Jan Whitaker's Blog, page 15

Image gallery: have a seat!

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How often do you notice the chair you are sitting on in a restaurant? I’m a fairly observant person but I couldn’t tell you what kind of chairs my favorite restaurants use. Unless a chair is unusually uncomfortable I doubt I’d pay any attention to it at all.

Restaurant owners, managers, and designers, on the other hand, have thought about chairs a lot. There are numerous considerations that go into selecting them, including price, comfort, durability, style, portability, and how much space they occupy.

And let’s not leave out gender, because many of the chairs used in the 20th century were either intended to appeal to men or women, with the understanding that women will adapt to male preferences, but not necessarily vice versa. A 1912 etiquette column counseled women not to wrap their feet around the front legs of chairs in restaurants, but to keep them close together, facing straight ahead and flat on the floor. The author admitted the reason so many wrapped their feet around chair legs was that the chairs were too high for most women!

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It’s hard to say exactly what chairs were used in the 19th century because of the lack of available images as compared to the 20th. In the early 19th century, public eating places were often furnished with benches, while chairs came later. After hunting up as many drawings of chairs as I could – mostly from Victorian trade cards and circulars of the 1880s [e.g., Glover’s Corner, Boston] — I’d say seating in ordinary, non-deluxe restaurants was fairly simple, with slat or spindle backs.

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Certain chairs have been dominant in restaurants at various times over the past decades. The most successful beyond a doubt was commonly known as the “Vienna chair.” Used worldwide in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was one of the bentwood chairs developed and produced from Carpathian beech by the Thonet Company of Austria. Its stellar success was because it was graceful, durable, and lightweight. As one of the earliest chairs to be mass produced, it was also inexpensive. [Boos Bros., 1915]

Various versions of the Vienna chair were in use in this country in the 19th century. The C. L. Woodman restaurant of Chicago advertised in 1880 that it had remodeled and added “260 pretty chairs of cane and ebony [that] recall the days of our Viennese rambles.” In 1884 B. Nathan & Co., San Francisco, ran an ad saying “Sole Agents For Thonet Bros. Indestructible Bent-Wood Austrian Furniture and Chairs, for Hotels, Restaurants and Dining-rooms.”

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Somewhat reminiscent of the Vienna chair, metal “ice cream parlor chairs” were used in various types of restaurants in the early 20th century.

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Though it continued in use until WWII and even beyond, becoming collectible in the 1960s, the prototypical Vienna bentwood chair began to look dated in the 1930s, when streamlined aluminum or chrome chairs upholstered in colorful leatherette came into vogue. Some restaurants tried to update their bentwoods with paint or cloth covers that added color. [Lauer Sister’s, 1936]

[image error]But by the 1960s chairs with metal frames and padded vinyl backs and seats lost their 1930s moderne look, retreating into plainness and, for some, stackability. I have to admit what when I see this type of chair in a restaurant I lose faith that I will encounter good food. They are often used in restaurants that cater to banquets.

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Tea rooms and other restaurants that pitched their appeal to women often tried to avoid using typical restaurant chairs. A newspaper in Canton OH in 1906 applauded a new luncheon restaurant for women that had “wicker chairs . . . instead of the conventional stiff restaurant chair.” No two of the wicker chairs were alike, the article said, giving the place a desirable “homelike” look. Many other tea rooms and inns used Windsor side and armchairs evoking a sense of Colonial times.

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More expensive restaurants, especially those catering to men, were likely to use leather upholstered chairs, as shown in the men-only Locke-Ober restaurant in Boston.

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Men evidently favored sturdy arm chairs with a clubby look or, more informally, less pretentious captain’s chairs. As early as 1862, Philadelphia’s Continental Café and Restaurant advertised that the gentlemen’s café was furnished with walnut tables with marble tops and handsome walnut chairs “covered with red morocco.”

More recently a stylish restaurant has demanded a stylish chair, though I’d be hard pressed to say what the typical restaurant chair of the 1980s up to today actually is.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Ham & eggs by any other name

[image error]Usually I avoid topics that others have written about repeatedly. The origin of Eggs Benedict is certainly one of those.

I have a problem with origin stories in general because usually they are too neat. But that’s not actually true of Eggs Benedict (a poached egg and ham slice on a toasted English muffin with Hollandaise sauce poured over). The stories about how it appeared in the 1890s are contradictory. There are variations about who it is named after and which famous, usually New York, restaurant produced it first. Among the contending dining spots are Delmonico, the Waldorf-Astoria, and Sherry’s. Of course for an origin story to work, it almost has to involve a well-known, prestigious person/place.

