Blue Fountain Room: Hotel La Salle (restaurant)

Street Address: 
La Salle and Randolph
Chicago, IL

Culled from: Drury, John. Dining in Chicago, New York: The John Day Company, 1931, pp. 61-63.

Note: The Newberry Library holds the personal papers of author John Drury.

BLUE FOUNTAIN ROOM:HOTEL LA SALLE

Chafing Dish and Saxophone

Here you may see those two highly-polished instruments, the chafing dish and the saxophone, manipulated by the fingers of experts. Quickly and deftly the waiters prepare the chafing dish specialties of this dining room at your table — veal chop saute with bacon and fresh mushrooms a la Melba, breast of capon with Virginia ham and rice a la Hongroise, whole breast of baby chicken a la Queen Roumanienne, or Lake Superior Jumbo whitefish a la Mary Garden. You are thrilled by the Continental aspect that these chafing dish activities give the place, and you are more thrilled upon eating that which you have seen prepared before your eyes.

Meanwhile, the saxophone is in deft hands also — which is a more American feature. The room is alive with the intoxicating, but not blatant, music from "Husk" O'Hare's orchestra, and couples are tripping the fox trot fantastic under the colored lights and around the fountain of blue water in the center of the room. All is gay, and colorful, and elegant — and you feel that you are having a time of it.

Such is the Blue Fountain Room at dinner hour. But during luncheon, the atmosphere is more restrained and dignified. Then it is that you find the lovers of good victuals collected at the tables — principally bankers and capitalists from the La Salle Street financial district. The Blue Fountain Room was one of the favorite dining places of the late James Patten, the wheat king; here also came the late John J. Mitchell, the banker, and the late James B. Duke, the tobacco king. At the present time, during luncheon, you are likely to run into George M. Reynolds, the banker; Henry A. Blair, the traction magnate; and Joe Leiter, the millionaire. Here it was, also, that Paul Leach, noted political writer of the Chicago Daily News, held many of the conversations with his friend. General Dawes, which led to the writing of "That Man Dawes," a recent biography.

The prices in the Blue Fountain Room are not as high as you might expect after reading the above names. Therefore, if you want to indulge in a chafing dish dinner, we know of no better place in town than the Blue Fountain Room.

Incidentally, Hotel La Salle contains the only roof garden in the Loop. It is on the top floor, open during the summer months only, and you may dine and dance from 6 P. M. to 1 A. M. The food is on a par with that served in the Blue Fountain Room. Here is a pleasant adventure during a hot summer's evening, with the streets of the downtown district far below you.

Blue Fountain Room: Hotel La Salle, American

La Salle and Madison Streets



Open for luncheon, dinner, and after the theatre



Special blue plate dinners, 85 cents. Table d'hote dinner, $1.50



Also a la carte — which is expensive enough



Cover charge after 9 P. M., 50 cents. Saturdays, $1.00



Dancing, 6:30 P. M. to 1 A. M.

Collection

Community

Dates

1931 - 1931

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