This 1980s menu for Stanley Stegmeyer’s Hodgepodge Restaurant includes a map of the eclectic dining rooms. (Image courtesy GRTC/Tre Rockenbach)
Today, as the unassuming structure at 4118 W. Broad St. is transformed into a new storefront for the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, little about the building acknowledges its significance in Richmond’s mid-20th-century social history. Two renowned eating establishments once operated there: the Clover Room (1946-78) and Stanley Stegmeyer’s Hodgepodge Restaurant (1979-84).
During the 1940s, Ashland brothers Beattie C. and Cabell Luck ran the processing plant of their Clover Leaf Dairy on the property. Cow-milking operations occurred in what became the dining establishment’s North Room when the Lucks opened the Clover Room Restaurant on March 23, 1946, as a small sandwich and ice cream shop amid fields and trees. Curles Neck Dairy purchased Clover Leaf Dairy in March 1952 and moved to Moore Street in Scott’s Addition.
Among the Clover Room’s nearest neighbors were the Virginia Methodist Children’s Home and the legendary Tantilla Ballroom. Word got around about 30 flavors of homemade ice cream and 30 kinds of sandwiches. A dinner menu, including a much-remembered shrimp salad, was added later. Lines soon formed at the door.
Beattie Luck oversaw daily operations and greeted guests. By the early 1960s, the restaurant had expanded to four rooms, and the staff had grown to 65 people. The Clover Room became the prime gathering spot for lunch after church, dates and a meal post-movies. Proximity to Thomas Jefferson High School on Grace Street attracted the bobby-soxers.
When Beattie Luck’s health deteriorated, Andrew Lewis, then executive vice president of Best Products, purchased the business in 1975. Three years later, he sold to John G. Dankos, who with his wife, Theresa, founded the Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House chain in 1962, and Angelo Alexandri, who ran King’s Barbecue with Dankos.
The 10,000-square-foot Clover Room underwent a 16-month, $1 million overhaul as it was transformed into Stanley Stegmeyer’s Hodgepodge Restaurant. The Clover Room’s lack of pretense was transformed into an experience — part Disney, part Vegas, part Richmond.
File photo
Visitors previewed the Stegmeyer’s concept beginning with the lobby’s fun-house mirrors and the 6-foot brass eagle lectern where hostesses met diners. Furnishings included a century-old confessional, two church pews and a Model A truck (from Ukrop’s grocers) used as a salad bar. The multitiered and -sectioned spaces created the Oval Office (a White House dining room scenario) and a Tropical Room dominated by a 16-foot waterfall, a mechanized alligator and two “loose cabooses” on railroad tracks, favored for kids’ parties.
Servers outfitted by Premiere Costumes — “We Dress for Dinner,” an ad proclaimed — included Superman, Batman and Robin, a Playboy bunny, and a prisoner in stripes. These characters performed paid and unpaid practical jokes: shoving birthday cake into the honoree’s face or planting silverware in patrons’ pockets.
Richmond didn’t quite know what to make of the Hodgepodge. Despite a piano bar and a dance floor that lit up a la “Saturday Night Fever,” the novel concept and perhaps even the food weren’t impressive enough to mint return customers. It closed in 1984.
The Dankos’ concept came ahead of the local curve of theme restaurants, such as The Tobacco Company and later Havana ’59, or the ubiquity of chains like TGI Fridays and Applebee’s, whose cluttered aesthetics evoke old-style neighborhood pubs.
The Model A went back to Ukrop’s, and it remains in the family, driven out for special occasions and the annual Christmas parade on Broad Street.
A version of this column appeared in our May 2001 issue.