An essay from American Food by Rachel Wharton discusses the numerous conflicting reports of the dish’s origin. It concludes with “Maybe it doesn’t matter who the first Benedict really was. The real point, as has been said by many others in the past, is that this was a rich dish devised for rich people . . .”

With all the butter and egg yolks in Hollandaise sauce, it is certainly a rich dish but was it really devised for “rich people”? That would be, of course, another significant factor in giving the dish panache.

My version of the dish’s fame doesn’t focus on its origin but on its later status and how it became well known long after the 1890s. I suspected that Eggs Benedict was marketed as having an elite past so that it could become a “special” dish. Is it necessary to say that a restaurant could charge more for Eggs Benedict than they could for ham and eggs – and use less ham to boot?

The early days of Eggs Benedict do not seem to have been especially glamorous. At the start of the 20th century the recipe for the dish was featured in newspapers’ “women’s pages.” It seems it was more of a home dish than a restaurant dish. A 1906 woman’s column deplored the food served by society women and wished they would instead serve things such as good old scrapple, mincemeat pie, or Eggs Benedict. During World War I Eggs Benedict appeared on menus as a patriotic meat-conserving dish. A low point in its glamorousness may have occurred in the 1920s when a Beaumont TX newspaper recommended a casserole of baked tomato on toast with cheese sauce and breadcrumbs as “a nice change from eggs Benedict.”

[image error]When Eggs Benedict was listed on restaurant and hotel menus in the teens and 1920s it was usually as a breakfast or lunch entree. An early example was at a Boston restaurant that featured luncheon specials in a 1915 advertisement [shown here]. As can be seen below, Du Pont of Paris was a white tablecloth restaurant, certainly fancier than the average working men’s lunch room but a long way from the deluxe world of the Waldorf.

[image error]The dish’s fame and fortune began to rise after World War II when the middle class grew larger and more people began to go to restaurants for recreation. In 1946 the New York columnist Gaynor Maddox introduced readers to a creation tale of Eggs Benedict which had a hungover Waldorf guest coming to breakfast in 1894 and asking for toast, bacon, two poached eggs, and a pitcher of Hollandaise. The famed Waldorf host, Oscar, came into the story too, by later substituting ham and English muffin for the bacon and toast.

[image error]A year after Maddox’s column, the dish appeared on the brunch menu of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel for the high price of $2.50 (the average daily gross income in 1947 was about $12).

Its reputation continued to be burnished by others. Chef Pierre Franey retold the Waldorf origin tale, while Duncan Hines had it coming from France via New Orleans. Chef Louis Szathmary credited a wealthy Bostonian and a chef at the Ritz Carlton. But all seemed to agree it was indeed a ritzy dish.

For some reason – maybe to make Eggs Benedict sound even ritzier – some restaurants renamed it Eggs Benedictine. They were probably unaware that Benedictine refers to an entirely different egg dish of the almost 500 egg recipes that have been recorded. It is a poached egg on a puree of salt codfish with cream sauce and truffles.

[image error]Even though it had formerly been served mainly for lunch or supper, Eggs Benedict found its true calling in the 1960s and 1970s, when it became the classic brunch order. [Molly Maguire’s, 1977, New Orleans] Perfect for Mother’s Day and best accompanied by a glass of champagne followed by Crepes Suzette.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Good eaters: Josephine Hull

[image error]A while back I reviewed several years of a diary kept by New York City resident Josephine Sherwood Hull. Over a five-year period, 1920 until 1925, she recorded about 320 restaurant meals. This works out to a little more than one a week, which was considerable at that time. [publicity photo, ca. 1950, from movie Harvey]

I suspect her attraction to restaurants was largely explained by the fact that she was in the theater. After years of research into the history of restaurants, I’ve noticed that opera singers and theater people lived more of their lives in public than did the average American, and that included eating in restaurants frequently. Also, the 1920s was the decade that saw the number of women eating outside the home increase dramatically.

Then unmarried, Josephine Sherwood began her theater career not long after her 1899 graduation from Radcliffe College, where she had participated in amateur theatrics. In 1909 she married actor Shelley Hull and retired from legitimate theater. But after he died in 1919 – a sudden victim of the “Spanish” flu raging through the U.S. – she resumed her theater career as an actor and a director.

