Dixie Que revives Southern theme in Yankee territory

Nation's Restaurant News, August 27, 1990 by Carolyn Walkup

Dixie Que revives Southern theme in Yankee territory

CHICAGO -- A veteran restaurateur has created a casual-theme restaurant that looks and sounds like a 1950s movie set in Memphis.

Dixie Que resembles an old roadside filling-station-turned-diner, complete with faded paint, formica, leatherette bus seats, ceiling fans and custom-made tapes of early Elvis Presely and similar music. But instead of being located on a sleepy Southern street, it's on a frantically busy Chicago intersection just east of the I-94 expressway.

Owner Mel Markon is better known locally for Mel Markon's restaurant, a Lincoln Park dinner house especially popular with singles in the 1970s, just down the street from R.J. Grunts, Richard Melman's first restaurant. Markon sold the restaurant six years ago and became semi-retired.

"Time passes. You get bored," Markon said, when asked why he decided to get back into the business. "There was an open niche in the marketplace" for a good barbecue restaurant in Chicago, he said.

This time around, Markon chose a concept he hopes he can clone for future expansion. Dixie Que has a simple, limited menu and the flexibility to be take-out only or a combination of take-out and sit-down, as is the one he just opened. His prototype also has an outdoor patio.

Barbecue items are slow-smoked, Southern-style. Markon meticulously researched barbecue in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Georgia while developing his concept and recipes.

Signature items include Memphis-style shredded pork shoulder with barbecue sauce on a toasted bun with Tennessee mustard slaw; barbecue spaghetti made with brisket; Kentucky bourbon chicken with spicy fries, apple raisin beans and garlicky Southern buns; and a fried catfish basket. Checks average $9.50 for dinner or $8.80 for lunch. The menu doesn't change, but long-neck bottled, beer sales are higher in the evenings.

Unlike many of Chicago's Near North Side casual-theme restaurants, Dixie Que does not appeal primarily to Yuppies. "We get a real cross-section," Markon noted -- from nearby factory workers on their lunch break to suburbanites in the city for a night out.

Southern themes recently have multiplied in Chicago, most notably with the Old Carolina Crab House, owned by Dan Rosenthal and Cathy Newton, and Bub City Crab-shack and Bar-B-Q, owned by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. Both of those restaurants are much larger dinner houses with broader menu selections and little take-out.

PHOTO : Mel Markon at his new Dixie Que restaurant