By this time, they had reached Fourteenth Street, a wide, busy thoroughfare bright with neon lights and gaudy store windows crammed full of bargain merchandise. It hardly looked the sort of neighborhood to come to dressed as they were, and for a moment Peggy had a feeling that Randy hadn’t been joking about coming without a tie. “Where are we going?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to offend the boys.
Randy laughed. “I wondered whether or not you knew about Fourteenth Street. Since you’re so deep in the history of the theater, I thought that we’d take you right into some. This run-down street was once the heart of the fashionable theater district!” He waved a hand to indicate the tawdry movie houses, the corner hot-dog stands, the poolrooms, the pizza places.
“This?” Peggy said.
“This,” Randy answered solemnly. “And the funny thing is that this is far from being a bad neighborhood. Especially when you compare it with some of the places you’ll be visiting in the next few days!”
“You see that movie house?” Mal said, pointing to a place plastered with signs for a double horror monster show. “That was once the most famous musical theater in the city. And the Irving Theater over there was a great dramatic showcase.”
“But why are we here tonight?” Amy asked in bewilderment.
“To show you that, in the ashes of the past, a good bit of the past still flourishes with no sign of decay,” Mal intoned dramatically.
“He means,” Randy interpreted, “that we’re here to eat dinner at Luchow’s, one of the best restaurants in the city. It’s German, not Chinese, and you pronounce it with a German ch that sounds like a cough, if you can. If you can’t, you settle on ‘Loo-shau’s,’ which most people do. It’s been here since the theater district was here, and it hasn’t changed at all through all these years. Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell and Tony Pastor ate here, and tonight we’re going to do the same!”
With a bow and a flourish, Mal and Randy opened the doors and led the girls into, not just a restaurant, but another century and another world.