A conversation was overheard in a Sacramento, California restaurant back in 1970. Two men were talking in a booth about the best steak they’d ever eaten. One mentioned a steakhouse in Texas, the other said he couldn’t decide, that he’d been working with a uranium company in Wyoming and had eaten in a tiny little town, no more than a wide spot in the road, with two great steakhouses. They were both excellent and he couldn’t decide which one was best. He also mentioned the little town was located about halfway between two slightly larger towns in the foothills of the mountains.
The eavesdropper listening to their conversation was from Fremont County, he excused himself for the intrusion but told the men, “Hudson, Svilar’s and the El Toro.”
The uranium businessman agreed.
Rated third best restaurant in America by Life Magazine in 1958, and fourth by food reviewer Duncan Hines, the El Toro in Hudson was a renowned steakhouse across the world.
For a town of fewer than 500 people today, that never exceeded 1500 in population to have two remarkable restaurants located just 50 yards from each other on opposite sides of the street is amazing, but not as amazing as the stories behind them.
This is the story of the El Toro, located on the west side of the highway in Hudson.
The El Toro opened in August 1934.
Mike Dabich grew up in Hudson, his grandfather’s Milan “Mike” Dabich and Milan “Emil” Radovich both immigrated from Yugoslavia. Emil was a steam engineer in the coal mines.
Emil married his first wife, Milicia but she returned to Yugoslavia after giving birth to Mike’s mother Pauline “Polly” and died of tuberculosis in Bosnia between World War I and World War II.
Polly returned to Wyoming at 13, unable to speak English and enrolled in first grade at Hudson Elementary school. She graduated from Fremont County Vocational High School in Lander just three years later.
Emil remarried Katherine Brkovich.
“She could stomp her foot and a piece of the sky would fall my dad said of Katherine,” Mike said.
In 1924, Emil opened a meat market and grocery store in what was the Senate room in the Union Bar.
Mike’s father Don Dabich married Polly, Mike was born in 1943, and Don went off to serve as a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II.
“They started the night club in the grocery store,” Mike said. “Frank Ninkovich owned the two-story “rooms” next to it. Frank was a bootlegger.”
Mike’s two grandfathers went into business together.
“My grandfather Milan Dabich went by Mike, he became partners with Emil in the El Toro Corporation,” Mike said. “His brother-in-law, Frank Ninkovich became a partner in the business.”
They owned the two buildings where the Union bar was located on the east side of the street.
“The part that was the Senate room was the grocery store,” Mike said. “Ninkovich lost the Union Bar in a card game with Rade Svilar. He was a gambler.”
There was a photograph in the Union Bar of a man with a mustache in an Army uniform. That was Frank Ninkovich
“He enlisted in World War I before the U.S. entered the war,” Mike said. “He went to Canada to be trained, then shipped back to Europe to fight against the Kaiser. He came back to the US in 1922 and partnered with my two grandfathers.”
Ninkovich’s death certificate listed his occupation as a “soft drink distributor” in Hudson, Wyoming. A clever dodge to his actual business as a bootlegger.
Hudson was a center for illicit liquor throughout prohibition. One of Wyoming’s most notorious bootleggers was Sam Paradise from Kemmerer. The Lincoln County authorities kept close watch on Sam and looked for supplies of sugar arriving on the Union Pacific in Rock Springs and Evanston destined for Sam’s stills outside Kemmerer.
“Frank ordered sugar by the carload to be delivered on the railroad in Hudson,” Mike said. “Sam loaded trucks and took it to Kemmerer.”
Polly came up with the name, “El toro”
“Hudson was a shipping point for cattle from the western portion of the county. Theye were trailed in every fall and the town was full. I’d taken some Spanish, and the restaurant had to have a name, the El Toro was all I could come up with,” she said in a 1979 interview in the Hudson Free Press.
The name, “El Toro” came from Spanish for “The Bull” but it was reinforced a few years later when the U.S. Marine Corps opened an air base by that name in California.
“When we were kids, El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California was running. These guys came in from the base. They’d just started the restaurant, just before Svilar’s started. Momma Svilar and my grandmother, Katherine Radovich ran boarding houses. Grandma had a brewery too.”
Three Marine Corps pilots stopped to eat at the El Toro and Katherine fed them for free. A few weeks later, a model of a P-39 Airacobra fighter plane arrived at the restaurant with El Toro insignia all over it.
“She started feeding bachelor miners,” Mike said. “We lived in an apartment in the back of the building. Dad went into the US Army in 1942. He was in the army for four years. They had the restaurant going.”
Don Dabich was on Okinawa with the U.S. Army as a signalman.