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In 1922, 1923, and 1924 alone she directed four or more plays, and appeared in at least two others. Later she would appear in movies, often playing an older woman, frequently an aunt. She appeared in Arsenic and Old Lace, and in Harvey for which she won an Oscar in 1951 for a supporting role.

In the years of her diary that I looked at, Prohibition was in effect, and that along with greater employment of urban women during and after the war led to the flourishing of tea rooms, a type of restaurant that she favored. She went to the White Swan for dinner 24 times over the five-year period, the English Tea Room 20 times, mainly for lunch, and the Yellow Aster near her apartment on West 57th Street 12 times, again mainly for lunch. Other tea rooms she liked included the Virginia, the Thistle, the Hawaiian, and the Mirror. But despite her liking for tea rooms she rarely had afternoon tea, and when she did it was usually at hotels rather than independent tea rooms.

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By far her most frequent meal out was dinner. She recorded eating it in restaurants 219 times. Her favorite dinner spot was a popular restaurant on 6th Avenue established in 1907 called The Alps. She also enjoyed The Hotel McAlpin, visiting their rooftop restaurant six times in warm weather. Henri’s was another favorite, as was The Tavern.

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She had “supper” in restaurants 13 times, mostly in hotels. As a late night meal, supper was a favorite of theater people and others in the entertainment world. She visited a number of clubs, some of them related to theater, others emphasizing civic volunteerism.

Judging from the restaurants she patronized, except for tea rooms, she preferred places that might be described as continental, either Italian or French. For whatever reasons – perhaps reflecting her rather conservative middle-class background — there were some popular restaurants and areas of the city that she did not patronize in these years. The Automat was one. Nor did she record a single visit to a Chinese restaurant. She apparently was not attracted to Greenwich Village, a part of the city filled with tea rooms.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Name trouble: Aunt Jemima’s

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Of all the Black representations found in American white-owned restaurants, the mammy figure has been by far the most common. Many women in the restaurant business of the past have been known as Mama or Mother, but Mammy was reserved for Black women.

[image error]The mammy figure, usually grinning broadly in its corporate version, was meant to be a symbol of hospitality universally appreciated by white Americans. Early restaurants using Mammy as part of their name and/or as a visual trademark started appearing in the 1920s in Massachusetts, California, Pennsylvania, and Florida, among other states, with the word Mammy often paired with Shanty, Shack, or Log Cabin. The name and trademark continued in use through the 1950s.

[image error]In 1955, probably the best known of all the mammy restaurants opened in Disneyland as Aunt Jemima’s Pancake House, using the sponsorship and trademark of the Quaker Oats Company. The other eating places in Frontierland – among them Pepsi-Cola Golden Horseshoe, Swift’s Chicken Plantation, and Casa de Fritos – also reflected name-brands.

In 1960 Quaker Oats began to franchise Aunt Jemima’s Kitchens, a name variant that signaled wider menu offerings. The first opened in the Chicago suburb of Skokie IL. In 1963 there were 21 in operation in the U.S., plus one each in England and Canada. Among the states, New York led with seven Aunt Jemima’s in the first few years. Pancake restaurants, largely inspired by the high profit potential of pancakes, were the latest food trend in chain eateries at that time, with an estimated 150 around the country. One Aunt Jemima’s franchisee, Pancake Kitchens, Inc., had optimistic plans to open 36 units in the Eastern U.S. I doubt that they were all built, or that the total number of Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Houses and Kitchens across the country ever topped 100.

[image error]Protests against Aunt Jemima’s restaurants began in 1962. But there had been objections to the Aunt Jemima image on pancake mix boxes much earlier. Black newspapers ran an editorial in 1937 saying that Aunt Jemima was an “insulting caricature,” in particular criticizing the bandanna she wore over her hair, saying, “The fight against ‘Aunt Jemima’s’ bandanna is one of self-respect.” (Quaker did not get rid of Aunt Jemima’s bandanna until 1968.) Yet, apparently not all Black people were offended by the Aunt Jemima portrayal. In 1952 the Afro-American newspaper in Baltimore hired a marketing company to research the use of Aunt Jemima pancake mix by their Black readers. The company surveyed 501 Black families and 501 white families whose house values or rents were similar. Both groups chose Aunt Jemima pancake mix as their favorite, but it was preferred by a higher proportion of Black respondents (38.1%) than white (31.7%).

