For well over 2 Decades, Marie Livingston’s Steakhouse has fed Tallahassee residents its savory cuts of marbled beef, marinated in its signature secret sauce. The restaurant, which moved into its third location a few years ago on 2705 Apalachee Parkway, is a raved-about local favorite, the type of restaurant where people plan 11:30 a.m. lunches and 9 p.m. dinners to escape the crowd.
But what many Tallahassee residents don’t know is that the popular steakhouse isn’t an out-of-town chain, nor is the name a marketing gimmick. There is a real Marie Livingston.
She has perfectly coiffed, shoulder-length brown hair, a sweet, slow Southern drawl that comes from her Alabama upbringing, and a gracious way of greeting strangers that immediately puts them at ease. Not that she needs it, but the grandmother has the help of her two grown daughters, Sonya Livingston and Susan Higdon, both former professional dancers.
Though elegant in appearance and demeanor, don’t be fooled: Livingston is a roll-up-her-sleeves workaholic who spends her days making sure her damaged hardwood floors are fixed, the food is just right and guests are happy.
Retire? “I hadn’t thought about it,” Livingston says, although she does allow that she “might want to take a few more days off.” Her daughters interject, saying their mother went on a short out-of-town trip recently and was itching to get back to the restaurant after two days.
“I enjoy working,” Livingston says. The truth is that Marie Livingston knows hard work, having managed or owned restaurants all her adult life. She is renowned for her great food, but her success also is attributable in part to her business savvy and flair for restaurant décor.
When she first moved to Tallahassee in 1991, Livingston was warned against opening a restaurant just east of Capital Circle Southeast on Apalachee Parkway, where Old Mexico is now.
“They told me that building was jinxed,” Livingston says. “No restaurant had been there more than six months. But I told them that building had nothing to do with it.”
It Began with a Date Livingston grew up in a speck of town called Malvern in southern Alabama, which currently has a population of 1,200 people. She spent a lot of her time in nearby Dothan and, after graduating high school, decided to apply for a job at a new, popular barbecue restaurant.
One of the co-owners of Dobbs Famous Bar-B-Que, Bill Livingston, decided that he needed to meet this applicant personally and asked Livingston if he could come to her house for lunch.
“I was so excited. I just wanted a job,” she recalls. Afterward, he asked her to dinner in Dothan.
“I thought this was the strangest thing, but if going to dinner to talk about this job means I get it, then, yes!” Livingston says. “He picked me up, and we went to eat dinner to talk about the job. He tells me that ‘my partner and I don’t hire people we date.’ Well, I didn’t know we were dating!”
She didn’t get the job, but they did date — and eventually got married. Then she was put to work. For 26 years. As the wife of one of the owners, Livingston filled in as manager and hostess.
“I loved it,” Livingston says, her eyes shining. “It wasn’t even like a job, to tell you the truth. It was like one big family.” Their two girls helped out, and when they weren’t tall enough to reach the soda fountain, an old milk crate would do the job.
“It was like having guests over every day,” says Higdon. “She’s tried to bring that sense here, too.”
A Department-Store Dropout After her daughters had moved to New York City, one dancing for the famous Radio City Rockettes and the other dancing for Holland America Cruise Lines, Livingston’s marriage fell apart. After 26 years working at her husband’s restaurant, she didn’t know what to do.
“All I had ever done was work in a restaurant,” Livingston says.
After her divorce, she moved to Birmingham, Ala., because she liked the city and decided to apply at the upscale department store Parisian. In the application, she left the salary-requirement line blank.
“I didn’t have a clue what people made in a place like that,” Livingston says.
After an interview, she was offered a job paying $6 an hour, plus 1 percent commission.
After her first busy weekend, Livingston learned that 1 percent commission was, on her best day, an extra $50 per shift.
“That wasn’t going to cut it,” she says. It would hardly cover her basic bills. Livingston realized that many of the other women worked at the department store part time and had the salary of a husband for support.
She quit after a mere six weeks and, at the urging of her Tallahassee attorney, Mark Levine, decided to relocate to Florida’s capital city.
A Tallahassee Lassie Besides Levine, Livingston didn’t know anyone in Tallahassee. She had no friends, no family and certainly no business contacts. Levine warned her against that first location on Apalachee Parkway. Others scoffed at the idea of a steakhouse when there were already three in town.
But Livingston was stubborn. She had an eye for seeing potential in worn, abandoned restaurant buildings, thanks to her quarter-century of restaurant management experience and strong business instincts. Her ex-husband had taught her the importance of keeping her overhead low — finding cheap rent, not going into debt buying equipment, and keeping labor and food costs down.
So Livingston decided to make a go of it, bringing along her interior decorator’s vision for how to style a restaurant. She adorned the first location with a country and Western theme, with red and green checkered tablecloths and Frederic Remington prints of cowboys and horses.
Livingston opened her doors on April 21, 1992. Oddly enough, the restaurant’s name wasn’t even Marie Livingston’s. It was Texas Longhorn Steakhouse. Livingston was confident in her concept and knew that the food was her secret weapon.
“I knew we weren’t going to have a large menu, I was going to simplify it,” she says. Livingston intended to use recipes she was familiar with from not only her ex-husband’s restaurant, but also from a steakhouse her sister had opened.
Her daughters say Livingston has always had a talent for cooking. When their mother would visit them in New York City, daughters Higdon and Sonya Livingston would beg her to cook a meal for them … and a dozen of their friends. Their group of “friends” grew larger once the word got out about Livingston’s cooking.
