2 Hilton Road, Bishopbriggs, Glasgow.
The Eagle Lodge.
The Eagle Lodge has a wonderful restaurant called Oregano.
Mr Emil Bernard. 1970.
Mr Bernard, managing director of the Eagle Lodge, Bishopbriggs, displays American chef matchbook. The best thing about having a small item collection in you bar is that the customers often get so interested they become volunteer collectors.
This is what happens to Mr Emil Bernard, who since started his collection of Matchbook covers about a dozen years ago, has had it augmented many times by customers and friends.
One regular of his roadhouse, opened in 1958 by Mr & Mrs Thomas Smart, who also ran the Crow Tavern in Bishopbriggs, brought back a batch of matchbook covers from all the ports he had visited while on a world cruise.
Now Mr Bernard’s collection runs to hundreds around the walls of the Lodge’s American cocktail bar, but his total at one time amounted to 6000, although it dropped sharply when 2000 were cleaned out once.
His favourite matchbook, and the most valuable is one from New York’s Restaurant Longchamps chain in which each match represents a chef, and its white head being the traditional cook’s cap, and carries a slogan.
Emil’s other favourites are also North American, which he thinks produces the best matchbooks, with Sweden and South Africa next, such as the 18 inch one turned out in the United States for an English seaside resort and the New Jersey restaurant which produce Christmas covers like Santa Claus example shown in the above image.
He also has a 24 inch long Canadian matchbook, the longest in the world, it is reckoned. Although born near Prague, Czechoslovakia, Emil Bernard considers himself a Pole, like his father, and served throughout the war in the Polish Merchant Navy.
After the war he married a Scots girl and started work in catering here at Peebles Hydro, then Glasgow’s 101 restaurant, Hope Street and Central Hotel, where he also collected quite a few celebrities like U.S. stars Frank Sinatra, Billy Daniels and Frankie Laine.
In the News 1974…
The Eagle Lodge, Bishopbriggs, was the venue recently for a happy occasion when the staff and customers entertained a party of 85 old folk from Bishopbriggs, Auchinairn and Kirkintilloch areas, who were conveyed to the premises by customers’ cars. 1974.