Shambarger’s was preparing to sell, move

Forty years ago this week, a local landmark was being prepared for sale.

The Feb. 19, 1983, edition of The Commercial Review featured a story about the impending sale of Shambarger’s Restaurant in Redkey.

The restaurant had once been in the in the national spotlight, receiving mention on page one of the Wall Street Journal and being celebrated in scores of other publications.

It had closed after an 89-year run in January 1983. Sale of the building and its contents was scheduled for March 19 of that year.

Beth Miller Shambarger, who led the family owned corporation along with her sister Sara and brother John Mark, said the site closed for “personal” reasons but that the restaurant would open at a new location April 1.

The French eatery was opened by the Shambarger family in 1895. It changed hands several times in the 1920s before being reclaimed by Tom Shambarger in 1928. It was brought to the peak of its popularity in the 1960s and ’70s by John and Harriet Shambarger. (John had begun working at the restaurant in 1930 after graduating from high school.) Beth and Sara took over in the late 1970s when their father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

At the height of its acclaim, Shambarger’s was known for eight-course meals that would last four or five hours, the zany antics of John Shambarger, the hodgepodge antique interior decor, the nondescript exterior and its unlikely location in Redkey.

“A less-promising front to a place to eat is hard to imagine,” one writer opined in 1972. “But inside, it’s another story — an ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ‘Laugh-In’ fantasy world of wild, wonderful food and wilder entertainment.”

Beth Miller Shambarger said the decision for the location change was not easy but was a positive step.

“It wasn’t an overnight decision we made,” she said. “It was just something I wanted to do, so I did it.”