The wild, nearly unbelievable tales from ‘unsavory’ Dallas bar J. Alfred’s

On September 10, 1971, three friends opened their first Dallas bar and restaurant on Oak Lawn Avenue. You know it today as the Al Biernat Steakhouse near Highland Park. But 50 years ago J. Alfred’s was selling schnapps for 5 or 10 cents a glass, collecting stories that today seem too wild to be true.

“We never timed this thing to make a lot of money. We just wanted to have fun, ”says Gene Street, now 80 years old.

“And meet girls,” adds Phil Cobb, 78.

This archive photo shows The Wine Press, a wine bar that closed “after the rough J. Alfred’s” on Oak Lawn Avenue in Dallas.(DMN file photo)

Maybe they wouldn’t have suspected it then, but Cobb would have about 100 restaurants over the next 50 years, including Mi Piaci, Balboa Cafe, Tejas Cafe, St. Martin’s Wine Bistro, and the San Francisco Rose. Street helped start or operate 200 restaurants, most notably Black-Eyed Pea and Cool River, and later El Chico and III Forks.

It all started with J. Alfred, where a toilet in the middle of the room was filled with peanuts.

“We cleaned a lot,” says Street: Customers reached into the dresser, grabbed a handful of nuts and ate them, leaving the shells on the floor. After “seven or eight years”, they suspect, they had to remove the public potty – not for hygienic reasons, but because the fire department did not like the potential danger of peanut casings near smokers.

As Street and Cobb tell, the next nine years were some of the funniest of their lives.

Some of the stories seem like legends that have been made up about too many beers. Like this one: Billy Bob Barnett, the founder of Fort Worth Music Hall Billy Bob, allegedly ate a dead rat found in J. Alfred’s attic and then hunted it down with Miller Lite. A 1982 Dallas Morning News story set the record – if you want to believe it:

“It was a mouse,” Barnett told The News, “and a slot.”

The bar should be called The Volstead Act. Street thought it was a cheeky way to fret about the ban until he researched what the law actually did: In 1919, the Volstead Act allowed the ban to be enforced.

“We got it backwards,” says Cobb.

So they named it J. Alfred’s, after a poem by TS Eliot entitled “The Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock”. It was a dream idea from some bar owners in their twenties for the first time – and it didn’t fit the atmosphere of a place where debutants danced on tables and still wore their white dresses. A man is said to have ridden into the bar on a motorcycle. Occasionally a woman would appear with a snake around her arms and neck.

J. Alfred’s was on time: it opened five months after Texan bars and restaurants started selling liquor per drink in 1971. The new drunk bill made J. Alfred’s a particularly interesting place for young drinkers in Dallas.

“At one point we sold more draft beers than anyone in Dallas,” says Street.

For over 50 years, Street and Cobb bought and sold dozens of properties in Dallas. (They also parted ways with the third partner at J. Alfred’s within the first year or two of doing business.) Street and Cobb eventually bought a house in Maui, just for fun, from their profits. They also bought a $ 750,000 private plane, painted it lavender, and rented it out to businessmen who could afford to fly their friends on a silly looking plane owned by some of Dallas’ most prolific restaurateurs.

In 1980, just before J. Alfred’s turned 10, the bar closed. “We closed a restaurant that was making money,” says Cobb.

After all the fun? Why?

In 1980 a story in The News declared J. Alfred’s an “unsavory” place where Street was slapped in the face after turning down the volume on the jukebox. Cobb tells an even dirtier story:

“We were joking: if you can find a syringe, that’s fine. Well one night we found two. And that was it, ”says Cobb.

The seedy J. Alfred’s grew into a long list of Dallas bars and restaurants: Bully’s 1974, Black-Eyed Pea 1975, Lakewood Yacht Club and Dixie House 1978, Greenville Avenue Country Club 1979. And more.

In 1980, J. Alfred’s closed and became The Wine Press, a casual bar that sold much more champagne and Bordeaux than draft beer. And oh if these walls could talk

“I’ve never had a boring day in business with you,” says Cobb to Street, who is sitting at a table at Al Biernat a few days before the 50th anniversary.

“It all started here.”

Management consulting from Gene Street and Phil Cobb:

• “Get in to have fun – but you have to make money,” says Gene Street. He eventually ran up to 200 restaurants, including Black-Eyed Pea and III Forks.
• “Never spend more than 39 cents on a ballpoint pen,” says Phil Cobb, who has worked in over 100 restaurants. “Pay attention to the pennies: If you pay attention to the pennies, it will take care of itself.”
• Both said it was okay to make major changes in a restaurant or bar – quickly. They opened a fondue restaurant and bar called The Old Church in the 1970s and then found it was agony to keep the fondue hot. So they turned it into a burger joint instead. “You could make mistakes like that back then,” says Street. “These mistakes are now more expensive.”

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter @sblaskovich.

[ad_1]