Hello everyone. Today I will be talking about The Branding Iron restaurant that was once located at 4200 W 95th St in Oak Lawn, IL. It opened in August 1959 as a restaurant and a 36-lane bowling alley. The parking lot accommodated 300 cars at that time. The Branding Iron was a local favorite, serving up barbecued ribs with special sauce; salads with a Lazy Susan of French, thousand island and creamy garlic dressings; and baked potatoes and French fries. You also made your own ice cream sundaes when you ordered dessert there. The barbecue ribs were cooked over live hickory logs. According to the manager, Jim Sullivan, he recalled how patrons from the predominantly Catholic surrounding neighborhood would bowl until midnight on Fridays during Lent when their religion required them to abstain from eating meat. At 12:01, they’d line up at the restaurant for a barbecue dinner. The wait staff dropped off the complimentary powdered-sugar-covered donut holes in wooden salad bowls shortly after diners sat down. A second location opened at the corner of Butterfield and Finley Roads in Downers Grove, IL. I only went to The Branding Iron once in my life, but I wished I went there more often. When I was at Bogan High School in 1979, my friends suggested we go to the restaurant one Saturday night. When we arrived there, I fell in love with the place. It was big, but not enormous and the people were warm and friendly. I ordered their famous ribs, and they were the best I have ever tasted. The baked potatoes and the salads were sheer delights. The piece de resistance of the entire meal was the powder-sugar donuts holes. They were so succulent, much better than Dunkin Donuts or any other donut shops that I have eaten. I still miss those. After we finished our meals, we headed to the bowling alleys. I had a lot of fun of bowling there, but I liked the other bowling alleys in my old neighborhood, like Ford City Bowling Center and Scottsdale Bowl. Ford City Bowling Center had the red pins and if you bowled a strike, you would have received a free game. I used to drive by The Branding Iron all the time on W 95th St, and never went a second time. The place is still talked about to this day. People miss it immensely and when it was announced that the place was closing in the spring of 1988, everyone was very sad about it. The Downers Grove location was closed as well. The building was eventually torn down. A Bank of America and an Advocate Medical Group Primary Care Medical building are there now. Please share your memories and comments on The Branding Iron Restaurant here on my blog and on my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit accounts. Some information was provided by an article written in The Chicago Tribune. Thank you. Pete Kastanes-Admin for Vanished Chicagoland Facebook page.