Lost City: Albany Edition: Lodge's

B. Lodge & Co., a old-style department store, calls itself the oldest business in Albany. As with most of these sort of ancient department stores, the interior is no great shakes. Ugly, in fact, with racks and racks of modest goods. But the exterior is a dream. And there's no mistaking it's called Lodge's, is there?

It was founded in the 1860s and run by the the founding family for nearly 100 years. The next owners bought the business in 1960 and ran the store for 37 years. After that, an employee, Jack Yonally, took over. He's still there. He smartly bought the building, renovated it, created a couple apartments upstairs for rental and bought neighboring buildings as well, renting them out to businesses. Lodge's is now the "largest provider of school-uniform clothing in the capital district."

Lost City: Albany Edition: K.W. Savory

K.W. Savory deli on James Street in downtown Albany has been closed since 2002, at least, but the mint-green neon sign is still there, and it has to count as one of my all-time favorites. The color, first of all, is unusual. So is the name, which I imagine is made up and is not someone's name. The purposefully misspelled "Redi Lunches" is intriguing, as it the enticement of "Homemade Ice Cream." Finally, the swooping tail on the "Y."

Lost City: Albany Edition: Jack's Oyster House

On a recent trip to Upstate New York, I was talking to a local businessman and asked him if there were any old bars or restaurants in Albany that captured the city's past, the world of William Kennedy's novels. I was crestfallen when he shook his head and said, "All of that is gone." Then he remembered one place: Jack's Oyster House.

You can tell from just the name that Jack's is old. It still serves oysters, just to keep up tradition. I imagine in the old days the bivalves played a much bigger role. It was founded in 1913 by Jack Rosenstein, a former oyster shucker who actually hated oysters. The restaurant was on Beaver Street. In 1937, it moved to its present location on State Street, just a stone's throw from the Capital Building.

Now you know no restaurant is going to survive that long in Albany without the patronage of politicians. And Jack's gets them in droves. During a recent August lunch visit, the place was pretty barren except for a gigantic telemarketer jawing nonstop to his parents about all the tricks of his trade. He sure looked like a politician; the back-room, cigar-chomping kind. Otherwise, nobody. Albany goes on vacation in August, like everyone else. The waitress pointed out a large booth in the back, however, as being the Governor's Booth.


Jack's is still run by the Rosenstein family, the third generation. It survived the Depression and the awful "urban renewal" years of the '60s and '70s. It never closes. Not even on Christmas Day.

The Menu includes a few things that supposedly have been there since 1913, including the Manhattan Chowder, which I tried. They also boast a Bloody Mary using a "1913 recipe," which I didn't try, and which I'm going to publicly dispute here as bullshit. Most drink experts credit Fernand Petiot, an American bartender at Harry's New York Bar in Paris during the 1920s, as inventing the Bloody Mary. It didn't arrive on these shores until the 1930s and didn't become widely popular until after WWII. If Jack's made a Bloody Mary in 1913, they're saying they invented the cocktail. And I doubt they're saying that.

Nonetheless, Jack's is a pretty swell place. Old booths, wooden walls, mirrored back wall, checked floor, bentwood chairs, chandeliers. Albany lawmakers deserve a place like this to scheme and unwind.

Below is a picture of the Jack's building before it became Jack's. Hm. When's the last time you went to an Oriental Occidental Restaurant?