Red Oak’s Rainbow Café closes its doors

A long-time restaurant staple of the Red Oak community has closed its doors.
The Rainbow Café at 105 W. Market St. served its final meals to customers on Aug. 6.  At the time of its closure, the Rainbow was the oldest restaurant operating in Red Oak.
Local historian Roy Marshall shared a partial history of the restaurant. Marshall said it stretched all the way back to the 1940s. At the time, the owners were Mr. and Mrs. C.O Walker.  They moved the location to the present one, named it Rainbow Gardens, then sold to Robert and Chuck Allen in the mid 1940s.
“A check of records took me to 1946 when Allen, a World War II veteran, applied for beer and cigarette licensing for a business at 105 Market Street.  Allen was perhaps thinking of his military division or a pot of gold with a place named ‘Rainbow,’” Marshall said.
The Rainbow has changed ownership a number of times since its opening. Marshall said one ownership change took place in 1951, when the restaurant was sold to Thelma Rhoads.
“Rhoads had relatives in Cass County. In the Cass County seat of Atlantic in 1953 a single mother named Effie Bean opened southwest Iowa’s first pizza place. She had a tiny kitchen, no seating, made her pizzas in aluminum foil pie pans which she sold through a walk-up window for 25 cents each,” stated Marshall. “In my research of Effie Bean, one of many stories was that on Thursday afternoons she sold a lot of pizzas to someone who took them to a bar and grill on Red Oak’s south side.  This presents the possibility that the first pizza sold in Montgomery County, and also the first pizza delivery, was an Effie Bean original that Thelma Rhoads bootlegged for resale at the Rainbow.”
Rising food prices and decreased traffic were reportedly the reasons behind the closure.