“She was a waitress at the Anoka Embers-we’d see each other at the Ember’s bowling league.” ‘A scary decision’ “And, along the way, I did meet my wife,” he adds. After high school, he got into the Ember’s management program and, eventually, became a general manager. You remember Al’s in Dinkytown? It’s this little place, just eight stalls, and I always thought about it as I was cooking, how it would be so much fun to open a little restaurant.” “I’d work all weekend long, even in high school,” Rickenbach says. When he was 15, Joe’s dad helped him get a job at the Northtown Embers in Blaine, where he too worked his way up the ladder. “In fact, I’d go to McDonald’s and order an Emberger-that’s just what burgers were called.” “I thought that was a normal thing for a kid,” he says. Rickenbach grew up following his dad around on service checks, eating out at different Embers around the state three or four nights a week. “So even though my dad didn’t have a college education, he moved up real quick, and by the time he left the company in ’86, he was a vice president.”Īdam Kristal and Joe Rickenbach, the sons of Henry Kristal and Ricky Rickenbach, respectively // Photo by Sam Ziegler “Embers needed people, and they did a ton of promoting from within,” says Joe Rickenbach. He wanted to move up, and he was single-at least until he met and married Noreen, a waitress at the restaurant-so he spent all his off-duty hours training in the kitchen, learning to cook. What happened next reads like the American Dream: Ricky started out as janitor in the Highland Embers. Embers was growing like gangbusters, there were loads of opportunities, and Clyde was a manager-Ricky should come out west and work for him. In 1958, Joseph “Ricky” Rickenbach was working at the Luden’s cough drop factory in Reading, Pennsylvania, when an old army buddy, Clyde, called to tell him about an exciting new restaurant chain in Minnesota. Six months later, they opened a second spot on Ford Parkway in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. The star of their menu was the quarter-pound Emberger-charbroiled and brushed with their proprietary barbecue sauce-that went for 45 cents (60 if you added fries). Birnberg and Kristal hired a small staff and worked alternate shifts, pinch-hitting as cooks and servers and whatever role needed filling each day. The first Embers Restaurant opened on East Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis in 1956. Eventually, their yearnings turned into a plan to open a restaurant, a place where working-class folks could get a good meal at a low price. Kristal was stationed in Virginia Beach, and Birnberg moved around a lot, but they wrote to one another-letters, as legend has it, about the terrible Navy rations and how much they missed their mothers’ home-cooking. They stayed close buddies all the way through school, and then joined the Navy together. The Ember’s billboard off of 694 in Fridley, Minnesota // Photo by Sam ZieglerĮmbers founders Henry Kristal and Carl Birnberg met as five-year-old boys in St. He seemed to know them all and to be completely in his element-running the last of the original Embers restaurants, a remnant of a once mighty Midwestern chain. Rickenbach wandered from table to table, chatting with the young families, older couples, and car folk. As we plowed through it, the tables around us filled up and a homey din took over the little A-frame, which increasingly felt more like a small neighborhood restaurant than a freeway stop-off. He found us a booth, and his son Sam brought the menu: a full eight pages ranging from breakfast skillets to mini pies. Inside we were greeted by Joe Rickenbach, the owner of the restaurant and Ricky’s son. An older gent-Ricky, as it happens-opened the door for us, saying, “Come on in, Honda.” A group of regulars wearing Cruise Night T-shirts sat out front in lawn chairs they’d brought from home and talked cars. We’d arrived for the last Cruise Night of the summer season, and the parking lot was full of cars from every era, some more interesting than others-like a souped-up ’58 Ford Custom 300 with stainless steel dice on the air filter, red ball fringe around the windows, and a kitschy plastic lady perched on the dash.Ī Grandpa’s Ice Cream truck parked next to the restaurant’s rhubarb patch was handing out free ice cream. On a recent Thursday, we stopped by Ricky’s Embers Family Restaurant, just off 694 in Fridley. Ricky’s Embers Family Restaurant in Fridley // Photo by Sam Ziegler
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