Kaphan's Restaurant
This South Main stronghold was famous for more than just its seafood: Long ago, it was one of the first Houston restaurants to have an integrated dining room. If you're a total vintage restaurant geek, you can not only buy the postcard above, but the actual recipe book that owner Pete Tomac used for Kaphan's.
Granny Harber's
While it's difficult to picture a Houston summer without them, Granny Harber's Chez Orleans was one of the first restaurants to bring crawfish to the city. Alison Cook, back when she was the food critic for the Houston Press, reported on how Harber would boil one sack of crawfish a week before Jim Gossen -- now owner of Louisiana Foods -- and the Landrys came to town and changed the entire scene with Don's Seafood in the 1980s. Granny Harber's is now an EyeMasters and Don's Seafood was bought out by Tilman Fertitta, but Houston's love of crawfish remains intact.
Swiss Chalet Restaurant
Hey, kids! Here's how you can tell this postcard is old: There's no 713, 281 or 832 before the telephone number. Oh, the good old days when all of Houston was the 7-1-3. The special occasion but always fun Swiss Chalet was run by all-around good guy Gabriel Martin, who died just two years ago, and wasn't actually Swiss at all -- he was from Argentina.
