Mario’s Of Windsor

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• cool stuff Andrew! something tells me that's the Mario.

  "Mario's: for a plesant evening" just don't see things advertised that way no more.

  hang on a tick.....what's that annomily on the exterior wall?

  fr..........freeeeeee, i can't even read that.

  oh...nevermind, it's free parking on a residential street. i thought it was in the parking lot. blew my mind for a second there.

• That's Kees (pronounced "Case") Roozen, who was not only at Mario's but also occupied a position of prominence as controller/general manager etc. at the Elmwood Casino when it was a renowned nightclub attracting A List stars.
  There was another Mario's Restaurant, too: on the southwest corner of Ouellette Ave. and Tecumseh Rd. where Ouellette dead ended at Jackson Park in the times before the familiar overpass was built ("that 'Highway to Woolco'"....now Wal-Mart.....as one dissident City Council member scornfully called the now vital road bridge which connects South Windsor with the older parts of the city).

• I can't say for sure but I have a feeling the news photo might be from the Mario's at Tecumseh and Ouellette. The bar looks more like the one in that location. I was never much of a drinker but my memories of the "Bentley's" Mario's are of a classier dining room with less prominent bar unless there was a separate bar side I wasn't in which just doesn't "remember right". Maybe someone else of my vintage can correct me.

• I remember reading that Mario's also didn't allow people of colour in their establishment(s) but not sure when that ended.

• Well ME, the whole country wasn't terribly friendly to people of colour for a while either.

• My father, Nick, was an early chef at Mario's at the corner of Tecumseh and Ouellette. Following his stint in the war, Dad started to work for Mr. Mario and Frank Cundari (daughter Emily was an opera singer)in 1946. We lived on Forest avenue and Dad walked to work daily.
  Mr. Mario sent my Dad to Chicago to learn the process of preparing this new food item called a "pizza". Ovens were purchased and Mario's (Tecumseh and Ouellette) became one of the first, if not the first, restaurants in Windsor to serve pizza. The restaurant had a large neon rooster sign on the front and was a local hangout for the students of Kennedy Collegiate. Many of Windsor's prominent and not so prominent citizens spent many hours in the main room enjoying the fine food......at reasonable prices. I'm sure the bar in the photo was at the Ouellette avenue Mario's. This was a much more elegant establishment then the tecumseh road location. I do recall Mr. Mario having children's Christmas parties at the Ouellette Avenue location and always bringing in disadvantaged and physical disabled children. Lot more to tell. Thanks for reading.

• My first taste of pizza pie was at Marios' on Tecumseh Rd.
  It was a taste that I have yet to enjoy since as that was and to me still is the best pizza ever.
  They also had Seeburg jukebox stations at the tables so if I had been a good boy my dad would let me play some songs.
  I was pretty young and didn't know a lot of the "teenage" songs, but got a real thrill out of those table type jukeboxes. Flip the cards back 'n forth. If the place was crowded it was sometimes difficult to hear your selection.
  C P
  I wonder what a pizza cost back then

• Hal,

  Thanks there was some writing on the back of the photo that didn't make much sense, but it now looks like it does say Keez Roozen.

• Kees it is. My parents, who NEVER went out to eat took me there for my 16th birthday, back in '65 (19 that is). I have a faded color print of me and sis and the folks standing in the parking lot. Pompadour hair and skinny pants several inches too short. There may or may not be a Ford Galaxie in the background (Dad drove a '63 Strato-Chief). A year later my Assumption High homeroom mates and I were the champions of the annual Christmas can drive (knocking on doors to beg spare food for the less fortunate). Thanks to classmate Bill Lombardo ( Bill where are you?), whose dad had something to do with Lombardo Construction, we fanned out over the city in the company fleet, hauling truckloads of booty back to campus. Our reward? A pizza party at Marios (the main room - downtown). We ate a LOT of pizza(and no beer,can you imagine?). The "other" Marios, which I believe was the original one, was a classic "diner" in the '50's and '60s style. A long counter with a line of overstuffed vinyl covered stools on the west side and vinyl booths along the eastern windows. Very groovy hangout on Friday nights after back-to-back football games at Windsor Stadium. Windsor was a happening place back then.......
  christmas

• My father, a salesman for the old Sterling Building Materials in the '50s and early '60s, loved downtown Mario's, which despite the exterior appearance of the place was about the stateliest dining room in Windsor, and was famous for roast beef. We could rarely afford to go there as a family but he went for business dinners sometimes: the Windsor Home-Builders' Society, etc.
  Mr. Roosen was Dutch and once a year he organized a weekend or week of rijstaffel, the Indonesian (and now Dutch, too, because Holland was the colonial power) meal of many small dishes of various exotic foods, served with rice.
  My dad was a real meat-and-potatoes guy but made an exception for this. Once or twice when he couldn't get there for business during that one week, he would scrape up the money to take my Mom, or even the whole family.
  The other place we went en famille once in a while was Sunday brunch at the old Top Hat supper club.
  Good memories...