John Clark

John David Clark Jr. was born at St. Mary's Hospital in Evanston, Illinois on September 6, 1949. He lived with his parents and siblings in the northern Chicago suburbs of Des Plains, and then Mount Prospect, until he was ten-years-old, when his father's job as a textile salesman took the family to St. Louis. They settled in a large house in Spanish Lake, on the bluffs of the Missouri River.

Clark attended St. Louis University High School, graduating in 1967. He then entered Parks College in Cahokia, thinking he would be an aircraft maintenance engineer, although his earliest ambition was to be a policeman.

One of the schools I was accepted to after I went to St. Louis U High was Northwestern. It was at Northwestern that they had this law enforcement thing and I thought that was pretty cool, and at the last minute I picked Parks College.

The first Vietnam War draft lottery was held on December 1, 1969. Clark's birth date was drawn sixth.

I didn't care about going to Vietnam. Didn't bother me. You know what bothered me? It was going to take four years of my life. I didn't think I was going to die. At that age, you're bulletproof. I just didn't want to give up four years of my life.

A friend convinced Clark to enlist in the National Guard. Clark told the enlistment officer he wanted to go into law enforcement, so they made him an MP. Discharged after a six month stint, he returned to college, transferring from Parks College to St. Louis University.

Still aspiring to be a policeman, Clark took sociology courses in SLU's School of Commerce and Finance.

You don't have to go to college to be a policeman. My ambition was a little higher ― the FBI or the Treasury Department.

Clark graduated from St. Louis University in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in business.
 

John Clark - SLU High Yearbook, 1967	John Clark - SLU Yearbook, 1972

Usselman's Market had been a St. Louis institution at the northwest corner of Spring and Laclede since 1920. The market was a popular spot for Cardinals and Browns baseball players and managers who leased apartments in the area or stayed at the Coronado Hotel.

Usselman's closed in 1969. The two-story building was acquired by John A. Joyce, a lawyer and alderman, as a fee for legal work. It was not a prime real estate holding. The downstairs was vacant; the upstairs was uninhabitable, the walls crumbling.

In his final semester at Saint Louis University, John Clark walked by the boarded-up old grocery store and decided it would be a good place to open a bar.

There wasn't much around St. Louis U at the time. l got the idea of opening just a college joint ― nothing fancy ― 25 cents for 12 ounces of Bud.

1 North Spring, 1971	John Clark, 1 North Spring, 1971

Clark acquired a three-year lease on the first-floor space. He started with $7000, with $5000 borrowed from his father. After four months of sanding down old plank flooring, knocking off plaster to bare a brick wall, putting in plumbing, rough-wood paneling and a bar, and building an inventory, he had about $20 left in his checking account.

Clark called his new venture Fridays, so named by his girlfriend and based on the campus adage, TGIF ― Thank God It's Friday. Fridays debuted in late February of 1972.
 

Fridays, 1 North Spring

Furnished with 15 tables to seat 60, Fridays served a campus crowd of 300 opening night.

I was shocked. I'm told we sold more beer than any other establishment in the city's history, for a two-tap bar. We had five guys helping to tend bar and the taps never stopped flowing. We went through 20 half-barrels.

Fridays' decor was described as rustic, with a fine old oak door and cafe curtains made from burlap bags. An American flag, about 4 feet by 7 feet, was tacked up on the paneled wall.

The bar is really two old bars I got at a place called "Lou's Bars" on South Broadway. You don't see many anymore with that rounded wood in front. We stripped them, sanded them, put them together and put on varnish.

Clark's mother, his sister and a family friend helped behind the bar serving the lunch menu, which included roast beef and ham and cheese sandwiches for 75 cents, and cackle berries (hard boiled eggs) for 15 cents.

Inside of a year, Fridays had broken records for selling beer. Pinball had become a craze again and Foosball arrived and Fridays became one of the hottest college hangouts in town.

Four months after we opened, on Father's Day, I walked into my parents' house and gave my dad back all his money. I got a tear in my eye. He got a tear in his eye. It was great.

Clark noticed that a lot of the college crowd frequenting his bar had ID's from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. So in early 1973, he opened a second Fridays at 8911 Natural Bridge, near the UMSL campus. Fridays Too, as it was called, caught on too.
 

