Word: murrays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
These perfect fall days make me sad, and there have been so many of them lately in Minnesota. My cure for sadness is, first, to clean off my glasses and, second, to take a fast ride on a bicycle. If that doesn't work, I go to Murray's. The next step is to join the Men in Their 50s Coping with Melancholy group, and I've never had to do that...
...Murray's is a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis that's been around longer than I have. In my childhood, there were the Big Three, Charlie's, Harry's and Murray's, and only Murray's survives. It is the sort of grand old joint you find in any big city, restaurants with pink drapes and a 70-year-old coat-check girl and a pianist who plays Deep Purple and the waitresses have names like Agnes and Gladys and the menu harks back to the Age of Steak; a place where a fiftyish couple can enjoy a Manhattan and tuck...
...home or at the homes of relatives--we were sensible people, not spendthrifts or dreamers. Once a year we went to the state fair and had Pronto Pups. That was it. Every Sunday morning, however, my father drove us to church, and the route took us past Murray's, and I would glance up from my Bible and the verse I was memorizing for Sunday school, and there was Murray's big marquee and the name written out in orange block letters and, above, a sign that said COCKTAILS/DANCING, and over the years, memorizing one verse after another, you build...
...saved up Murray's for years, and then, when I turned 21, I couldn't go there because I was under the terrible burden of being hip--it took years for that to wear off, during which I ate what hip people were eating in Minneapolis then, ethnic food, most of it awful. I thought of Murray's as a den of Republicans: steaks became (in my mind) politicized. And then, on the very last day of my misspent years in graduate school, my role model and hero Arnie Goldman said, "School's out--what...
...feeling flush and lovable. And then I went back one night last week with Jenny and my son and his girlfriend. We strolled in, and I saw the pink drapes, and I felt the old euphoria rise in my heart, and it dawned on me that I had invented Murray's: as a child, reading the words SILVER BUTTER KNIFE STEAK FOR TWO off billboards, meditating on them, I had created a kingdom of elegance more durable than any restaurant where an immaculate young waiter introduces himself and tells you about the broiled marlin served in fennel mustard sauce...