History
The chain was founded by Howard N. Quam, a Chicago native, who served in the US Marines and then worked as a blackjack dealer at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. In the mid-1960s, Quam moved to Florida and opened his first restaurant, which he named in honor of the casino. He returned to Chicago in 1966 to open additional restaurants before selling the chain and moving back to Las Vegas in 1988.
At present, there are seven Golden Nugget franchises in Chicago. Many other local restaurants with "Golden" in their titles, such as the Golden Angel restaurant in North Center and the Golden Apple restaurant in Lakeview, belonged to the Golden Nugget chain in the past. Over the years, the so-called "Golden Empire" has attracted a loyal and diverse clientele and has become a familiar part of the Chicago culture. In the 1970s, local writer Jon-Henri Damski described the Lincoln Park Golden Nugget as "the biggest chicken coop in the Midwest". Later, Dodie Bellamy used a Golden Nugget as one of the settings in her 1984 short story "The Debbies I Have Known".
In 2000, the Irving Park Golden Nugget became the site of a local scandal when a pair of police officers allegedly stopped at the restaurant for two hours while an intoxicated 56 year-old man waited in their police wagon. The man died of asphyxiation when he fell into an awkward position in the vehicle, and the Chicago City Council agreed to pay the victim's family $1.8 million.
An unrelated Golden Nugget Pancake House has been operating in Dayton, Ohio, since the 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Golden Nugget Pancake House
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