Fridays Too, 8911 Natural Bridge

In 1974, Clark opened a third Fridays in Illinois.

We thought we wanted to do another one, and that's when we went into Belleville. It was a big building right there at 624 South Illinois next to the railroad track.

What was interesting to me, you'd walk in and the bar would be full at lunchtime, and you'd see a guy with a pinstripe suit sitting next to a guy with bib overalls on. Well, they both went to the same high school together. One is a federal judge down the street and the other guy is selling tractors down the other way. So it was this real crazy amalgamation of different folks. Then we started putting music in there in the evening, and then the young people started coming. It became very popular.

Fridays, 624 South Illinois, Belleville

In 1973, the national TGI Fridays chain sued Clark, claiming ownership of the "Fridays" name. After five years in federal court, the case was settled, with the Dallas based company buying the name from Clark for $10,000. In 1978, Clark renamed his St. Louis taverns Clark's and Clark's Too. Clark's at Spring and Laclede would continue to serve SLU students until 1992.
 

Clark's, 1 North Spring

Clark's, 1 North Spring

John Joyce, who owned the building at Spring and Laclede which housed John Clark's first floor bar, died in August of 1972.

The Joyce trust said you take care of the whole building, do whatever you want, rent out the upstairs and we just want a check. I figured I could make more money off of pizza then just renting this place upstairs. So I put a pizza joint up there and I delivered to the university.

Clark opened Pie In The Sky Pizza at 3 North Spring, with a walkup entrance just north of his tavern.

Pie In The Sky Pizza, 1975 3 North Spring	Pie In The Sky Menus (click image to enlarge)

Clark "borrowed" the recipe for his pizza dough from Shakespeare's Pizza in Columbia.

My partner at the time was good friends with this fella and he owned this pizza place in Columbia at Mizzou. He owned three of these places and they just did gangbusters business. The best pizza you ever want to eat. He made his own dough. Everything was scratch. He only bought sausage from a certain place on the Hill that was shipped to Columbia.

So my partner goes down to Columbia and he comes back and he said, "I got his recipe." And I said, "What?" He said, "He doesn't care." And I said, "Well he just might when we start making the pizza, because I want to do this upstairs." And he said, "Well, here it is."

Pie In The Sky Pizza Dough Recipe (click image to enlarge)

In 1975, the city of St. Louis approved a development plan for Laclede's Landing, the nine-square-block area sloping from Third Street to the levee, between the Eads and Dr. Martin Luther King bridges. By 1978, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Nights, Kennedy's, First Street Alley and the Old Spaghetti Factory were booming along the Landing's narrow cobblestone streets.

The Old Judge Coffee Building at 708-710 North Second Street was originally built in 1883 for the offices of Scharff & Bernheimer, one of the largest Mississippi River shipping firms of the era. The five-story building was purchased by Old Judge Coffee in 1918 and converted into a factory and spice warehouse.

In 1977, the Old Judge Coffee Building was purchased by Hoffmann Partnership, an architectural firm in Clayton. After more than $1 million dollars in renovation work, Hoffmann moved their headquarters into the building and was seeking other tenants. They approached John Clark about the basement space on Clamorgan Alley, in the rear of the building.

I wasn't intending to go in there at all. But you remain open to everything and one day I got a call. You couldn't even figure out how to get in there. Some people said you could probably pick it up cheap because it was a basement.

I didn't even think restaurant at the time ― just another volume-type college place, a big game room, hamburgers, dancing. I didn't know what I wanted.

In November of 1978, Clark became a restaurant owner on the Landing. He sold his Belleville bar, and with $250,000 in loans, he opened Lucius Boomer at 707 Clamorgan Alley, in the basement of the Old Judge Coffee Building.
 

Lucius Boomer, 707 Clamorgan Alley

Lucius Boomer took its name from a nineteenth century bridge builder who was one of James Eads' principal competitors. The basement space was a long, narrow room with stone walls displaying historical drawings. The restaurant's menu resembled a large blueprint with engineer print.
 

Lucius Boomer Menu - Nov 24, 1978 (click image to enlarge)

The range of food touched on Mexican, Italian, Chinese and European. The original menu featured an egg dish which Clark called Egg McBoomer.

