Throwback Thursday: 45 years ago, when Mariah’s Restaurant opened
For decades, Mariah’s wasn’t just a restaurant in downtown Bowling Green—it was THE downtown restaurant, a place where celebrations were held, stories were swapped, and time seemed to slow just enough for everyone to feel at home. Today, the building has a different purpose. It later housed Steamers Seafood, and now Bluegrass Ingredients calls this space home. But long before those chapters… this corner of Downtown was defined by a single name: Mariah’s.
The restaurant’s namesake, Mariah Moore, carried a lineage woven into the very foundation of Bowling Green. She was a relative of brothers George and Robert Moore—the men credited with founding this city. And fittingly, the restaurant opened inside the oldest known building still standing in Bowling Green.
Built in the early 1800s, its walls held the echoes of frontier days, the Civil War, and generations of downtown transformation. And starting in 1980, those walls welcomed thousands of diners into an atmosphere that felt like stepping into a storybook of southern hospitality. Mariah’s became beloved for its warmth as much as its menu. Homestyle meals, hot rolls that disappeared as fast as they hit the table, the clinking of glasses, the laughter of WKU students, and the steady hum of families gathering for birthdays, anniversaries, and after-game dinners.
Some of its famous menu items were stoplight pasta and chicken and buttons. It was known for having a beautiful mural of Downtown Bowling Green’s Fountain Square on its main dining room wall. A look down Main Street with old Model T’s made it feel like diners stepped back in time over 50 years.
When Mariah’s eventually closed its doors a decade ago, it wasn’t the end of the building’s story—just the close of one of its most beloved chapters. Steamers Seafood restaurant carried on the tradition of gathering there for a few years, and today Bluegrass Ingredients is writing its own page in downtown’s history book. Bluegrass is using it as a research and development engineering facility to create recipes for the kind of flavored dust you might find on potato chips.
But ask anyone who remembers… and they’ll tell you: Mariah’s shaped a generation of memories. It was a taste of home, a meeting place, and a reminder of how food can bring a community together. Forty-five years after it first opened, and long after its last meal was served, Mariah’s lives on—in stories, in traditions, and in the hearts of those who shared a table inside Bowling Green’s oldest home.
