Post #789794 by HotelCharlieEcho on Fri, Sep 7, 2018 2:56 PM

There's another Sam's Seafood menu currently available on e-Bae that has a fun little artifact attached to it. The menu seems to be from around 1943 and would therefore appear to predate the restaurant's tiki phase. Here's the listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-SAMS-SEA-FOOD-HOUSE-MENU-seafood-East-Seal-Beach-California/192617796469?hash=item2cd8ea5375:g:LvQAAOSwqj5bZdAv. From the price increases, it looks like this one post-dates Luckyd's menu from earlier in this thread: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=4914&forum=2&vpost=643006.

What's unique about this particular listing is that it also includes a personal letter dated November 19, 1943: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pfkAAOSwlQ5bZdBz/s-l1600.jpg. As you can see from the letter, the writer and some friends took a little eating and drinking tour of Long Beach/Seal Beach and wound up hitting four different spots: Sam's, The 307 Club, The Port Hole, and Talbert's (Tolbert's? it's in cursive so I'm not sure).

The reason I found this of interest is that at least three of the four spots either already had or would later adopt a tiki/pre-tiki theme. As I understand it, Sam's Seafood seems to have "turned tiki" around 1960 ( https://www.ocweekly.com/revisiting-the-legacy-of-sams-seafood-seal-beachs-original-polynesian-palace/ ). The 307 Club opened the South Seas ( http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=52658 ) sometime before June 25, 1948 (the first mention I could find in the local news, by which time it was already "famous" according to an article entitled "Pike Barmaids Allowed To Pour Patrons' Whisky" in the Long Beach Independent). Finally, the Port Hole (aka the "Port Hole Café"), opened a tropical-themed "Palm Room" no later than the time this ad appeared in the Independent on September 7, 1945:

Tried to work my googol-fu on "Talbert's" or "Tolbert's", the barhoppers' last stop, but came up empty.

[ Edited by: HotelCharlieEcho 2018-09-28 14:54 ]