I got sued for this. Cease and desist. So I talked to my attorney. He said, "How close do you think to confusing that is to an Egg McMuffin?" I said, "It's as close as you're going get because that's why I called it that." He said, "Change the fuckin' name."

Lucius Boomer was known for its Crab Rangoon appetizer.

Everybody would say, "What's your secret?" We'd just give them the recipe. I didn't care. And I said, "Just make sure when you get to the second thing on the recipe you put in there what it says to put in there. And it's crabmeat. Put the crabmeat in the Rangoon. OK? You've got to put crabmeat in there."

Egg McBoomer Recipe (click image to enlarge)	Crab Rangoon Recipe (click image to enlarge)

Boomers, as it came to be called, had live entertainment seven nights a week, featuring a Top 40/dance/classic rock formula. There was no cover charge. Clark proudly advertised, "always a party, never a cover."

Lucius Boomer received citations, awards, articles and mentions from both local and national newspapers and magazines. They were a regular entry in Restaurant Hospitality's top 500 restaurants in the United States. In 1984 and 1985 Boomers was listed in Playboy Magazine's "Best and Hottest" club survey for the single-minded. In February of 1991, Traveler Magazine called Lucius Boomer "the place to dance in St. Louis." In addition, the restaurant routinely won year-end awards from the Riverfront Times for best bartenders, waitresses, atmosphere, drinks and food.
 

Clark hired Tim Mallett as manager at Boomers, and Mallett soon became a close associate and Clark's general manager.

In January of 1980, Clark began thinking expansion again.

Tim and I went out to look at Abernathy's. It seemed like a scary thing. Here, two different owners who had been very successful in the restaurant business in town hadn't made it work.

The large, one-story building at 8215 Clayton Road, across from Westroads Shopping Center, had been The Cupboard restaurant before it was Abernathy's.

But I looked at it the way I looked at the original Fridays ― the need for a focus of entertainment. It was at the epicenter of where the money in this town is. There was nothing between Al Baker's and Busch's Grove except this place. They both have their own crowds who grew up with their owners. I saw a need for a place for people who weren't in these crowds.

Clark leased the space and opened Clamorgan on June 18, 1980, the name derived from Clamorgan Alley, the address of his restaurant on the Landing.
 

Clamorgan, 8215 Clayton Road

Clamorgan was an instant success. Clark rearranged the space, removing many of the antiques and artifacts of the previous decor. There was a bar featuring live entertainment to the right, and a dining room to the left, off the main entrance. There were other dining rooms farther to the rear and a second bar. Servers wore preppy uniforms of khakis, alligator-emblazoned golf shirts and loafers.
 

Clamorgan, 8215 Clayton Road

Clark's menu, which he used for both lunch and dinner, had a Mexican flavor, with nachos, gazpacho, huevos rancheros, chimichangas, enchiladas and a Mexican pepper steak.

We put a Mexican slant to the menu. We hired a guy ― his name is Ernie Marquez. He's a Mexican chef. There was a stainless steel table in the middle of the kitchen. It was huge. And he'd take a bag of beans and dump them on the table. He was looking for the right beans to make this bean dip. He cooked these beans in lard. He cooked the french fries in lard. There is a totally different taste when you're eating something that tastes like bacon all the time.

1980 Clamorgan Menu (click image to enlarge)

After five years in business, Clamorgan boarded its doors on August 31, 1984. Clark cited unsuccessful lease negotiations as the reason for deserting the site.

I eventually hope to open a sophisticated, upbeat place in the middle of downtown.

John Clark at Clamorgan

Clark opened his downtown restaurant the following year. He debuted John Clark's Olive Street Bistro on October 3, 1985 in the St. Louis Place Building at 420 Olive Street.

This place was really just a big square box. So I immediately knew that we had to put in lots of levels and I also knew we had to stuff a lot of chairs in here at both lunch and dinner because of the cost of space down here.

The bistro's main level contained the bar with a stand-up area and lounge, with dining areas on the upper and lower levels. The decor contained shades of deep reds and blacks, with teal green and wood accents.

Photographs of buildings once housed on the site of the bistro hung on the walls, along with plaster casts of terra cotta work and the lion's heads from the old Commerce Bank building.
 

John Clark's Olive Street Bistro, 420 Olive Street

Clark's menu, which was the same for both lunch and dinner, was eclectic, combining Cajun/Creole and Italian cuisine with the all-American favorite, the hamburger, plus steaks, seafood and salads.

