Red Coach

Anyone remember the Red Coach chain. It was a kinda upscale place owned by the original HoJo's. I used to go to several of them. Latham, NY..... Weathersfield, CT... Portland ME (Exit 8 of Maine Turnpike).

Remember them fondly as a decent place for prime rib. Could always count on rare when ya ordered rare and there is nothing like a overcooked prime rib... gotta be drippin blood.

Yeh I remember them. There was one on the south bound lane of Rt.#1 in Saugus Ma., Kellys now occupies the location. I use to drive by it all the time on my way to a place called the Areojet Club wich later became a very famous steak house. It was the number #1 grossing restaraunt in the country for a number of years. Chow Jim

Oh! I ment to mention that this should have been posted in another thread, long gone Rest's. or chains. Whatever. Chow Jim

Or perhaps even mention the location.

I have very fond memories of Red Coach, it's where I first tasted lobster. Husband and I each got a whole lobster and the very nice waitress showed us what to do with it. Also, I remember the hot fudge brownie sundaes we got. The one we visited was on Cape Cod, Hyannis I think.

It was the "Red Coach Grill" and I remember them being all over Southeast New England. Never ate there, my folks refused to pay a premium for Howard Johnson's food (Red Coach was, at least for a time, owned by HoJo). But I still have the radio jingle in my head - don't really remember the words except the bass line vocal repeating "Red Coach, Red Coach..."

Here's a site with a decent picture of the sign. http://www.orangeroof.org/RhodeIsland/RedCoach/Warwick/warwickrcg1.html Remember it was the "Tally Ho Lounge."

Yeah,
I just went through some old memory things and found a letter from Mar.15.1972 which includes a birthday credit card from my doughter being 4 years old on Mar.29.1972  from the RED COUCH GRILL nearby the hotel east of Hartford not far away from brat and withney(probably spelled wrong) factory. We stayed at this time in east Hartford at the Madison Motor Inn (my first trip to the US) and i took my wife and my doughter with me, because I had to stay for more then 3 month away from old Germany and i didnt want to leave the family back home. The Hotel was $ 12,xx , what a price and we had a living room with kitchenet a bedroom, bathroom and a small room for cloth ( I did not know anything about walk in cupbourds). The reason I got to this side was, I wanted to check if red couch grill does still exist and if it would have been I would have liked to try to get a free dinner with this card for my dougther on her next birthday, unfortunately the card is not valid anymore because no red couch grill anymore. I will keep the card just for the nice rememberances I (we) have because we met people (colleage) who invited us to his house to live in for the time we where over there, because my wife wanted to fligh home after a month, feeling bored me always in the company from morning till night and she alone without car with the little child. We still have a very closed relationship with this very nice family, we often visit them and they or some of there 10 children visit us, just great, this is the way the world should work.
Could write a whole book about it, but nowbody will read it if it gets to long.
Thanks to all of you, we love Americans, they are deeply friendly we do appriciate this so much, because over here people are a bit different, not real bad but we can tell the difference.
We wanted to move over, but onkel sam only accepts us if we have a million $ on the banc account or we open buisiness (we dont want, we are retired), so we stay here its beautiful also and visit your nice country as often as possible ( I am going to a motorbike ride holiday for a month on May 30.
Till then
Heinrich 

In those days it was our favorite restaurant.  We lived on Long Island,NY
and the Red Coach was on Jericho Turnpike in Westbury.  Great drinks, great prime ribs with popovers.  Thanks for the memory.

Welcome, Heinrich.
There is a great web site that documents the Howard Johnson hospitality chain, highwayhost.org.
 
They have a listing for the Red Coach Grill on Berlin Turnpike (Bundesstrasse 5) in Wethersfield, Connecticut including a 2002 photo of the building:
http://www.highwayhost.org/Connecticut/RedCoach/redcoachgrill.htm#wethersfield
There is a typographical error at the bottom of the page. That restaurant at 354 Saw Mill Road was in West Haven, not Wethersfield.

I remember seeing the one in West Haven when my wife and I would go back to visit family. My mother and father went once when it opened, but they said it didn't compare to such places as Ferry Tavern in Old Lyme, Eleanor's Red Lobster in New Haven, or even App's in West Haven.