With two steakhouses directly across the street from each other, people imagined that Svilar’s and the El Toro were fierce competitors, they weren’t.
“They weren’t really in competition, but they were,” Mike said. “They always helped each other out when they needed it. The coal mines were shutting down, and everybody enlisted in the service.”
The Dabich’s had a nice tennis court but it was plowed up to make a garden. The old tennis court is where the town park basketball court is located today.
“We’re at war, we need to feed people my dad said. They raised a lot of their own vegetables for the restaurant, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, whatever they needed,” Mike said. “They had a butcher shop and grocery store. They sold hardware too.”
One disgusting job at the El Toro bar was cleaning brass spittoons each afternoon. Hudson was a mining town and many of the miners suffered from lung ailments like black lung, and nearly every one of them chewed tobacco.
“Kenny Applehans and I got caught stealing grease from the Svilar garage to grease the railroad tracks when we were about five or six,” Mike said. “Rade bumped our heads together then bought us ice cream.”
Paul Petzholdt, the renowned mountaineer, and founder of the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander frequented the El Toro, and always paid with a counter check. A counter check that bounced.
Years later in a conversation with Mike’s dad, Don Dabich, Petzoldt said, “Your dad knew I didn’t have any money, but he took the checks anyway.”
In 1949, Emil died and the family sold the El Toro to a woman named Miller from Cody. She had a successful restaurant in Cody and was looking to expand her business.
While the rival restaurants were thriving, something a bit more nefarious was thriving as well.
The 1940s and 50s in Fremont County were on the wild side. Gambling was well known in Hudson, Shoshoni and at the Dam Bar located at the first tunnel in the Wind River Canyon. Prostitution was thriving as well with brothels operating in Riverton, Shoshoni and Hudson.
“Homer Wampler took care of the gambling machines,” Mike said. “He always gave my brother and I a silver dollar. They had dollar machines at the time.
Wampler was from Riverton.
There was a roulette wheel and a crap table.
“Chuck Ramsey was the dealer, he was a pilot,” Mike said. “He started the Sky Club in Riverton.”
In 1949, the Dabich family moved to Lander.
“Thursday was a big night for families. Friday and Saturday were for dancing,” Mike said. “The Neon signs worked like big bug zappers. My brother and I had the job of cleaning up all the dead bugs out front. Dad called the girls working the brothel next door Kittens.”
In 1953, Ed and Warren Hancock purchased the El Toro from Miller.
The brothers made major improvements, including a dance floor, remodeled dining room, larger kitchen, a longer bar and new, modern restrooms. Opening night was May 20.
From Sunday through Friday, guests were serenaded by Clarence Craven on the piano, playing the popular consonata style of jazz.
On Saturday nights Warren brought in the Danceonians on the wildest night of the week.
The Peil Brothers polka band performed as well, with brass, accordion and piano getting customers out on the dance floor.
In the 1970s, Warren brought in Nashville West, a popular regional band that played in Riverton, Casper and Thermopolis as well as at the El Toro.
They were brothers, and excellent businessmen.
“Warren made money with the restaurant,” Mike said.
The El Toro became a well-known stopping point for tourists heading west to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. Ed and Warren marketed their restaurant with specials, tying in connections to Lander Frontier Days, local rodeos, fairs, sporting events and the One Shot Antelope Hunt.
As with Svilar’s across the street, the El Toro was renowned for its steaks, T-bones being the favorite. They also served ravioli and their version of Sarma, called “pigs in a blanket.”
The restaurant thrived. With a bar, a dance floor and excellent food, it was the place to go in Fremont County, and home to many business and government events.
The menu was upscale from most Fremont County restaurants offering shrimp, rainbow trout and “Giant Japanese Frog Legs” in addition to fried chicken and the mainstays of a steakhouse the T-bone, New York strip and filet mignon.
The prices were upscale too. At $4 you could order any one of the three popular cuts of steak. That equates to a $48 steak in 2024. Aged bourbon, five years or older was a dime higher than the younger version sold for 50 cents a glass. Sandwiches sold for 50 cents to a dollar.
The Hancock’s sold the El Toro to Annie and Kelly Connell 1976. Warren later owned the Maverick in Lander
Annie and Kelly ran the restaurant until 1986, when Kelly started High Country Construction in Lander.
“We gave it back to Ed, he ran it for a short time,” Annie said. “Then John Vinich and his sister Michelle. They ran it for a few years.”
Hudson is a small town. The relationship between Svilar’s and the El Toro was more cooperation than competition.
“I was raised in Hudson. I’ve known those people forever,” Annie said. “Ruby (Svilar/Calvert) and I ran around together every summer. I worked at the El Toro for Ed in high school. In the summertime Ruby and I would get off at the same time and run around a little.”
