Machus Red Fox

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Machus Red Fox was a restaurant, famed as the place from which former Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975, was the crown jewel among Machus Enterprises' chain of restaurants and bakeries. Harris Machus, already a successful restaurateur, opened Machus Red Fox in 1965 on Telegraph Road near the affluent Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Noted for providing a fine dining experience, the 270-seat restaurant was decorated in an English country, hunt-club motif, rich in red velvet with dimly-lit booths. While many wealthy and socially elite chose Machus Red Fox for their dinner venue, Jimmy Hoffa was perhaps the restaurant's most regular celebrity patron. The restaurant hosted the wedding reception for Hoffa's son, James Hoffa Jr.

Despite Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance from the Machus Red Fox parking lot and Harris Machus's concern for the restaurant's reputation due to the ensuing publicity, patronage flourished, perhaps as much from morbid curiosity as for the cuisine. Customers would jokingly ask the manager if he's seen Jimmy Hoffa lately, to which one of the managers would reply, "No, but I wouldn't eat the Hoffa burger."

After the disappearance of Hoffa in 1975, the FBI set up an office in the banquet rooms in the basement for several days.

Machus Red Fox closed in 1996. An Italian restaurant, Andiamo, is now located in its place. Harris Machus died in January 2001.

[edit] External link

Yockel, Michael Come Back to the Red Fox Jimmy Hoffa, Jimmy Hoffa NY Press, v. 14, iss. 6 February 2001 [1]