Manufacturer: Walker China
User: The Blue Fox Restaurant – Lakewood, Ohio
User: Florence's Restaurant – Robinson, Illinois
Date of plate: April 1943

Blue Fox grouping photo by Marge Barner

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Notes:
The Blue Fox
Located at 11706 Clifton Blvd. on the corner of West 117th Street in Lakewood, Ohio, the Blue Fox restaurant was once one of the finest restaurants in the area. It was owned by three siblings – Vera, Bruno, and Eddie Berardinelli. It has been described as having "exquisite food and exciting clientele." A writer reminiscing about lost restaurants in the area said of the Blue Fox, "The bar was full of bookies, mobsters, call girls, politicians, local celebrities, etc.  Always an illegal card game going on upstairs."

From what is known, the Blue Fox operated from at least the early 1940s until it was closed by an FBI raid in January of 1984. Marty Rini, the bartender, was arrested for book making along with Joe Spaganlo, a Cleveland mafia figure who picked up money for the mob. In the 1970s and 80s, Rini served bar for politicians, judges, professional athletes, celebrities and even priests at the Blue Fox restaurant.

After the FBI raid, the Blue Fox never reopened and the building today (2023) is a CVS drugstore.

Florence's Restaurant
As noted above, the Blue Fox closed in 1984, but that was not the end of life for the restaurant's dishes. A Robinson, Illinois, woman, Florence "Flo" Henderson, who "showed love … through cooking," according to her obituary, opened Florence's Restaurant in 1985 at 2088 East Main Street in Robinson, and the dishes she used were the Blue Fox's.

In 2004, she sold the restaurant to her daughter, Kathy Lake, who continued to run the restaurant. Flo died in 2019 and Kathy in 2022, and now (2025) T.J.'s Café is located in, according to their Facebook page, "Old Flo's building next to Rural King."

But T.J.'s Cafe is not using the china. We were able to piece together the dishes' second chapter of more than 35 years thanks to a reseller of what must have been the restaurant's entire inventory (a small fraction of which are shown at left), and she was kind enough to suffer our questions and find the name of Flo's restaurant for us. Their third chapter is still to be written.

White body plate with a narrow rim that has an airbrushed yellow-gold band on the outer edge of the rim. In the well of the plate at the 11 o'clock position is a black stylized line drawing of a fox's head with a long-pointed mussel and oversized whiskers.

Sources:
Cleveland.com – article about the FBI raid at the Blue Fox
Florence "Flo" Henderson obit 
Kathy J. Lake obit

Contributors:
ID and research: Roland Burritt
Plate photos: Charles H. Sovine
Grouping photo: Marge Barner
Author: Ed Phillips