Raxgiving

In America, fourth Friday in November is the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season. At big box stores and malls all over this land, folks line up outside the night before, sometimes setting up lawn chairs and tents, hoping to be early enough in the door in the morning to be one of the lucky few to get the pre-bait and switch “doorbuster” price on the season’s hottest new rooty-toot-toot or rummy-tum-tum. The event is an easy target for criticism by columnists, bloggers, and anyone seeking likes and shares on the socials, but the people that bemoan the frenzy of consumerism that marks the day after Thanksgiving seldom offer any alternatives to make the day pleasurable and memorable.

The consumer observances that follow the infamous Friday in late November all seem to have been created as a response to it. Small Business Saturday reminds us to support our local independent merchants. Cyber Monday is when online retailers seek to compete with brick and mortar stores by offering deep discounts on popular merchandise, and Giving Tuesday serves as a prompt to support our favorite charities. The broken chains, not technically small businesses, since they’re part of larger brands, and still decidedly for-profit, so not charity cases either, somehow get lost in the shuffle, and are not known for offering significant discounts following the Thanksgiving holiday. I aim to remedy that, by replacing Black Friday shopping with a new holiday that I like to call Raxgiving.

Rather than standing in bitter cold and enduring numerous aggressive shoppers in a crowded, chaotic store as fluorescent lighting, Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey assault your senses immediately after you’ve been roused from three hours of sleep on a too-small twin bed in your childhood bedroom, exhausted from having cooked and eaten a literal feast, all the while barely tolerating the various Cousin Eddie types that make up your extended family, I humbly suggest an alternative. Instead of abusing your body and mind by taking part in competitive shopping immediately following Thanksgiving, take a break. Get a full night’s sleep, and make an excuse to take a few hours to yourself. Use that time to visit a nearby (or not so nearby) outlet of a struggling, near defunct, or otherwise diminished chain, and buy yourself a nice meal, an ironic T shirt, or a few cans of marked down cranberry sauce, whatever they’re selling at the place where you end up. The business will appreciate your patronage more than the crowded big box store up the street, and in turn, you’ll have a  recharging experience in an atmosphere that is likely to be quiet, relaxed, and charmingly outdated.

To understand why the day is called Raxgiving, you should probably hear the story of how I celebrated the very first Raxgiving almost two weeks ago so you can share the story with your friends and well-wishers. It goes like this:

Even in the '80s when there were 500 Rax locations, this one would have been a contender for best view. 

I awoke in the spare bedroom of my parents’ house in Central Kentucky, having spent the past two days driving down from Michigan and preparing essentially the entire Thanksgiving meal, which incidentally, included pecan pie made with Stuckey’s pecans. After two solid days of family time and generally making Thanksgiving happen, I was ready for some alone time, so Friday morning, I pointed my car toward Harlan, Kentucky, home of the one operating Rax location I had not yet visited.



The Harlan Rax had been on my list to check out for months. Along with the Joliet, Illinois Rax, it’s one of only two Rax locations that has a functioning salad bar, and is the last operating Rax in the Bluegrass State. With its view of the Appalachian mountains out the solarium, it’s also a strong contender for the most scenic Rax location.



I arrived late in the morning, and after taking the time to appreciate the largely unmodified ‘80s vintage building and signs, walked in. Like the other Rax that retains its salad bar, the Harlan location has ‘90s vintage signage and menu boards. One panel of the latter advertises a hot food bar on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for $10 including a drink. Knowing I can get a BBC sandwich or barbecue cheddar potato at any of the four Rax locations in Ohio, that do not offer salad bars, I opted instead for the unique hot food bar, which also included access to the every day salad bar.



Just as in Joliet, a nicely stocked, tidy salad bar awaited me. Rather than the taco meat I encountered in Joliet, though, this Rax offered fried fish, on its hot food bar along with homemade soups, beans and cornbread, and fried potatoes, most of which I sampled. I suspect the hot food bar menu varies day to day. I’ll have to plan a trip here on a Saturday and/or Sunday to get the full hot food bar experience. The food was unimportant compared to my surroundings however. 

First course from the Endless Salad Bar; I went for variety

Second course; This soup was made from scratch

The third course tasted better than buffet fish had a right to. 

Replace that flatscreen with a fuzzy CRT, and this picture could be from 1985. 