This is a bistro, which means that you can come in here at any time of the day and have a bowl of soup, or dessert or just one thing and that's fine. And the menu is supposed to make your mouth water.

John Clark's Olive Street Bistro Menu (click image to enlarge)

I had a chef working for us when I did John Clark's Bistro ― Larry Shifrin. And I always remember, it's like, "Hey Larry, I need something for Clark's Bar. We've got to make this hamburger different." So he put this sauce together and it was a peppercorn sauce. And we actually served this on the hamburgers at Clark's Bar. And people loved it.

He used to come up with food that just tasted good. He came up with this thing, I said, "roasted corn?" And we're doing this thing out in the alley, and we did it for these special events and we'd roast corn. Nobody was roasting corn at the time. We used to sell the shit out of that.

Larry Shifrin John Clark's Olive Street Bistro	Green Peppercorn Sauce Recipe (click image to enlarge)

While John Clark's Olive Street Bistro got good reviews, the restaurant struggled.

The year of us opening, they had a decision to make about the Convention Center in St. Louis. We're going to slowly redo the Convention Center or we're going to close it and totally redo the Convention Center. They decided to close it. So I'm working off of all this business coming from the Convention Center and it was like . . . what?

So we did a lot of other stuff. We did baseball stuff. Before every baseball game there was this big burger bar that you could put all this stuff on a burger. You came in and you bought a baseball at the front door. You'd throw the baseball at the guy and he'd bring you a big burger and then you'd go dress the burger.

It was a tough go. It fit that I wore a coat and tie. And that was the only time in my life that I wore a jacket and a tie. I did it every day. And finally, the guys from Caleco's bought it.

As of August 31, 1987, the space had been converted into a mini-version of the successful chain of Caleco's restaurants.

About the time Clark closed his bistro, he also parted ways with his general manager, Tim Mallett.

I'll never forget, we were in front of Clark's Bar and we got into a little bit of a riff. I pulled off to the side and I look and I said, "Tim, you know something? You are the biggest pain in my ass." And he looks at me and he said, "Maybe we just ought to go our separate ways." And I said, "You didn't understand. That's really what you're supposed to be is a pain in my ass." And he said, "Oh." I said, "But I disagree with what direction you want to take what we do."

He was the smart one. He wanted to pick a direction that would have been the direction for us to go. At that point everyone was expecting a nicer food product. Anyway, he did end up going out on his own and did very well. He did very well.

In November of 1988, Tim Mallett opened Blue Water Grill at 2607 Hampton.
 

John Clark (left) and Tim Mallett

Lucius Boomer continued to boom. In the summer of 1988, Clark expanded his restaurant, adding a second dining room and bar, and a private party room. He had enlisted the Pasta House's Kim Tucci to go with him to Jefferson City to lobby the legislature to extend his closing time from 1:00 am to 3:00 am.

We developed a good trade with a lot of people who worked at other restaurants and bars who stopped by after their place closed. There was a line all the time on Sunday, which then flowed over to other nights of the week.

The space above Clark's basement spot in the Old Judge Coffee Building had originally been occupied by Chapin's, a restaurant and bar. In 1981, Roma's in the Landing, a rib joint, opened in the space, and in 1982, Roma's was reopened as Uncle Sam's Plankhouse.

Uncle Sam's closed early in 1990. Someone gave Clark's name to the bank, thinking he would be interested in the space. He wasn't initially, but the bank made him an offer he couldn't refuse. He leased the space for a new restaurant, which he called Jake's Steaks.

The thing that scared me, it was big. It had an upstairs, a downstairs, a this, a that. I downsized the whole thing and you had to come off the alley. It was all very condensed.

The restaurants which had occupied the space above Boomers had their entrance on North Second Street. Clark confined his new restaurant to the lower level of the space, and changed the entrance to Clamorgan Alley, a portal which had worked well for Boomers.

By August of 1994, business at Jake's had increased beyond the capacity of Clark's condensed space. He expanded into the upper level and flip flopped the entrance back to North Second Street. And by the beginning of 1999, Clark had completed a 1,200-square-foot addition, with a new private dining and party area, which seated 70, raising Jake's capacity to 250.
 

