Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor | |
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Restaurant information | |
City | Columbus |
State | Columbus, Indiana |
Country | United States |
Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor is a restaurant in Columbus, Indiana.
The restaurant was founded in 1900 by James, Lewis, and Pete Zaharako, three candymakers from Sparta, Greece, who opened it as a confectionary shop. [1] [2] [3] [4] After visiting the 1904 World's Fair, they added ice cream to their offerings. [1] By the early 1910s, they had added soda fountains, a mahogany backbar, and a 1908 Welte orchestrion. [1] [2] By the middle of the century, there was a self-service area. [1]
The restaurant closed in 2006 when the youngest generation of the Zaharako family weren't interested in continuing to run the business. [1] The orchestrion was sold to a California collector. [3]
In 2007, Tony Moravec, a local businessman, purchased and restored the restaurant, including purchasing the orchestrion from the collector who had bought it, at a total cost of $3.5 million and reopened it in 2009. [1] [5] [6] The family living quarters above the shop were also restored, and Moravec also opened the space next door as a museum of 19th-century soda fountains and mechanical musical instruments. [1] [7] As of 2019, the orchestrion was the only one in the country available for the public to hear play. [3] By 2013, the building had been named to the National Register of Historic Places. [8] [9]
Moravec died in 2022 and his son took over the business. [5] [10]
The restaurant is also known for its Gom Cheese Brr-grr, a type of sloppy joe or loose-meat sandwich with cheese. [6] [3] [8]
The restaurant was used as the primary set for Robert Moniot's short film The Ice Cream Man about Ernst Cahn, a Jewish ice cream parlor owner in Amsterdam whose arrest sparked the February Strike. [7] [11]