Of the six surviving Rax locations, this one feels the most authentic. Like the Ironton and Lancaster, Ohio locations, it’s a purpose-built 1980’s era structure with the signature long, narrow windows running down the sides of the building and the classic Rax solarium in the front, but unlike its counterparts in Ohio, this location makes use of vintage signage and has a fully functional salad bar and buffet. The Joliet Rax has a salad bar and buffet as well, but is housed in an older building which was built in the era when Rax was known as Rix, and while it’s immensely interesting building, it’s had some interior upgrades and doesn’t feel as authentically Rax. The Harlan Rax on the other hand, retains most of its original fixtures and furniture, aside from some patina here and there, it’s largely as it was three decades ago. It’s a truly amazing working museum exhibit that exemplifies the Rax “Fast food with style” motto. 

I'd guess this sign has been on the wall for at least 20 years. 

Finding the Raxiest Rax, and completing my travels to every operating Rax location is cause for celebration, hence my suggestion of the yearly observance of Raxgiving. While Raxgiving can be spent at not just Rax, but a location of any broken chain, certain traditions should be observed. I’ve laid out a few suggestions of Raxgiving traditions below:

• Whatever broken chain you visit on Raxgiving, be sure to spend money there. Your patronage keeps the broken chains in business for others to enjoy.

Support America's favorite sandwich place so all of America may enjoy it. 

• Immerse yourself in your surroundings and revel in the uniquely anachronistic customer experience a broken chain provides.
  

  

  A drinking fountain in a fast food place? How crazy is that? 

• Visiting a broken chain by yourself isn’t mandatory. If you have friends or family around for Thanksgiving that you’d like to spend some additional time with, invite them along to make a memory.
  
  

  

  For instance, I met up with my uncle at Rax. He happens to be an alligator.

• Remember to take the time to honor the memory of any former locations you encounter along the way.

I spotted this Arby's in Corbin, Kentucky on my return trip. If you look closely, you can tell it began life as a Rax. I paid my respects by using their bathroom and buying a chocolate shake. 

So that’s my modest proposal for the next trendy new unofficial post-Thanksgiving holiday. If you plan on celebrating next year, start planning soon. As of the time I’m posting this, there are only 361 days left until next Raxgiving.

The Other Red Meat

Ever notice that the mainstream fast food outlets occasionally introduce their own versions of menu items from their less successful competitors as limited time offerings? A couple years ago, Taco Bell introduced a “Taco Burrito,” basically a burrito-sized tortilla stuffed with taco fixins and no beans. It was suspiciously similar to the Sancho at Taco Tico. Hardee’s, whose parent company owns the rights to the long-defunct Burger Chef name periodically offers its own version of the Big Shef in certain markets, presumably to prevent anyone else from snatching up the Burger Chef name claiming it’s been abandoned. Recently, Arby’s has begun offering the Bacon Beef and Cheddar. While it is basically their normal Beef and Cheddar with their pepper bacon strips added, it’s also strikingly similar to the BBC (Beef Bacon Cheese), a longtime menu offering at Arby’s imitator and onetime national competitor, Rax.

I’ve been working on a piece on Rax off and on for months. Since April, I’ve been tweaking, but never publishing a post about them that playfully avoids mentioning Arby’s by name, but couldn’t help feeling like something was missing. I simply couldn’t see the appeal of Rax in its current state.

The first paragraph of the History section on the Wikipedia page for Rax Roast Beef is a baffling labyrinth of name changes and corporate acquisitions. Originating as Jax, Jack Roschman opened the first location opened in Springfield, Ohio in 1967, (three years after Arby’s opened their first location in Boardman, in the opposite corner of the Buckeye State.) Various corporate parents would change the name of the restaurant from Jax to Rix before landing on Rax in the early 1980s. Rax peaked in the 80s with over 500 locations in the US and Canada. It was during this period that Rax attempted to move upmarket and expand their offerings to include a salad bar and hot buffet items. The concept failed to catch on with Rax customers and started the slow decline of the chain.

Ironton, Ohio, a purpose-built Rax

Circleville, Ohio, a converted Wendy's

Fans of the Pittsburgh Dad YouTube series will recognize the Lancaster, Ohio Rax. Go Stillers!

The Rax website shows eight locations on their map, however two of those appear based on Google Maps information to be Long John Silver’s that also serve Rax items. (Long John Silver’s is quickly approaching broken chain status itself.) Another Rax has been “coming soon” for at least several months. By my count, that means there are five freestanding Rax locations open for business today, just 1% of the restaurants that were open in the chain’s heyday. In the past two days I’ve been to two of those locations. I’ve been to four of them total in the past 12 months. Most of the remaining Rax locations are in Ohio, and the three Ohio Rax I’ve visited all seem to operate similarly. There’s a limited menu of sandwiches, fries, baked potatoes and not much else at the Ohio Rax locations. Menu boards are modern, but cheaply made. They appear to be printed on foam poster boards that are simply placed over the old backlit menu boards. Though the Ironton location still has a buffet table in the dining area, it was empty when I was there, and looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time. The Circleville and Lancaster locations have no remaining signs of the salad bar ever existing.