Lucius Boomer & Jake's Steaks, 707 Clamorgan Alley

Jake's Steaks, 708 North Second Street

Clark dubbed Jake's the "Best Strip Joint in Town." The decor included exposed brick walls, open-beam ceilings, vintage pinball machines and old advertising signs.
 

Jake's Steaks

Jake's Steaks

Jake's Steaks was a classic steakhouse with a southwestern flair. Diners chose from four cuts of steak, then chose a size from 8 to 32 ounces. House-made rubs and sauces went a step further to customize each order. Pork chops, chicken, seafood and salads shared the menu. Blackened chicken linguini was the big seller at lunch.
 

1993 Jake's Steak Menu (click image to enlarge)

When Tim Mallett left Clark to go out on his own, John Wilson took over as Clark's general manager.

Wilson had gone to Forest Park Community College for culinary arts and then joined the navy and cooked for 4 years on a carrier and destroyer. Although he was not a formally trained chef, he said, "I managed restaurants all my life and when the cook doesn’t show, you had better know what to do."

Wilson started with Clark in 1985 and stayed with him until 2008.

As things expanded, we needed a manager. Tim hired him. Tim called him a mad genius. He was a huge contributor to my business' success, serving as the GM of both Boomers and Jake's. He contributed to the creative character and unique vibe of these restaurants.

I got very close to him. I'm his son's godfather. After many years working with me, he moved on and got a very good position with Casa.

John Clark (left) & John Wilson at Boomers

In early 1997, Clark purchased the Old Judge Coffee Building for $1.1 million. To fill a vacant space on the ground floor, he decided to open another restaurant.

Clark debuted the Diablo Cafe at 710 North Second, adjacent to Jake's Steaks, in August of 2001. The warm decor featured midnight blue, brick red and tan walls, along with mosaics and punched tin sconces. A mix of tables, booths and banquettes accommodated 62 in the dining room. A small bar completed the space.

Diablo's cuisine featured an eclectic mix of Mexican, Southwestern and Cajun influences, with touches of Mediterranean and Asian. Their slogan was, "We flavor our spices with food."

The menu was developed by Clark and Wilson, with consulting assistance from Greg Perez, who had excelled at Tim Mallett's Blue Water Grill and his own Painted Plates. House specialties included a pan-seared crab cake appetizer, with stripings of jalapeno mustard and roasted red pepper creams, and the Terror of Diablo dessert, featuring espresso chocolate moose, layered with cinnamon espresso soaked devils food cake and topped with chocolate glaze.
 

Crab Cakes Recipe (click image to enlarge)			Terror of Diablo Recipe (click image to enlarge)

Despite good reviews, Clark's new restaurant closed by August of 2002, a year after it opened.

Spent some money. Did all the design stuff. Opened it up. Great menu. We did some business, but not the kind of business I wanted to do.

Bill Gianino comes down there one day and was interested in the space. He said, "I'd like to make a few changes in here and I understand that you may want to sell it." I don't even remember how he knew this. Before we were done talking, in about an hour and a half, the contract was on a cocktail napkin.

Not only did Clark sell Gianino the Diablo Cafe, he also sold him Lucius Boomer.

Believe it or not, the moniker "always a party, never a cover" had a lot to do with the music. There was no more music. The music really died off, and the bands that were around and doing well were so expensive, it didn't work for us. I couldn't afford $1300 a night for a band and still pay the bills. Somebody said, "Just start charging and just take the moniker off." I said, "I'm not doing it."

While Boomers was dependent on music for its success, Jake's Steaks was not. Clark's steakhouse continued to thrive until he closed it in 2014.
 

Jake's Steaks, 708 North Second Street, 2012

Eventually, the parties ended on Laclede's Landing. The recession, the renovation of the Arch grounds that cut off access to the area, and the end of Rams football at the nearby Dome at America's Center contributed to the decline of the cobblestone-studded historic neighborhood.

John Clark sold the Old Judge Coffee Building and retired from the restaurant business. He lives comfortably with his partner of forty years, Mary Louise Helbig, in their home on the Mississippi River in Golden Eagle, Illinois.

And if he had it to do all over again . . . Clark would do things pretty much the same.
 

John Clark and Mary Louise Helbig - Golden Eagle, Illinois, 2022

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