This Celebrity Started The Wall At Chef’s Restaurant

Chef’s is known as Buffalo’s Favorite Italian Restaurant. It’s the home of the world famous spaghetti parmesan, but it’s known for more than that.

If you have ever been into Chef’s Restaurant, then you already know that the walls are covered with famous celebrities who have visited Chef’s at some point and posed with their famous Chef’s sauce. Although there are plenty of notable celebrities on the wall, you may have wondered...who was the celebrity that started it all?

The walls at Chef's Restaurant are covered all over the restaurant with celebrities posing with the original delicious sauce, but who was the first person to do it?

You may be shocked to learn that the first person to take a photo with the iconic Chef's sauce visited the restaurant back in 1997, and that celebrity was none other than Jerry Springer.

On April 27, Jerry Springer passed away at his home in Chicago after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 79 years old. 

Jerry Springer was best known for his talk show of the same name, which he ended in 2018 after 27 seasons and nearly 5,000 episodes. It wasn’t quite a full retirement, though…Jerry Springer worked on a handful of other television series. 

Springer did a lot of things in his career, but he had a unique back story. Springer was born February 13, 1944 in a London underground railway station that was being used as a bomb shelter. Jerry’s parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews, and they fled to England during the Holocaust. Other relatives in the Springer family did not make it, as some of them were killed by Nazis in the gas chambers. 

When Jerry and his parents arrived in the United States, he was 5 years old. He grew up in Queens, New York, and he developed a love for the New York Yankees.

While his home became Queens, Springer would venture up north on occasion, and one time he made a stop in Western New York. 

Springer took the time to eat at Chef’s Restaurant, a Buffalo favorite, and he loved it so much that he actually took a picture with the Chef’s original sauce!

This photo became the first photo on the celebrity wall, and it all started back in 1997. 

In memory of Jerry Springer, Chef’s Restaurant paid tribute to him on an Instagram post that told the story of how the celebrity wall got started. 

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“The FIRST celebrity to take a picture with a jar of our sauce on our celebrity wall in 1997. He was a great guy #rip,” the post said.

Chef’s Restaurant also shared a famous quote from Springer that he shared during his time here. Springer said, "Take care of yourself and each other."

Jerry Springer is easily recognizable on the wall at Chef's when you walk into the restaurant and turn the corner to walk towards the bar top, but there are several other celebrities on the wall, too.

Take a look at 35 of the most iconic celebrities on the wall at Chef's below.