Kelly was a gifted carpenter, electrician and construction man. An example of the relationship between the two restaurants came when Svilar’s had an electrical issue.
“Reddi Svilar and Kelly became very good friends,” Annie said. “One time Reddi had an electrical problem, Kelly fixed it. While Kelly was working at Svilar’s Reddi cooked for us at the El Toro. No one ever found out, they were great friends.”
How many “rival” restaurants have cooks who walk across the street and run the kitchen while the other person repairs their place?
The El Toro relied on local and regional suppliers. Tweeds delivered cigarettes, candy and gum, Noble Food Supply from Denver brought in products once a week and they purchased their steaks from Safeway in Lander.
“We’d get a whole loin and Kelly would cut it. Wee filets, cut the skin and wrap them in bacon,” Annie said. “Our best sellers were filets. They weren’t as expensive as they are now. We had a big one and a little one, with the big one you got a lot.”
Prime rib is a common item on steakhouse menus today, but it wasn’t always.
“We started prime rib,” Annie said. “When we got out cooks at Svilar’s asked if we wouldn’t mind telling them how to cook it.”
One of the popular offerings at the El Toro was the salad bar.
“We had a salad bar, people liked it,” Annie said. “On a busy night you had to have a salad girl to keep things filled up.”
They had regular delivery from local beer distributors but had to order the hard liquor.
Over the years many famous people dined at the El Toro.
One evening in 1984, General Chuck Yeager, the man who first broke the speed of sound was in the restaurant.
“I had a tray and slipped,” Annie said. “Someone caught me with a hand in my back and when I turned it was Chuck Yeager.”
Robert Fuller, cowboy actor and doctor on Emergency, and one of the guys from “Combat” were there for the One Shot Antelope Hunt.
“The guy from Combat had a funny oriental wife,” Annie said. “She said look at me here, I’m dressed as a cowboy, this isn’t me.”
Larry Hagman, who played J.R. Ewing, the villain in Dallas, was in Lander for the One Shot.
“He started at Svilar’s for the one shot then he came over,” Annie said. “He was a drunken mess.”
Music was standard at the El Toro since the Hancock brothers owned it and Kelly and Ann continued the tradition.
“We always had a band on Friday and Saturday, “Annie said. “We used to get Union Carbide parties and sometimes we’d have to shut down because they took the whole place. We had a lot of Western Nuclear parties, too, but they weren’t that big.”
They recalled the Sneed brothers from Nevada playing, a father and two sons, when Ed had them and Riverton businessman Ben Michelle who played the drums.
“We used to have the prom kids come,” Annie said.
One memorable night, Kelly was ill and a strange call came to Annie.
“Kelly was sicker than a dog, it was 2 am, I get a call, and the guy says, now you are going to think I’m crazy, my friend is locked in the El Toro. I guess he passed out on a toilet,” Annie said. “They’d open the door and ask if anybody is in here when we classed, nobody answered. Then I got the call. I called the town cop and he met me there. He hands me a big flashlight and says to me, “You carry this flashlight and I’ll walk behind you”. He’d go to the left and put his gun out, and then to the right and put his gun out. I heard glass break in the bar, he was in the dark, in the bar.”
The small-town atmosphere of Hudson in the 1970s and 80s was evident in another story.
“One night someone was pounding on the door, Kelly and I heard it. We went over there. Kelly went to where they were beating on the door. There were two guys. I saw the other one, they were both from Western Nuclear. Their car broke down, it was below zero, they were freezing. They said no one would let us in and broke down our door,” Annie said. “He said, I’ll pay for the door.”
The Hudson town cop had driven by them but wouldn’t stop.
“The town cop was mad because we wouldn’t press charges,” Annie said. “The next day the guys had a new door and fixed everything up.”
They had a Saturday night tradition with Svilar’s.
“When Reddi was cooking at Svilar’s, whoever got done first we would go to the other place and play 3-ball pool,” Annie said. “It might be four in the morning before we went home.”
In the early 1980s, the economy of Fremont County changed dramatically. The uranium mines shut down and the iron mine at Atlantic City closed as well.
Matchbooks advertising the El Toro were popular advertising – h/t El Toro 
“Everything started getting bad. Kelly bought High Country Construction and I was getting tired,” Annie said. “We started closing every Monday when the economy went south.”
Previously they closed every other Monday in an unwritten deal with Svilar’s
“We were off every other Monday,” Annie said. “If we were out of anything, we’d trade, beer, whatever.”
The restaurant gradually slowed down, closing for good in 2006.
“It was fun when we did it, we had a good time doing it,” Annie said. “Hudson was a fun town to be raised in, we kind of ran wild in the summer.”