The Hardee's thread brings back memories of some of the chains that are either gone or have left the Chicagoland area.

Two of my favorites are Rax Roast Beef (great salad bar and menu in general) and Stuckeys (awesome breakfast buffet).

Another is The Lure Hamburgers (most recently in Portage, IN) which used to be decent to good but slipped badly the last time I was there a couple years ago and is now gone.

What are some other blasts from the past good or bad??

Edit: Substitute Shoney's for Stuckey's. Great breakfasty buffet for sure. Damn my memory sucks...

Brown's Chicken in Palatine.

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Is there a less appetizing restaurant name than "Rax"? It sounds like a pharmacy, or possibly a strip club.

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Wag's Family Restaurants. We used to go to the one on 95th by Evergreen Plaza all of the time.

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All you can eat shrimp was great.

I miss Wags.

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Still a handful of locations left, including Springfield, IL.

http://www.raxroastbeef.com/index.php#

A fast food place with a salad bar is just such a relic of a bygone era, when you could go to a crappy chain fast food restaurant with prefab architecture and expect an adequate meal. Same with all those Greek coffee shops all over the place. Now we want tapas and Thai.

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YIKES!

Shakey's Pizza for me, yeah it wasn't the best but it was damn good for the price and the mojo fries.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

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Shakey's (the buffet) was great for sure (for the money). Damn shame when they closed.

The video would not play for me, but reading a few of the comments I don't need to.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

Yep, and the fried chicken they made was pretty damn good too.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

Wag's is exactly my choice as well .... discovered "chicken fingers" as a kid there .... mind blowing concept at age 6 or so.

Not nearly as vintage, but I would probably kill a number of you to get a Double Original from Schlotzsky's.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

My dad used to get tacos from a place called Naugle's, which, upon research, seems to have been a mostly west coast chain. Long trip for fast food.

No idea what a Wag's is.

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Bob Evans is in with Ponderosa, still kind of around....but not really.

On Anthony Bourdain's new CNN show he did an episode in Korea-town in LA and one of the people he profiled took him to Sizzler for lunch. Bourdain looked more frightened of what he was about to experience than any blood sausage/intenstine filled meal in rural Eastern Europe.

GF in H.S. worked at Wag's in McHenry.

Was it Wag's before Shoney's or was it Shoney's before Wag's?

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@audioidkid

Wag's became Shoney's, then Shoney's went away to just the south .... around here they turned it into a Colonial, so not a bad trade.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

I remember Wag's. My Grandma used to take us there as kids all the time

John's Garage

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Sometimes the Wag's in Carol Stream would have a clown that made balloon animals for the kids.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

John's Garage! Always went to the one in Woodfield. There were others besides Woodfield and Hawthorn?

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There was one in Ford City that my parents took us to a few times a year. We always got chicken tenders and my parents always had french onion soup.

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Some really awesome childhood memories of Shakey's all-you-can-eat buffet, mojo fries, watching pies made through the glass and the automatic piano player. Hit one up in Janesville or Milwaukee about 5 years and it was dreadful. It truly made me sad.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

Sizzler sounds so delightfully trashy for a restaurant name. It sounds too perfect to be real, like those Seinfeld movie titles.

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"Shakey's Pizza was founded in Sacramento, California, on April 30, 1954, by Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson and Ed Plummer. Johnson's nickname resulted from nerve damage following a bout of malaria suffered during World War II." awesome

"There are now more branches in the Philippines (then under San Miguel Corporation) than in the United States."

Did they have any in the area? I think I'm just inventing them, but from your description it seems like I might have (very) vague memories of such a place. I could also be conflating it from when there was a Happy Joe's on Lake Street in Aurora .... played Pac Man for the first time there shortly after it came out .... wonderful.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

They should reopen Shakey's as a Neil Young concept restaurant, like Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. I'll have the out of the blue and into the blackened chicken.

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Rocky Roccoco's. I loved that place and I'm really not sure why. Probably the bad as cuban pimp looking guy that it was named after. I enjoyed my last pizza and mug of root beer there in high school at the Spring Hill mall.

Fuck shoneys. There is one down the street from me. You couldn't pay me to go in that place.

I remember hitting up Marie Calander's and Bakers Square back in the day though they may still exist....at least 1 does in the freezer of the grocery store.

Connies Pizza was aight.

These are all basically places I remember going to at Fox Valley so while they are no longer there they might still exist elsewhere.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!