Popcorn in the bar and Steak Dunigan, apple pie and onion soup in the restaurant — those were among favorites of customers who for 66 years were drawn to The Pink Adobe, which closed Nov. 7 following financial problems.

Now, Priscilla Hoback — daughter of Rosalea Murphy, the woman who started The Pink Adobe and kept it going as long as she lived — says she wants to bring back "The Pink."

But it's unclear how that could happen any time soon, since the owners earlier this year filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition to reorganize the business, an ongoing process.

"It's been in our family a long time, and we love it," Hoback said. "We're trying to get it back. We have a large interest in it. It's very sad it closed."

Hoback said she and her family, who represent four generations of restaurateurs, had no idea that the people who bought the property a few years ago would change the menu and decor and start a much more "Eastern" kind of restaurant.

"We would be very interested in going back to a concept that has a lot more to do with Santa Fe and the history of the people who live here," she said.

About 15 or 20 people lost their jobs at the restaurant when it closed, Hoback said.

Joe Hoback, Priscilla's son, who is leading the charge to return the restaurant to the Hoback family, couldn't be reached for comment.

And neither could the out-of-state owners of the Pink Adobe, including David Garrett of the Garrett Hotel Group.

In documents filed with the federal Bankruptcy Court in Albuquerque in June, The Pink Adobe LLC says its nine largest creditors together are owed about $230,000.

The largest creditor by far is the Garrett Hotel Group, which claims a trade debt of $217,622. The second-largest creditor is Global Wine Co., owed $5,600, and the third is Above Sea Level, a Santa Fe commercial seafood business, due $1,221.32.

Those bankruptcy documents also indicated the Pink Adobe had estimated liabilities of between $500,000 and $1 million, the same range given for its estimated assets.

Earlier this year Garrett in a telephone interview said The Pink Adobe remained "operationally profitable." He also said that the restaurant's suppliers "remain very much understanding. Nobody is being difficult about it."

Garrett then added, "Most restaurants are in the same boat. We just elected to try and level our costs. Costs are so high we had to find some way to deal with them."

Murphy, an artist, writer and reluctant restaurateur, founded the business in an old adobe building at 406 Old Santa Fe Trail in 1944. After her divorce, "she had to do something to earn her living," Joe Hoback has said. That led to the creation of The Pink Adobe.

Murphy named the restaurant after the rose-colored stucco covering the 300-year-old former house.

Contact Bob Quick at 986-3011 or bobquick@sfnewmexican.com.