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  • Title: Golden Star Restaurant
  • By: Dick Gee
  • Location: Flagstaff, AZ
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This fabulous 1960's mid-century modern restaurant is close to my heart because it was my family's restaurant when I grew up. It was the most popular coffee shop stop for truckers and locals along route 66, the town's main Chinese restaurant, a banquet hall for wedding banquets and where the local civic organizations met and to top it off, a Polynesian Tiki Bar. The restaurant had a round lava rock dining room at the center with floating cantilevered wings on each side adorned with precast concrete arches. The coffee shop was in one wing and the tiki bar in the other wing. The central dining room was covered with a dome topped by a gas torch (like the LA coliseum) that lit up the sky at night. You entered through a floating covered ramp entry with reflecting pool fountains on both sides. In its time, it was a well-known stop along Route 66 in Flagstaff. My only regret is that I only became a Preservation Architect after it was later demolished, and I was not able to save it.