at the bar having a drink, when a hit man walked in and shot him right in front
of everyone. At the time that really made Sunny Isle infamous. The news media played
it up big, inferring that Sunny Isles was some kind of a magnet for the Mafia.
So as we drove through Sunny Isles, I
was looking at all the restaurant signs when I saw a strip mall on my right,
and there, low and behold was the Bonfire Restaurant, I was very excited to
have finally spotted it.
Now that I knew where it was, I wanted take my
family there for supper, I wanted to see what all the hype was about, not to
mention they always said it was the best barbecue place in town, and who
doesn’t like barbecue. Also, I thought we might get lucky and spot a celebrity
there.
There was a big neon sign over the front of
the restaurant, it was depicting a bonfire and barbecue ribs cooking over it, what
could be better, we had great expectations for a spectacular barbecue meal. However,
once we were shown to a table and looked over the menu, we were disappointed to
find little or no barbecue on it, as a matter of fact the menu had very little
of anything exciting to offer at all, I saw that there was nothing on the menu
that couldn’t be found at any other restaurant. Then as I looked around, the
interior of the restaurant, it was somewhat formal, not what you would expect
for a barbecue joint. But, I knew there had to be something special about the food,
especially after all the years of hearing about it on the news.
But unfortunately it turned out to be a real
let down, there wasn’t anything special to be had there. The restaurant had a
long bar that could seat perhaps thirty people and then there were tables for
perhaps another hundred people. There was no hint of a barbecue pit or anything
barbecue for that matter, even the décor was really nothing special. So after
our meal, we all left disappointed, and we thought that it was pretty obvious
that whomever owned the Bonfire restaurant had something going on with the news
Media that give them all the free advertising they were getting. We put the Bonfire
restaurant on the “Never go back again list”.
Several months passed, and one day, the local newspapers
and television personalities were just bursting with news about the Bonfire restaurant,
it appears they had been raided by a task force of the FBI, and the restaurant was
closed and the doors locked up. The headlines said that the Bonfire was Mafia
owned and the head Mafioso Meyer Lansky ran the restaurant. They said
That the restaurant was a hub for
the numbers rackets, prostitution, extortion, money laundering and a whole list
of other crimes including bookmaking and loan sharking. The list of reasons
that they had raided the restaurant for was pretty long.
Everyone in South Florida, knew all about Meyer
Lansky, as he was the Mafia finance man who once ran the mob’s casino’s in Cuba.
Meyer was always in the news, he had been indicted several times for various
crimes, I’m not sure, but I don’t think he was ever convicted of anything, but
it was big television news when Meyer attempted to leave the United States and go
to Israel and become a citizen, he tried doing it to avoid being indicted. I
remember seeing him on television returning to Miami, as Israel would not let him
in.
After
that, my aunt Lillian (My mom’s sister) told me that when she took the bus on
Miami Beach, she would always see Meyer walking his dog in front of his condo building,
but eventually it was reported that Meyer had died of a heart condition, while
he was still living on Miami Beach. After Meyer’s death no one ever mentioned
anything about the Bonfire Restaurant anymore, it was closed, boarded up and
forgotten.
For several years, just out of
curiosity, every time I drove by the Bonfire restaurant I would look to see if
anything was happening there but it just remained boarded up, closed for good.
Now enter into the story my friend
Ritchie Schneider.
I met
Richard Schneider because at one time he was involved in a similar Automotive and
marine parts business as I was, then when I went into the Marine business, It
wasn’t long before Richard and I became good friends, as he liked all things
marine.
One day,
while Richard and I were talking, he mentioned the Bonfire Restaurant. I was really
very curious as to what he had to say, so I asked him about it and he related
to me the following story:
As
a young man, Richard had worked for his fathers paint manufacturing business in
New York City, and when his dad passed away, Richard had received a substantial
inheritance. He then married a lovely girl who was a registered nurse, and they
moved to South Miami, where they raised a son. To earn a living in Florida, Richard
started a business flying in live Maine lobsters into Florida and selling them
wholesale, mostly to restaurants.
Richard told me, that he had a grandfather
who was also living in Miami. His grandfather he said was about eighty years
old at the time. Richard’s grandfather told him that he had formerly been the
chauffeur for the famous mobster Meyer Lansky, and Richard’s grandfather still
wore a pistol strapped to his ankle just like he did in the old days when he
drove Meyer around.