It would be interesting to know whether the results would have been the same if the survey had been carried out in the 1960s. The NAACP led the protests, joined by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The biggest victory seems to have been in an affluent suburb of Rochester NY, Brighton, where an Aunt Jemima’s restaurant was proposed in 1963. The two organizations criticized Aunt Jemima for her degrading costume, calling her “a negative stereotype of a Negro subservient to a white family.” The restaurant was not built but once again opinion was not unanimous in Rochester’s Black community. The editor of a city paper, The Frederick Douglass Voice, contended that “These symbols are part and parcel of our heritage.”

The Rochester protest was widely ridiculed in opinion pieces in the white press that characterized protestors as humorless and oversensitive. Writing in Chapel Hill NC’s Daily Tar Heel, author Armistead Maupin called it “comical” and “absurd,” arguing that the mammy was not a negative stereotype but a historical figure to be proud of.

Still, the tide was turning. In 1966 members of the American Federation of Teachers voted at their annual convention at Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel to picket the hotel’s Aunt Jemima restaurant unless it agreed to allow its workers to unionize and get rid of the mammy costume worn by the Black hostess. The delegates then resolved to urge Quaker Oats to drop the Aunt Jemima symbol on its products or face a possible boycott. According to an article in Jet magazine, the restaurant’s hostess expressed unhappiness that her heritage was attacked and that she could no longer wear the Aunt Jemima costume, which she had designed. Obviously the AFT was unsuccessful in asking Quaker to get rid of the Aunt Jemima trademark, which did not happen until this year.

[image error]In 1968 and 1969 a number of Aunt Jemima restaurants closed. The restaurant in Grand Rapids MI became Colonial Kitchen, while one in Mount Prospect IL was renamed Village Inn Pancake House. Many across the country became part of the Calico Kitchens chain. In 1970 Disneyland ended its contract with Quaker Oats and renamed its Aunt Jemima restaurant Magnolia Tree Terrace, changing that in 1971 to River Belle Terrace.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Reflections on a name: Plantation

[image error]Restaurant names such as Plantation, Old/Ole Plantation, and Southern Plantation leave me wondering why. Why adopt a name that references slavery and is offensive to a lot of people, particularly if they are Black?

Plantation names are similar to ones such as , Mammy’s Kitchen, or those with the initials KKK. Maybe not all who have chosen such names intended to insult anyone, but were unaware of their resonance. But, really, how much reflection does it take to realize that such names carry deeply negative historical associations?

Isn’t it just plain bad business to have an offensive name? Evidently the Disney company thought so. They tried hard to create a fictitious, slavery-free history of their Louisiana resort Dixie Landings by avoiding the name plantation. Eventually they shed “Dixie Landings” as well, becoming Port Orleans Riverside. Of course, white-washing history is controversial in its own right, but clearly Disney recognized that “plantation” held liabilities.

Ostensibly, restaurants named Plantation were meant to convey gracious Southern hospitality. But, again, the question is for whom? If your ancestors were enslaved and forced to do hard labor for white people who lived graciously off their profits, would you be charmed by this concept?

Although it might be assumed that most Plantation Restaurants were in the South, this is not the case. Since the early 20th century, and especially after World War II, they have appeared in Michigan, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, and other northern, western, and midwestern states. In the 1920s and 1930s the Seattle WA environs were fertile ground for restaurants with racially offensive names. In addition to The Plantation, there was Mammy’s Shack, Henry the Watermelon King, Coon Chicken Inn, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

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Why would anyone choose the name Plantation? Perhaps because they had access to a building that looked like a Southern manor house, so it seemed “natural’ to name it that. But then, how to explain restaurants that had no magnolias, no romance whatsoever and looked more like roadhouses than elegant mansions [above, Auburn IN].

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Others added “columns” in a not-very-convincing attempt to mimic a plantation mansion.

And then there were the Plantation Restaurants that exhibited confused identities not expressive of their name with respect either to cuisine or ambiance. What were patrons to make of New York City’s Old Plantation on West 47th in the 1920s with its Mexican dishes? The Old Plantation Restaurant near Lawton OK served bratwurst and schnitzel in the 1960s. Nor is there anything about pancakes or a vaguely early American exterior that would seem to suggest the name Pancake Plantation. Equally odd, Charleston’s 1970s Plantation Restaurant was decorated with wagon wheel light fixtures and red tablecloths.

