Beggar’s Banquet hosts 50th anniversary celebration

Oh, what a night in early February 1973. A relatively quiet storefront on Abbot Road in East Lansing would never be the same. Beggar’s Banquet, a hippie-dippy restaurant with fabulous food and a popular hangout spot for area politicos, professors, activists and artists, opened on Feb. 8, 1973. For 50 years, it has served as the gathering place for the cognoscenti of Greater Lansing, according to one of its founders, Robert Adler of Laingsburg.

At 8 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 11), Beggar’s invites former staff and customers to a 50th anniversary reunion. There’s no program, but Adler expects employees and customers to step up and tell some tall tales about the East Lansing institution.

In the early 1970s, Adler, a Michigan State University graduate and ski bum by avocation, and his co-founders, Charlie Rose, Christopher Blunt and Martin Richard, had been working at the successful Cave of the Candles (now Landshark Bar & Grill), which was noted for its high-end food and service — the place to take a date or special someone.

Adler and the crew liked the atmosphere of the Cave, but, like many food service workers, they wanted to open their own restaurant. 

Adler had been pestering, or at least nudging, the owner of the Best Steak House, a popular eatery, to sell his operation on Abbot. When the deal finally went through and a liquor license was approved, it was already January 1973.

According to Adler, in one month, the group worked nonstop to transform the former cafeteria-style restaurant into what would become the standard for good food and good service at good prices. A 1976 article in The New York Times declared Beggar’s “has one of the most estimable (wine) lists to be found anywhere.”

The restaurant’s title was copped from a Rolling Stones LP of the same name, which Adler said, “had a wonderful, medieval bacchanal scene on the inside of the album.”

Although the restaurant was noted for its higher-end items (at least for Lansing) such as chicken Kiev, liver pâté and roasted New York strip steak with French bordelaise sauce, the owners also knew how to have fun with the menu, serving a popular Richard M. Nixon Memorial pickled bologna for 90 cents. One of the favorite lunch items was a fiery bowl of chili named “sympathy for the devil,” priced at 95 cents and served with a draft beer for just a dime. The beer was called “sympathy for the customer.” 

“Chris (now deceased) developed a rating system for the day’s chili on a scale of one to four. A four would bring you to your knees,” Adler said.

Not only did politicos like former governors John Engler and Jim Blanchard hang out at the restaurant, but so did notables who were in town for events at MSU, including David Crosby, who recently died; writer Jim Harrison; and poet Diane Wakoski. Iggy Pop and Ralph Nader also dined there, but not together.

“I remembered having lunch with Buckminster Fuller twice,” Adler said. 

MSU artist Bob Weil, now deceased, created a mobile that hung in the bar area before Adler and his spouse, Betty, donated it to the Wharton Center, where it hangs today.

Adler, who worked the front of the house, remembers having to tell Gov.-elect Engler and his spouse, Michelle, that they would have to wait for a table.

“The day he won his first election, he came in and read the newspaper while sitting at the bar,” Adler said.

For many local residents, Beggar’s was likely the first time they tried original menu items like the fabulous liver pâté. The recipe is posted on Adler’s and Beggar’s Banquet’s Facebook pages.

“And it was the first-time they were exposed to long-haired hippies as servers, cooks and managers,” Adler said.

Beggar’s didn’t just offer food — it served up plenty of community service, sponsoring everything from bowling leagues to a major pee-wee hockey team that boasted future NHL players.

“Charlie Rose, another partner (also deceased), was a big hockey fan, so it was a natural fit,” Adler said.

Rose also helped organize and played in what became the legendary “Pigs vs. Freaks” football game, which raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. At one point, more than 40,000 fans poured into Spartan Stadium to watch the “freaks” (hippies) and “pigs” (police officers) go at each other. The game became the inspiration for the movie “Off Sides,” by MSU graduate Jack Epps Jr. of “Top Gun” fame.

“The staff at Beggar’s was always eclectic and included National Merit Scholars, a Georgetown Law School graduate and Students for a Democratic Society members along with military brats,” Adler said.

“Beggar’s was always a political place, and there were rumors that the feds were tapping the pay phone. I think it was real,” he added.