The great Halifax "I remember when" thread

[Keith P.]

I had mentioned an earlier recollection of being taken to the Town & Country Restaurant on Quinpool by my parents when I was a kid. Maybe a dozen years later during the week I graduated from university I wanted to take them to dinner on my own dime. The T&C was long gone by then but in the mid to late '70s the place to eat was Pepe's, on SGR, sort of exotic for the times, so I took them there. They had never been there.

As I recall the food was great and the service wonderful - in fact I can still somewhat recall the server, blonde, young, friendly, and very good. But (though they never said anything, then or later) I had the distinct sense they didn't like it there. It wasn't the kind of place people like them - lower middle-class, growing up in the Depression era, traditional eaters - would ever go to. There were no hot chicken sandwiches on the menu, no meat-and-potatoes stuff, very few things they would have had before. I remember feeling badly afterward. In retrospect, I should have let them pick the place to go.

That aside, Pepe's was great, and I was sorry to see it close - I guess it just went out of fashion. In later years the same ownership opened Cabbagetown down in the basement, a popular dance bar for a while.