SIGNED! - Ola's Norwegian Restaurant Cook and 41 similar items

Ola's Norwegian Cook Book, by Lucie Keyser Frolich. Illustrated by Ingrid Selmer Larsen. First Edition, 1946. Pamphlet-style paperback. 69 pages. Measures approximately 8.5 in x 5.5 in x 0.3 inches. SIGNED by Lucie Keyser Frolich, and inscribed to a Mrs. Wood, with a little note (see photo). Acceptable condition. Covers wearing/tanning, staining. Pages tanning. A few blemishes on the pages here and there. Ola Restaurant, or Ola Kaffehus, "behind the gate", resided at 14 Carver Street, Boston, MA, and was the first real Norwegian restaurant in Boston, founded by a Norwegian architect during the Depression. In 1934 Lucie Keyser Frolich and her husband, Bernhard, decided to open into a restaurant near Boston?s Park Square, even though neither had any experience in the business. Here?s how Lucie Frolich would later tell the story: ?The great depression of 1929-1933 practically forced my late husband and me into the restaurant business. This is how it happened. A very discouraged Norwegian architect was sauntering along the streets of Boston one day. He stopped for a moment on Carver Street, struck by the rustic atmosphere of number fourteen. Ola was conceived right then and there, and in less than ten days the new restaurant was born.? In the early days the restaurant, visible through an iron-gated entrance at 14 Carver Street, was Ola Kaffehus, signaling the Norwegian heritage of its owners (as well as their partners, Olaf and Sallie Amundsen). From almost the start Lucie was known as ?Madame Ola? or ?Mrs. Ola? and Bernhard??a six-foot-two Viking,? as Lucie described him?as ?Mr. Ola.? But when Bernhard died just three years after the restaurant opened, Lucie was thrust into the role of sole proprietor, a role in which she would remain for nearly 30 more years. As Ola Restaurant thrived, Lucie Frolich acquired quite a large following in Boston, and in 1946 she published Ola?s Norwegian Cook Book, which she sold in the restaurant and at the Norwegian Arts Craft Shop on Beacon Street. ?I dedicate this book to you good Bostonians who have favored and been faithful to my little Ola for more than ten years,? she wrote in the introduction to the book. ?Depression, war, rationing?you came regardless, with pleasant smiles on your faces.? After Frolich died at age 65 in 1964, two longtime customers took over as the owners, but Ola?s Restaurant closed in 1966 and a new restaurant, Dante?s, opened in the same space. The building at 14 Carver Street and the houses on both sides of it were demolished in 1979 as a massive redevelopment project rearranged the street pattern in Park Square and the South Cove. What remained of Carver Street was renamed Charles Street South.