South Seas, Lincolnwood, IL (restaurant)

Name:South Seas
Type:restaurant
Street:Lincoln Ave & Pratt Blvd.
City:Lincolnwood
State:IL
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:
Here is another great looking pre-Tiki place, the South Seas restaurant located in Lincolnwood Illinois.

I picked up a postcard with some nice renderings of the interior.

The bar with bamboo, a large mural and swag lamp.

The dinning room, lots fishnets and cool stuff in here.

The back of the card.

Here is a matchbook from Mimi Payne's website.

The bar featured the standard Pago Pago rain on the roof and the dinning area was called the Bamboo Room.

DC

Thanks for the post, DC.

This location was mentioned in Tiki Road Trip 2 as being the single tiki location geographically closest to my house, and yet I have been able to dig up very little on it.

The two inspiring nuggets from your post are the proprietor's name, and the lil' map.
Without a proper address, I'd been looking on Lincoln near Pratt, but the map clearly show the location on Pratt just west of Lincoln, on the south side of the street.

Time to revisit my research...

James,

Good luck with your research. I know how you feel, I have been trying to find photos of the Don the Beachcomber in my home town of Santa Barbara for years.

Here is another version of the hula girl matchbook from the South Seas.

DC

Found a John Latona, aged 89, who lived in Chicago at one point.
Following up...

James, I think I have this solved. I picked up an original photo of The Pago Pago and added to the Pago Pago thread to see if anyone had any info...no response. So I started digging deeper and found that someone scored a Pago Pago Matchbook from the same address as the South Seas in April (I hope it was a TC member, forgive me for posting it) and it got me thinking that given the trees that the location was not a West Coast spot.

DC's great postcard made me look the building and I imagined less scroll work (and the artistic freedom that many early linen cards had) and perhaps a cleaner later version. The kicker was the Union 76 Gas Station. I gooogled the address and looked at the street shots and said "Damn" that repair shop (Lincoln and Pratt Power King) has the look of an early gas station. I got the repair stations number and called....A great guy "Eddie" answered and said it was a gas station before but did not know what it was. I said well thank you and..he said wait, the old owner comes around and I can call him. I said ask him about the gas station and if there was a "Hawaiian style" restaurant next door. Do want me to call you back in a week or so? He said no, I can call you. I thought oh well good try, that's the end. About 35 minutes later he called and said YES it was a 76 station and yes the old owner said that there was a restaurant/club next door where the bank is now. I know how memories are (the old owner) but I feel pretty good about this one. It was fun.