Richard’s grandfather told him that
Meyer had entrusted him with the keys and papers to the old Bonfire Restaurant,
and he still had them. His grandfather suggested that he and Richard open up
the old restaurant. He said that because Richard was already in lobsters business
they could make the old bonfire into a lobster restaurant.
So Richard’s
grandfather suggested that they renovate and open the place up again. Richard
could move his lobster business there, and together they could run the lobster
business and the restaurant, it all sounded like a great idea.
Exactly how Richard’s grandfather had ended up
with the keys and papers to the old Bonfire restaurant, was never questioned,
because he did have the keys, and the documents.
By that time the Bonfire
restaurant had been shuttered for several years and the interior would require a
complete renovation, and to make matters worse Richard had no restaurant
experience.
But Richard did have his inheritance money,
and he used it to fix up the old Bonfire restaurant building. There were contracts
to be signed, furniture and supplies to ordered, and because the building had
been neglected for so long, just about everything needed to be replaced. Not to
mention the long liquor bar that needed to be restocked. And then Richard had
to get all the new licenses, as well as set up leasing agreements for laundry
and all the things you needed to do when running a big restaurant. I think
Richard said that as his grandfather was a felon, his name couldn’t be involved
on any of the leases or contracts he signed, so it wasn’t long before
Richard’s inheritance ran out, and
he started signing for loans and leases personally.
Eventually after several months, the old
Bonfire restaurant did open up again and the customers started coming.
Richard then said, that the work of running
his lobster business, and then running the restaurant was endless work, and the
hours were long. He said he worked all day and all night,
And on many evenings some of the
local Miami drug dealers would throw big lobster parties, and those parties lasted
into the early morning hours. So Richard found he was working around the clock,
with little sleep and then every day new supplies needed to be ordered.
Richard
found he no longer had little time for his family, the restaurant business required
all his energy and attention, and it consumed all his time. That’s when Richard
started to notice there was not enough money in the till to pay all the bills.
He knew that he had no choice, he had to closely watch what was going on.
The first thing Richard noticed was that
whenever there was a few hundred dollar bills in the cash register, his
grandfather would remove a few of them and stick them in his stocking.
Richard said his grandfather’s main job
was supposed to be watching the liquor bar for theft. So every day his
grandfather, would go there with a ruler, and he would measure all the whiskey
bottles to make everyone think he knew how much booze they had sold, he thought
it would keep the bartenders and waitresses honest.
Richard started checking the bar
receipts, and things just didn’t add up, so he started watching even closer.
Every day the head bartender would show up for work early and put on a big show
of cleaning and prepping the bar, Richard said the guy even brown bagged his
own lunch. What Richard didn’t know at the time, but the bartenders brown bag
contained a large bottle of Vodka that the bartender was serving Richards customers
from it and the bartender was pocketing the money. It appeared that the
bartender was a whole lot smarter than Richard’s grandfather and most of the
profits from the bar were going to him and not to the restaurant.
Next
Richard started watching the waitresses, and he noticed that some of them had actually
copied the restaurants receipt book. Whenever a customer was going to pay for a
big meal in cash, the waitress would write up a phony receipt for pie and
coffee and turn that receipt in, pocketing the cash. Everyone was stealing from
Richard and the problems were becoming too great for him to handle them all.
Then to make matters worse, Richard’s wife
divorced him, and when that happened, Richard thought that he was at the end of
his rope, he was considering giving it all up.
One evening Richard was laying on the floor in
the kitchen, he was fixing a leaking hose under the dishwashing machine. As he
loosened the old hose, the dirty water and garbage came flooding out all over his
face and chest. Just as that happed a waitress came in the kitchen and told
Richard that there was a drunk loudmouth customer in the restaurant that wanted
to see the owner. So Richard slid out from under the machine and wiped the
garbage and water off his face with a towel. As he walked out into the dining
area, Richard was worrying as to how he was going to handle a drunk,
complaining customer.
As he
reached the table, the drunk customer asked if Richard was the owner and
Richard
Richard
replied that he was. The drunk then extended his hand to Richard, and said, “Best
lobster dinner we ever had”. Richard said his heart stopped pounding. And he
returned to the kitchen, at that point he knew he had enough, he had lost all
his inheritance money, he had lost his wife, lost his grandfather, and he was
in debt up to his ears.
The Bonfire Restaurant was then officially
closed for good.
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