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Wrapped around a live oak tree just off Richmond Avenue, Houston’s Hobbit Cafe is one of the city’s favorite haunts. The Lord of the Rings–inspired restaurant is a craft beer bar, burger joint, and haven for vegetarians all in one building. This spring, it celebrates a half century of service. But as the Hobbit Cafe reaches fifty, it proves it transcends its theme.When the restaurant opened in 1972, a few blocks away from its current location under the original name Hobbit Hole Cafe, J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels were popular among young people and counterculture movements but weren’t the global force they are today. The first paperback copies of Lord of the Rings had come out in 1965 (and were, amazingly, pirated). Leonard Nimoy had recorded the…

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