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It seems more likely that the popularity of the name can be explained by large numbers of white people who actually loved the “moonlight and magnolias” aura that surrounds plantations. Many advertised for banquet trade, and may have wanted to attract wedding parties. Even today many white women reportedly associate plantations primarily with romance as portrayed in the film Gone With the Wind.

When – and if – proprietors were informed that quite a few Americans were offended by such a name, how would they respond? The answer is not on record. But having received many comments to this effect on other race-related posts, I can imagine many would reply: it was long ago, don’t be so negative, get over it.

There are still quite a few restaurants named Plantation in business today. I’d say it’s way past time to reject that as a name.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Dining on a roof

[image error]Roof-garden restaurants have had something of a vogue in recent years and may see many more visitors this summer. Their history goes back at least to 1879 when St. Louis restaurant owner Tony Faust created a terrace adorned with boxed shrubs and flowers and lit by gaslights. It was a roof garden of sorts, but on a low roof incapable of giving diners a magnificent view. The terrace remained in operation until at least the mid-1880s, and was commemorated in the ca. 1906 postcard shown here.

[image error]In the 1890s, a few places of entertainment in New York City added roof gardens atop tall buildings, primarily as sites for drinking, dancing, and listening to music. The Casino built a garden around 1890, with lanterns, palm trees, and a small stage. Another appeared atop Madison Square Garden [shown here, 1894], then at Koster & Bial’s. These did not serve dinner, but it soon appeared there was a demand for that and it was added to the attractions.

By 1905, New York had dozens of rooftop restaurants during the summer, mostly on hotel roofs. But some restaurants joined in, such as Clyde’s on Broadway and 75th street, famed for its “beefsteak dungeon” which transitioned to the roof in warm weather. Delmonico had a rooftop restaurant in 1920, a few years before it closed for good. Jack Delaney’s ca. 1940 garden shown here appears in a postcard to be rather cramped and lacking a view of the city but it was at least outdoors.

[image error]One of the most impressive earlier rooftop restaurants was the one set to open in 1905 on top of New York’s Astor Hotel which was designed to resemble a Tuscan garden. Unlike some others furnished by hotels it was entirely in the open air, with a pergola running down the center that was adorned with moonflowers that only opened after dark.

[image error]Other New York hotels that opened roof garden restaurants in the early 1900s included the Hoffman House, The Vendome, the Belle Claire, the Majestic, and the Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn. The Waldorf-Astoria had a roof garden but according to a 1905 account only salads and desserts were served there.

[image error]Rooftop restaurants in hotels were not limited to New York. They could be found all over the country – at the Grunewald in New Orleans, the St. Anthony in San Antonio, the Hotel Nortonia in Portland OR, the Bingham in Philadelphia, and the McKenzie Hotel which was intended to “boost Bismarck and North Dakota.” Philadelphia had a number of hotel roof gardens, including an unusual-looking one at the Continental Hotel [shown above].

[image error]In researching this topic it was often difficult to figure out exactly what was meant by a rooftop restaurant. It might be entirely in the open-air, as was true of the famous Astor roof, or it might be partially or entirely enclosed, occupying part of a roof or the entire roof in which case it was actually the top floor. The Continental’s garden restaurant appeared to be at least partially under a roof, as did the one at Hotel Breakers in Lynn MA shown here.

Most outdoor rooftops opened at the beginning of June, advertising “cool breezes.” Not surprisingly, rooftop restaurants were in vogue mainly before air conditioning came into use in the 1930s. After World War II, when it became more common, it seems the number of open-air rooftops declined.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Restaurant-ing on wheels

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Will more people turn to food trucks for away-from-home meals this summer? With the cancellation of so many outdoor festivals and events, food truck operators may want to set up on city streets instead.

But in many places they may face obstacles that go back more than 100 years, to the era of the horse-drawn lunch wagon.

Selling ready-to-eat food on the street originated long ago. As far back as the 1830s, and again in the 1850s, “omnibuses” outfitted as cafes appeared on the streets of Paris and Lyons. But it wasn’t until the 1870s that some American sellers of prepared food graduated to vehicles. Following Chicago’s disastrous fire of 1871, “wagons gaily painted and covered with awnings” showed up on street corners supplying homeless crowds with basics such as sausages, fish, oysters, boiled onions, baked potatoes, pie, and coffee.

[image error]Early lunch wagons could be found in other states too. The oldest advertisement I’ve found is from Connecticut in 1877. In the 19th century they were usually referred to as night lunch wagons since night was their busy, sometimes only, time of business.

