You Can Get All You Want At Alice's Restaurant

You Can Get All You Want At Alice's Restaurant

It's 1967 in small town Minnesota, Albert Lea to be exact.  Late at night you could pull in WLS from Chicago, and really late you received a static-filled dose of 1960's counter-culture on 'Beaker Street' hosted by Clyde Clifford.  Music, Viet Nam, President Johnson, Haight-Asbury and Arlo Guthrie's long, iconic song, Alice's Restaurant.

Today we visited Alice's Restaurant on Skyline Blvd in Woodside, CA.  The drive up from the San Francisco Bay area through the redwoods and into the foothills was a scenic delight.

As we pulled into Woodside both sides of the rodes were filled with cars, motorcycles, hikers, tourists and mountain bikes.  We saw the sign and all simultaneously exclaimed "Alice's Restaurant!  Arlo Guthrie!  Let's stop."

There was a twenty minute wait but with all the people even waiting was a worthwhile event.  The inside and outside seating, strangers chatting and beautiful weather all put together was  'California cool'...it was all mellow.

The atmosphere turned out to be much better than the food but the 'experience' could not have occurred elsewhere.  The biscuits and gravy with one egg was a disappointment other than the gravy.  The locally grown organic kale salad with pine

nuts and house-made avocado vinegrette was lacking in vinegrette.  A handful of chips, a small coleslaw and house-made bourban barbeque sauce accompanied the pulled pork sandwich which was the best  choice of the three.

But as we said this is a stop about the experience, not the food.

Now the bad news.  Woody Guthrie's song was released in 1967 on his first album of the same name, Alice's Restaurant.  This Alice's Restaurant was purchased by Alice Taylor in the 1960s and renamed after herself and Guthrie's song.  It was a famous stop long before it was called Alice's Restaurant.