After “collecting Beatles memorabilia for years,” Dr. Bradley Wolf figured that the 60th anniversary of the Beatles playing Cincinnati Gardens was a great reason to display his momentos.
Some of his 18 framed silver gelatin prints of Walter Burton’s photographs of The Beatles in Cincinnati on Aug. 27, 1964, will be exhibited at the Fresh To Morrow Cafe & Market, a farm-to-table restaurant at 121 Main St., Morrow, Ohio, which he co-owns with farmer-chef Ryan Doan.
Wolf, 70, a hair transplant specialist, bought the pictures 10 years ago, after seeing my stories in the Enquirer about high-end art prints being sold by Burton for the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ Queen City concert on their first North American tour. Burton’s pictures were featured in a magazine-size souvenir booklet after the 1964 concert.
His collection also includes three gold records for The Beatles' Anthology 2 album, and posters from Let It Be, Yellow Submarine and a six-foot-by-five-foot poster for Help! in Italian.
“I don’t know if I can get that one up for the exhibition,” says Wolf, who lives on a 25-acre Warren County horse farm not far from Morrow. Wolf, president of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, has a medical practice on Mason Road in Symmes Township.
Wolf also owns several Beatles’ recording awards; 15 pencil doodles by John Lennon; a signed Paul McCartney photo; a poster for Ringo Starr and his All Star Band signed by Ringo; an assortment of Beatles playing cards, socks, cups, pens and a lunch box; and an Adirondack baseball bat signed to Ringo from Pete Rose (“You’re the greatest!”)
When I visited the café last month, Wolf was displaying a John Lennon color sketch from Prague, the signed Ringo Starr and his All-Star band item; and posters for Led Zeppelin, a stage production of Hair; and The Rolling Stones 1972 American tour poster.
To celebrate The Beatles exhibit opening, Doan is planning a 5-8 p.m. reception Saturday, Aug. 24, at the restaurant. Tickets are $35 each for a farm-to-table buffet dinner, mocktails and dessert and Beatles music performed by the Acoustic Pete Blues Trio.
The buffet will include salad, coleslaw, pasta salad, power bowl, stir fry, burgers, chicken salad, pizza, soup “and some sort of dinner special like steak or pulled pork,” says Doan, a Warren County farmer who opened the café with his wife, Megan.
“Ideally people purchase tickets in advance, and if we have room I will take payment at the door,” Doan says. “We only have space for 50, so we need people to buy dinner. They do not have to buy the $35 buffet ticket but they need to order food. People love the buffet meals when we do them, it allows them to taste most of the menu and eat as much as they want.”
Dinner will be served about 6 p.m., he said. Tickets are available here.
The Doans started their business in 2019 in the Morrow Arts Center. Two years later the Doans and Wolf bought the old First National Bank building in downtown Morrow along the Little Miami bike trail for the café. All ingredients are organic, no sprays are used in the cultivation, and 75% of all products used are sourced within five miles of the café. Their market also sells fresh produce, local healthy products, and a variety of tinctures, tonics, and elixirs.
“We are one of the only farm-to-table restaurants that have an actual farm,” Ryan says. “We are working on a vertically integrated model to try and increase wages in our industry, which is essentially dying. Nobody wants to be farmers because the capital threshold is high and the wages are low — a bad combination. So far, so good. We are profitable and our numbers are all pointing in the right direction,” Ryan says.
A special limited-edition 20-inch-by-30-inch three-color silkscreen print with photographs taken by Burton to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first visit to Cincinnati will be auctioned for charity.
The Beatles memorabilia will be on display at Fresh to Morrow until Oct. 24.
