Woodward Avenue Eateries Preserve Taste of Cruising

The iconic restaurants that fueled cruisers during the heyday of car culture along Woodward Avenue may be mere memories, but diners looking for a taste of the era still can find some of the original recipes in Royal Oak and Berkley.

Favorites – including burgers and fish sandwiches – from Ted's Drive Inn, Maverick's Drive-In, the Susie Q and Totem Pole Drive-In have been preserved at Duggan's Irish Pub in Royal Oak and the Blarney Stone Pub in Berkley.

The late Larry Payne Sr. – a cruiser himself – began acquiring the recipes in 1984 after he opened Duggan's, according to his son Larry Payne Jr., who now owns the business.

Pride in keeping it alive

It was in the nick of time: The Hund sisters, who owned the Totem Pole, were in assisted living when his dad made contact and rescued the recipes for the restaurant's popular Big Chief burger and Pocahontas roast beef sandwich, Larry Payne Jr. said. His father also persuaded the former owner of the Susie Q  to bequeath its beloved fish and chips, fried lake perch and clam strips recipes, he said.

"My dad gave him 50 bucks a day to come in and teach the guys how to do the batter because that was the whole thing with the Susie Q fish and chips," Payne said.

The Susie Q recipes made their way south on Woodward after Payne and his dad, in partnership with his sisters Dottie and Gail Payne, subsequently opened "Payne's Woodward Inn," which the sisters took over in 1995. They renamed the restaurant the "Blarney Stone Pub" but kept the Susie Q recipes on the menu, Payne said.

"We still get some (old-timers) because the Susie Q closed in the early '80s," Blarney Stone manager Bo Burton said Thursday. "Following the recipe, you have to cut your own cod fillets and batter it a special way and fry it to order. ... We take a lot of pride in that, keeping it alive, you know."

'It brings back good memories'

A group of longtime buddies who met for lunch Friday at Duggan's said the recipes bring back good memories.

Jim Dietle of Milford, who went to high school in Detroit and regularly cruised Woodward in the 1950s, had a Big Chief burger.

"The thing that's cool about the Totem Pole burger is the sauce," he said. "That brings you back."

Payne said he receives requests for jars of Big Chief sauce for nostalgia parties as far away as California and New York and the Big Chief burger remains the most popular item on Duggan's' menu.

Another favorite is the Susie Q fish and chips, which Dietle's friend Rick Nelson of Port Washington, WI, polished off before he reminisced about cruising Woodward as a young man.

"We'd go to Ted's and Mavericks and The Pole," said Nelson, who grew up in Royal Oak and was Shrine Catholic High School's 1959 class president. "You used to drag race. You started at The Pole (at 10 Mile Road), headed down Woodward to Ted's (at Square Lake Road) and then turned around and drag raced back.

"I just remembered I loved it as a high school kid," Nelson said of the Susie Q fish and chips. "It brings back good memories."