The Phoenix food world may have lost an institution this week. Durant's steakhouse, a 75-year-old fixture in the city’s food scene, announced a temporary closure in the wake of a sale to new ownership.
The restaurant isn’t being shut down — it’s actually been acquired by a family that owns other steakhouses, and the new owners are promising a “renaissance” for Durant's. But was there anything wrong with the old version?
Robrt Pela, KJZZ contributor, joined The Show to remember the Durant's.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Off the air, you told me that the closing of Durant’s is one of those news events where you're always going to remember where you were when you found out about it. So my first question is, where were you?
ROBRT PELA: I was doing laundry and I got a text from my friend. I mean this gives you an idea of how for many of us this, this was an important moment in time. I got a text from my friend Kimberly Baker, who's a foodie and a former restaurant owner, and she grew up in Phoenix, but she lives in Ohio. She's been in Ohio for years.
And she texted me and said, What's going on? What, how are, how are we going to, what's, what is this? And, and I'm like, you're in Ohio and this is shaking you up and, and it probably should because it was a big deal for us.
DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah, but the kind of existential tone of just the words in that also evokes the, the associations people seem to have with this place. I am a Johnny-come-lately to Phoenix. I haven't even lived here a year yet, so I unfortunately never got to go to Durant's. For people like me, we have a lot of Johnny-come-latelies in Phoenix. Tell us what was really special about it. What set it apart?
PELA: So you know, Durant's had a, it was the restaurant opened in 1950. It had a very specific old school steakhouse vibe. But it was not campy. It wasn't kitschy. It wasn't, let's, let's try to look like 1957. It wasn't that at all. It was just that it had never changed, right?
And so it had a shtick, but it was not manipulative. It wasn't like, look at how goofy we are pretending like it's 1963. They weren't. The red flocked walls were there because that was what Durant’s looked like, and you entered through the kitchen because that was what you did and.
DINGMAN: Oh, that’s cool.
PELA: Yeah, and there, there, you know, like a lot of things that stick around, there, there's a cult around it. We all collected these dessert chips. They look like poker chips. They have the Durant's logo on them. They're issued once a year on the anniversary of the restaurant. And people like book weeks in advance to make sure that they're there that night so that they can get the new dessert ship. You only need one. It's not like they expire.
And yeah, I mean, it, it became part of the landscape in the way that old restaurants do. But in this case, what was special is there was never a point in the ‘70s or in the ‘80s where someone came in and said we've got to update this place, we've got to make it look like 1983.
DINGMAN: Right, it never became like an imitation of itself. It sounds like it always just was what it was.
PELA: Right. It wasn't retro.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, and steakhouse culture is such a thing in people's minds, you know, there's like national chains that are kind of trying to evoke what it sounds like Durant's really was.
If I'm not mistaken, you know, one of the things we think about in like steakhouse lore is like mob affiliations. Like was there a hit there, was there not? If I'm not mistaken, Durant's had like a real mob connection, right?
PELA: Yes, so Jack Durant, who opened the place in 1950, was a small-time gangster. I mean, you know, very small time, but he should hang out with the big guys, and when they came to Phoenix, they would stay with him at his house on Central Avenue and they would dine at Durant's.
The part of the lore, and this is just coming to me now, is, you know, Don Bowles, the journalist who was murdered at the Clarendon Hotel in the ‘70s. The story has long been that the meetings that, behind planning that murder took place at Durant's. I mean, who knows, right? But that's the kind of place it was.
DINGMAN: Yeah, and that's the kind of thing that keeps a sense of authenticity flowing through a place. This shutdown, a supposedly temporary transition to new ownership. This is the kind of thing that we're seeing a lot of here in the Valley, right?
There's a lot of long standing institutions that the name is being preserved, but new owners are kind of making changes. How do you see this as in dialogue with the rest of those?
PELA: I hope that it is distinct from that. I know what you're talking about. You mean the fact that the Circle's Records building, which was a Studebaker …. showroom in the ‘50s, is now largely preserved as the lobby of a skyscraper and there's a restaurant there.
It was recently announced that the Punchcard building, the Phoenix Financial Center Highrise is going to no longer be an office building but rather condominiums and a hotel
Cities need to change, right? We, we can't, we can't be scrapbooks for ourselves. We have to be, we have to evolve with the time. So those are good things. Sky Harbor no longer needed two little tiny, out of date, largely useless places to grab a plane and so now we have two great big ones. We need to evolve.
Durant's, I think Durant's does not need to evolve. I think what I'm hoping for is that everything will stay the same, the, the, the red flocked wallpaper and the menu. The food until a couple of years ago was really quite good.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, we know that the folks who are taking it over are also in the steakhouse business, so we'll have to see, but I guess I'm wondering, we have just about 30 seconds left here. If you are the kind of person who used to love to have a martini at Durant's, watch the sunset. Where would you recommend people go now to get a similar old Phoenix experience and perhaps toast the demise of Durant's?
PELA: Maybe the Stockyards or I don't know, Alexi’s or El Chorro Lodge. There's a place on East Thomas Road called Avanti which is very groovy in a ‘70s way.
You know, I talked to the food writer Dominic Armato about this yesterday and he said the thing that they can do right is not to mess it up. And I think that kind of sums it up. They, the new owners probably need to stick with the Durant's vibe, or we're not going to be happy about it.
