Hot_l Bar & Grille | Formerly Michael Shay’s Rib and Seafood House | Formerly Howard Johnson’s
350 Bradford Street. [2008, Dunlap]
Howard Johnson’s in the 1970s. [Ben Kettlewell / Facebook / Provincetown Diaspora / 12 November 2023]
The trademark Howard Johnson’s steeple was salvaged from 350 Bradford and moved to Poor Richard’s Landing. [2014, Dunlap]
[2010, Dunlap]
Left: Prime seating. [2011, Dunlap] Right: These flippers and linguiça kept the photographer fed for the entire day. [2010, Dunlap]
[2010, Dunlap]
A new paint job for Hot_l Bar & Grille. [2014, Dunlap]
[2013, Dunlap]
Stephen Borkowski captured the desolate post-demolition scene in 2016. [Courtesy of Stephen Borkowski]
Text last updated on 19 December 2016 | As Michael Shay’s Rib and Seafood House, this was the breakfast club for a who’s who of Old Provincetown. After flippers and linguiça here, you wouldn’t have to eat for another day. The Santos family ran restaurants on this site beginning in 1948, when Basil Santos and his wife, Gloria (Silva) Santos, opened the Captain’s Galley. In 1954, it became an orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s franchise, but prided itself as being a “rather unusual link” in the chain. (The HoJo steeple still exists, at Poor Richard’s Landing.) In the early ’80s, the HoJo connection faded as Basil’s Place emerged, along with the Greenery bar, later the Buttery Bar & Grille. Then, in 1992, came Michael Shay, named not for one person but two: Basil and Gloria’s son Michael Santos and his wife, Shay. From 2012 to 2014, the restaurant was called the Hot_l Bar & Grille. The building was demolished in 2016.
¶ Republished on 14 November 2023.
350 Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.