Dobb's House Luau - Memphis, Memphis, TN (restaurant)

Swanky,

Here is an interesting matchbook I have. It appears that the Dobb's House Luau in Memphis operated under different ownership after the Dobb's House chain left.

Looks to be the 1970's by the font.

DC

On 2009-10-30 22:14, donhonyc wrote:
I wonder if Elvis ever considered going here. It was literally 15 minutes away from Graceland.

3135 Poplar is not 'just 15 minutes' from Graceland. It is like 30 minutes from Graceland.

I ate at the Luau in Memphis in 1977. It was a pretty popular spot then and I remember the Moai outside the closed restaurant when I went to school in Memphis in late 1982. I have pictures of the old moai...somewhere. If and when I can find them, I will post them to this thread.

On 2010-07-03 10:06, Dustycajun wrote:
Found this picture of the lounge singers at the Dobb's House Luau Restaurant in Memphis in the Memphis Magazine.

The author, Vance Lauderdale, also posted this picture that he originally thought was from the Dobb's House Luau but his reader indicated it was not.... so it's a mystery.

Anybody (Swanky) got and idea of where this might be from??

DC

This second pic is from The Harbor House, which was in Midtown on Watkins Avenue...close to the Sears office building...not too far from Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College).

On 2013-05-20 00:30, Vince Martini wrote:
I ate at the Luau in Memphis in 1977. It was a pretty popular spot then and I remember the Moai outside the closed restaurant when I went to school in Memphis in late 1982. I have pictures of the old moai...somewhere. If and when I can find them, I will post them to this thread.

Vince, is it that huge Moai you are talking about? Any luck with coming across those pics?

Vince,

Hope you can find the pictures one of these days. I found this ad online showing the exterior of the Memphis Luau Restaurant.

What a great looking exterior with the Tiki, A-Frame entrance and that awesome outrigger sign. Would really be nice to see a photo or two.

Also found this interior photo that was credited to the Memphis Luau.

DC

There's a great website for Atlanta History called the Atlanta Time Machine.

They have a postcard of the interior of the Dinkler Luau. Looks very much like a TV.

See here: http://www.atlantatimemachine.com/misc/dobbs.htm

But also click on the radio jingle at the top for a vintage radio ad for the Atlanta Luau, it was the one on "Sound of Tiki."

It says here too that the Atlanta Luau as the model for about seven other locations throughout the SE, including Memphis.

Also click the link to the Atlanta Tiki Retaurant Ads. Some great vintage ads. Apparently at some point the "Atlanta Luau" became the "Atlanta Tiki."

They also have several ads with pics of the old Atlanta Trader Engs.

HERE is my post about the history of the Luau.

That link will keep the Dinkler's here in this thread where they belong.

I'll have to make a new entry, as, what I just found out is concerning the Atlanta Luau.

I just got off the phone with Carling Dinkler III. His father was the one who built the Luau in Atlanta. He thinks it was in 1955-56. He said his Dad had a passion for the restaurant business though he owned all the hotels through Carling Sr. It was Jr who had the hotel restaurants brought in house and run by the Dinklers. He had this secret idea up his sleeve for a long time and had been to New York and Chicago and inspired by Trader Vic's he built the Luau across from the Piedmont Hosptial in Midtown Atlanta. He said it was a very modern structure and very new and innovative. Nothing like it in the lazy southern city of Atlanta. People were lined up to get in. They won awards for their food and they brought a lot of the crew from Chicago's Trader Vic's down to work there. He said it was designed by a New Orleans architectural firm of Curtis - Davis, who also designed the Superdome. He says Arthur Davis is deceased, but Buster Curtis is still around. The head of the Luau died recently, but he is contacting the widow to see if she has any scrapbooks or anything. He does not.

He said there were moats inside and you had to cross bridges to get to your table. They had a "Chopsticks Club" and they would burn your name into bamboo and when you came in to eat, they put the bamboo on a rack out front so people knew you were in the restaurant.

It was his Dad that put the Surf Rider in the Nashville Dinkler and he said also the Saint Charles in New Orleans had a Polynesian restaurant.

The Luau was a great business, as we all know, due to the gross profit margin of cheap rum drinks sold at high prices. The Luau was open for only two years when they sold it at great profit to the Dobb's. They used it as a sort of blueprint to open all the other Dobb's House Luaus around airports where they were located. That was in 1959 he thinks. That doesn't jive with the 2 years and opening in 1955. But it narrows things down a bit if someone in Atlanta hits the library archives to research it.

As usual, I am very late to the party, but I felt compelled to chime in after a DTB Zombie...My Dad is 93. We are native Houstonians, and the address that appears on the menu posted at the beginning of the threads was 5138 Westhiemer, which is right around the corner from the house that my parents built [and that i grew up in] in 1957. A while back, I was pressing my father for any Tiki memories that he had, and he quietly mentioned "The Dobbs House." What? I asked him. To me, there was a Dobbs House that was like a IHOP diner sort of place in the 1970s there. He maintained that the Dobbs Houise was the "Tiki" type of place that I was describing. After reading the previous threads and viewing the menu information, I feel my father is correct in his recollection of the Houston Dobbs House as a Tiki temple similar to the ones in Atlanta et al.

I kinda scanned through this thread to see if anyone else had posted anything about this....didn't see anything so here goes:

While looking through swizzle sticks on ebay, I came across this pic:

I noticed the stick on the far left, cropped and rotated it:

Looks like the Dobb's House in Miami was either located at, or they had another site at the airport.

howlinowl

This thread has conflated a few Luau places, but getting back to the Memphis Luau:

An article with a pretty good run down of the history.

Matchbook.

The concrete moai was destroyed when they tried to move it.

Like Mai-Kai: History, Mystery and Adventure the book

[ Edited by: Swanky 2015-10-27 07:27 ]

A new ad and interior photo from the Memphis Luau.

And a nice photo of the exterior A-frame entrance.

DC

On 2019-02-26 10:47, Dustycajun wrote:

DC

Dang. Is that that the base and top of the legendary moai seen on the other side of the entrance canopy???