{"id":33364,"date":"2025-06-17T09:58:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T13:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33364"},"modified":"2025-06-17T09:58:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T13:58:13","slug":"dining-with-dad-and-thinking-about-him-now-while-dining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/17\/dining-with-dad-and-thinking-about-him-now-while-dining\/","title":{"rendered":"DINING WITH DAD —
AND THINKING ABOUT HIM NOW WHILE DINING"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n(This essay was in Sunday’s <\/em>Cleveland Plain Dealer.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The last time my father, Toby, ate out was at Wendy\u2019s, on his way to a leukemia treatment in Columbus. My dad really liked Wendy\u2019s. He thought he had a quasi-business relationship with the chain because he had almost invested in Wendy\u2019s — headquartered in Columbus — before the chain got big. Almost<\/i> is the key word. My dad\u2019s near-miss with Wendy\u2019s always topped my uncles\u2019 near-miss get-rich-quick chronicles at Passover Seders.<\/p>\n

I sat at Vintage India Restaurant on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood <\/b>recently, thinking about my dad. My dad bought the building \u2013 not the restaurant, the building \u2013 decades ago. My family still owns the building. My dad died in 1986. I\u2019m pretty sure Toby never ordered saag paneer in his life. Haagen Dazs, yes, but not saag paneer.<\/p>\n

Vintage India is nothing special to look at. It has big plate-glass windows facing Detroit, and a laminate floor and drop-ceiling tiles. Bland decor, good food. The owners Ram and Shakuntla Lal do the cooking and their two adult children are servers. The son studies pre-med at Cleveland State University, and the daughter does nursing. The restaurant space, in previous iterations, was a medical-supply house, mattress store, office-supply house, furniture store and a video rental outlet called Cinema Transit. None of the businesses got the foot traffic of Vintage India. I counted more than 20 diners, plus a line of take-out customers, on a recent Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Theodore “Toby” Stratton (1917-1986). 1985 photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

My dad knew something about restaurants and food. His immigrant mother became a part-owner of Seiger\u2019s deli at East 118th Street and Kinsman Road, and she also ran a mom-and-pop candy store further east on Kinsman Road. One of my dad\u2019s childhood laments was that he couldn\u2019t try out for the track team at John Adams High School because he had to work in the candy store after school.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinancial security\u201d was my dad\u2019s watchword. He started early. One summer, he worked at Cedar Point, selling corned beef sandwiches on the beach. That\u2019s the same beach where Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne supposedly developed the forward pass. It would be great if Cedar Point put up a plaque for my dad, maybe something with wording like, \u201cToby\u2019s favorite food was a good piece of rye bread.\u201d Chocolate phosphates were a close second.<\/p>\n

At Ohio State University, Toby lived in the Tower Club, a scholarship dorm in a wing of the stadium. It was a bunch of guys on cots in a big room. Toby majored in chemistry and made Phi Beta Kappa. After college, he had a lot of different jobs \u2013 none of them in chemistry. The chemical industry wasn\u2019t hiring a lot of Jews when he graduated in 1938. He eventually wound up \u2013 27 years later — a real estate investor. He put down 8% on the Vintage-India-Restaurant-to-be building in 1965 and \u201ccarried paper,\u201d meaning he had first and second mortgages. He loved leverage.<\/p>\n

If my dad is reincarnated, I hope he and I go to Vintage India. Toby will definitely appreciate the Lal family\u2019s hustle and drive. I\u2019ll advise my dad to stick to \u201c1\u201d on the 1-to-10 spiciness chart. The food at Vintage India food is hot, and my dad was a Wendy\u2019s guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  (This essay was in Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer.) The last time my father, Toby, ate out was at Wendy\u2019s, on his way to a leukemia treatment in Columbus. My dad really liked Wendy\u2019s. He thought he had a quasi-business relationship with the chain because he had almost invested in Wendy\u2019s — headquartered in Columbus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33369,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33364\/revisions\/33369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}