Meh.

Meh on an old Wendy's table

I’ve never had what I would characterize as a good meal at an Ohio Rax. The stripped down menu is full of food that screams “Bootleg Arby’s” and it always came out tasting not terribly fresh and lukewarm. The buildings, (purpose-built Rax structures in Ironton and Lancaster, and a converted Wendy’s in Circleville) while generally clean had definitely seen better days, though the vintage architecture is charming. Each Ohio location was virtually empty on each of my visits, though I was usually there during mealtimes, leading me to believe the locals didn’t see any more appeal there than I did. The Rax experience, in general, felt generic and fell short of justifying the brand's continued, limited existence. My utter indifference to the Ohio Rax locations caused me to have a three month case of writers’ block, at least when it came to the subject of Rax.

Though the salad bar played a part in their ultimate downfall, I couldn’t help feeling like without visiting a location with a functional salad bar, a writeup on Rax would be incomplete. In the chain’s heyday, the Endless Salad Bar is what set Rax apart from its competitors. Wendy’s even borrowed the concept for their Superbar. A little research revealed that the only Rax locations with operational salad bars were also the only two operating restaurants outside of Ohio (Joliet, IL and Harlan, KY). I discovered this as I was planning a trip to a couple of places in southeast Wisconsin, so Joliet, being sort of on the way, won out over Harlan. 

I eventually made it to the Harlan Rax as well. You can read about it here. 

You had me at Endless Salad Bar

The Joliet locaiton is the oldest operating Rax. The building dates back to the Rix era. 

Having eaten at the mediocre Lancaster, Ohio Rax the day previous, I pulled into the Joliet, Illinois Rax for an early lunch. I was pleased to see a beautifully stocked salad bar at the front of the dining area, near the signature solarium. I ordered up a barbecue and cheese potato, a beverage, salad bar access, and a free roast beef sandwich because I had joined the astoundingly, still functional Rax text club the day previous. It turned out to be a lot of food, but not more than I could handle. I had previously discovered the Rax barbecue beef sandwich was a reasonable stand in for the hard to find Arby’s Arby-Q, and the same sauce-laden meat worked well as a potato topping. The salad bar was the main event here however. The typical salad ingredients were present as were a selection of fruits and desserts including strawberry shortcake and three kinds of pudding. The cup of cream of broccoli soup that came with my order tastes homemade. The broccoli is still slightly crisp. It clearly isn’t from a can. To my delight, everything needed to make fast food tacos was also present. The Rax taco meat had a taste and texture profile that was very similar to Taco Tico’s, and it’s a full two hours nearer to my front door than the nearest Taco Tico. On top of everything else, my roast beef sandwich was easily the best I’d ever had at a Rax. It was the perfect temperature and had more meat than any sandwich I’d had at an Ohio Rax. 

There's a potato under there somewhere. 

You can join too!

Endless.

Salad.

Bar.

My (second) favorite mystery meat.

Rax sky at night, I mean, it's alright...

...Rax sky in the morning, Arby's fans take warning.

This...

...is better than this, though it's nice to see Uncle Alligator is still around. 

This location is easily the oldest Rax in operation. With its faux green slate Pizza Hut-like roof, I suspect the building dates back to Jax/Rix days. It seems to boast a nice blend of new and old. The menu board here is the original backlit unit, and though it shows its age a bit, I drastically prefer it to the cheap new menu boards in Ohio. The tables and chairs are reproduction midcentury pieces with a glitter finish on the vinyl chairs and a boomerang pattern on the tabletops, clearly not original, but thematically appropriate. Unilke newer Rax buildings, the solarium here has no shades covering the ceiling, so I’m able to eat my meal with a sky view. The employees are even wearing what seem to be vintage uniforms with the Rax logo on their shirts and visors. This is Rax the way it used to be. This is the working fast food museum I was looking for, but couldn’t find in Ohio. If you’re looking for a Broken Chains experience in the state that’s high in the middle and round on both ends, stop by Arthur Treacher’s, Clancy's, Kewpee, York Steak House, or the soon to open Columbus G.D. Ritzy’s. Wait until you’re west of Chicago (Or maybe in Eastern Kentucky, I still need to check out the Harlan Rax.) to try Rax. That’s where they truly do fast food with style.