Hard Times Cafe Woodbridge Set to Rock
Last year over 20 area bartenders competed at Hard Times Cafe in Woodbridge for the chance to become the Fastest Bartender! This year we are set for a rockin’ time again!
A perfect venue, a great group of people, and customers that know how to turn hard times into the best of times promise to bring the house down this Sunday night.
If you haven’t been to a Hard Times Cafe you’re in for a treat. Their story is an American story:
Their roots: Ira Goodfellow was born in Grapevine, Texas in 1874. When he was 15 years old his father gave him a horse, double-barreled shot gun and a ten dollar bill and he told him it was time to go out and seek his fortune.
Ira Goodfellow
My brother Jim and I know of this story because Ira Goodfellow was our Grandfather. His first job was a trail drive cowboy at the Waggoner ranch near Wichita Falls, Texas. It was there he learned how to prepare chili from a chuck wagon cook.
He learned to cook more than chili because when he homesteaded in Oklahoma territory he taught his new bride how to handle herself in the kitchen. Irma, his oldest daughter eventually took over the kitchen chores and it was grandpa Ira’s chili recipe she used when she opened a small roadhouse in Gracemont, Oklahoma in the late 1940’s.
Irma became famous for her Texas chili and would have customers drive the fifty miles from Oklahoma City just for a taste. Her place finally succumbed to the new interstate highway system, a fate shared by many independent eateries on the secondary roads of the country.
It was twenty five years later around the mid 1960’s that brother Jim and I discovered the Texas Chili Parlor of Washington DC on Pennsylvania Avenue. This was a little joint that had been around since the early 1930’s and was located about three blocks from the White House.
Open until 3am it was a favorite hang out for cabbies, policeman, reporters and other folks working the graveyard shift. The Texas Chili Parlor also had a high profile clientele.
David Brinkley was a regular as was President Truman who lived a couple of blocks away in the White House.
The place was owned by two salty old ladies named Barbara Abbot and Hazel Caloway and their Chili tasted just like our Aunt Irma’s. The place only served straight chili, chili with beans, chili dogs and chili mac. That was it.
The two women had been feuding for years and would not work together , so they each would run the place two weeks on and two weeks off. Each had a loyal customer following and Jim and I were in Hazel’s camp.
Eventually they split up and only Hazel’s place survived. She died in 1971 and the Texas Chili Parlor went out of business.
For the next nine years I kept the memory of our local chili parlor alive by turning part of my home into a chili parlor.
Using the family recipe I served the famous Texas Chili mac to friends and family and we would sit around and tell Hazel stories.
In 1980 Jim and I decided to turn what had been a hobby into a real business and opened our first store on King Street in Old Town Alexandria where it still operates today. Since then hundreds of Hazel’s old customers have found us along with a throng of new fans each year. In October of 2005 USA Today named us as one of the 10 best places in the country for a bowl of chili.
- Fred Parker
Our Round 2 Winner: Chris “Diddy” Hollowell
