APRIL 1934

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the stories

“Meal with a View”

Photo compilation: From University of Miami, Special Collections, Pan American Air Ways, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 6 and 16.
https://digitalcollections.library.miami.edu/digital/collection/asm0341/id/50297/rec/9
https://digitalcollections.library.miami.edu/digital/collection/asm0341/id/50312/rec/9

With the last table cleared, skillet washed, and the lights out, Executive Chef Buehler reviewed his establishment’s Sunday April 1, 1934 grand opening. Across the evening his team plated 97 meals for guests who, seated in glass-heavy space atop the new Pan American Airways’ Dinner Key terminal were distracted from their carefully crafted entrees by stunning views of Biscayne Bay, well-heeled and well-known fellow diners, and photographer’s flashbulbs.

Three weeks earlier Buehler’s culinary team had faced even more-demanding diners, however — Pan Am’s Dinner Key base employees — when when the doors to the terminal’s bottom-floor company cafeteria opened Monday, March 12, 1934, reported as the “first actual use of the new building.”

After proving to the company’s blue-collar employees that the food and service met their standards, Chef Buehler staged a “soft-opening” banquet in the second-floor dining room for a cadre of Pan Am Caribbean Division officials and their guests.

The Pan American restaurant became Miami’s hottest dining spot, averaging 100-150 guests per night over the restaurant’s first month. With positive word-of-mouth and 35,000 visitors touring the airbase each month Buehler didn’t fear any imminent closure.

For the next decade food service at Dinner Key was an important part of the airbase’s place in aviation history and served clientele as diverse as found in New York City’s finest restaurants. On any given night locals sat amidst international celebrities, European royalty, South American diplomats and North American industrialists.

One night in the first week, Chef Buehler welcomed a particularly eclectic group, “a party that included a prince, two princesses, a baroness, a general, a commodore and a well-known author.”

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