DALLAS — It’s not Hollywood, but it may be the most star-studded steakhouse in Dallas.
Hungry celebrities often seek it out, but the one person who always tried staying away from Nick and Sam’s? Sam.
“I used to be scared to come to this place and the reason being is because Nick and Sam’s is haunted,” said Sam Romano, owner of Nick and Sam’s.
Haunted? How?
“This used to be a funeral home,” Romano said.
Romano says before the building became a steakhouse, it essentially served as a morgue for Parkland Hospital. Ask anyone who’s worked in the restaurant and they’ll say some of the people who came through the door never left.
“Yeah, everybody’s seen something,” said executive chef John Kleifgen. “Everybody has a story.”
Kleifgen said, one day, at 4:30 a.m., he and his sous chef were in the kitchen taking care of inventory. The entire building was locked with no way for anyone to get in.
And yet when Kleifgen looked toward the back door, he jumped back.
“Clear as day, a man was looking through this window at us,” he said.
When he looked again, Kleifgen said the man was gone.
Server Benny Bajrami has seen plenty of things, too.
One night, as he and two other employees were about to go home, a man in an Army uniform appeared and starting walking through the dining room.
“Towards the kitchen,” Bajrami recounted.
As the three employees approached to try and ask questions, the man disappeared.
“We’re asking each other, ‘did you just see what I saw’” Bajrami said. “It was freaky.”
Yet, he’s stuck around for 24 years.
Some people, however, can’t even make it through the night. The overnight cleaning crew refused to come back.
“They said, ‘We can’t work there anymore,’” Romano said. “’We’re going to go find another place to work 'cause we’re scared.’”
Romano said there have been many more sightings in the building, particularly the woman at 56. Several employees claim they’ve seen the woman appear in the corner booth and then vanish.
Whatever has taken up residence in the steakhouse, Romano says it’s nothing to be frightened about.
“We haven’t had anything bad happen,” he said. “If you’re scared of ghosts, these aren’t ones to be scared of. If you want to come in and ghost hunt while you’re having dinner, it might not be that hard.”
In other words, no matter how you take your steak, the ghosts are definitely not rare.
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