In the 1880s the number of lunch wagons grew. Temperance groups in Chicago and the Northeast adopted them as a way to lure late-night drinkers with coffee and rolls, naming their vehicles “owl wagons.”

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The first wagons tended to be cobbled together out of spare parts, but it wasn’t long before enterprising New Englanders realized the potential for profit in manufacturing them. Worcester, Massachusetts, became a center of production for a number of companies, as detailed in the classic book American Diner by Richard Gutman. By 1892, Worcester lunch wagon maker Charles Palmer was supplying his patented lunch wagons to many parts of the country. Some of them had elaborately painted exteriors that made them resemble circus wagons. Larger ones tended to have enough room inside to allow a few customers to sit at narrow side counters, while in older and homemade models orders were handed out a window.

Except for in Southern states where they were rare, their numbers continued to grow in the 1890s. It’s likely that the economic depression of that decade expanded their popularity. The low prices lunch wagons charged for humble food such as hamburger sandwiches made them favorites of the poor who formed their main customer base along with heavy drinking saloon patrons. In some places they were known as sandwich or frankfurter wagons, and in California as tamale wagons. Whatever they served, it was inexpensive.

[image error]Some lunch wagon proprietors made a decent profit but there were costs to doing business in addition to supplies. These could include wagon rental, hiring a horse to haul the wagon back and forth, rental of a garage to store the wagon during off time, and sometimes various payoffs to authorities and saloon owners.

It didn’t take long for opposition to lunch wagons to emerge, particularly from all-night restaurant keepers who became angry when wagons took a stand outside their doors. In 1893 restaurant keepers in Hartford CT petitioned the city for an ordinance that would limit how many hours lunch wagons could be on the streets. Complaints against the wagons were extensive. Restaurant owners declared that their businesses built up the town by supporting taxable properties, while the lunch wagons did not. They also argued that city streets were not intended as business sites.

Other complaints — from city officials and the public at large — focused on traffic congestion, gaudy and ugly appearance, unsanitary conditions, and rough customers who got into fights. In Los Angeles in the early 1900s, wagon proprietors were criticized for serving “embalmed” beef dosed with chemical preservatives. There were complaints about cooking odors. In Fort Worth TX, a paper reported, “Some people simply don’t like the idea of seeing a man take a big greasy hamburger sandwich and standing on the sidewalk munching away, while ladies and children pass and cannot avoid seeing him.” (Hamburger was seen as undesirable poor people’s food then.)

[image error]Fancier lunch wagon designs may have been intended to win greater acceptance. “White House” lunch wagons, produced by Thomas Buckley in Worcester and regarded as the finest made, were not only painted a clean-looking white but had colored glass windows with images of presidents and military figures. By 1899 the Buckley company was said to operate and control the lunch wagon business in 25 cities. The company sent wagons all the way to the Pacific Coast. However, despite their finery, Buckley wagons in Chicago operated in the poor parts of the city, where payoffs to property owners and police were often necessary.

[image error]As the 19th century turned into the 20th more regulations and limitations were forced on lunch wagon operators. Some required restaurant licenses or limited the number any one owner could operate. Chicago was among the cities that banned wagons on main streets, while others such as Albany NY and Lynn MA banned them on all streets. Operators began to look for alleyways or permanent locations they could settle on, often hiding their wheels behind dummy foundations. Over time the prefab eateries – now called diners – were produced in larger sizes, without wheels, and with better seating and cooking facilities.

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But, now-motorized portable restaurants on wheels did not go away – rather they adapted to the restrictions by going on the move. They traveled to factories for shift changes, or to fairs and carnivals. As long as they were moving all day and had a peddler’s license, they were legal. Then, in the 2000s, food trucks became somewhat upscale, appealing to customers interested in exploring dishes from a wide range of the world’s cookbooks.

[image error]Yet some of the issues that plagued early lunch wagons lingered on. Complaints today no longer target brawling customers or spoiled food, but not all cities welcome the trucks. Fumes from gasoline powered generators that many trucks use can be obnoxious. And of course restaurants still don’t want them parked outside. Regulation of food trucks has increased considerably since the olden days (see Wikipedia) and some locations are off limits.

But, with the threat of the spread of disease and some diners’ hesitations about indoor seating, I wonder if we’ll see some relaxation of regulations.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Dinner to go

[image error]The current situation, with restaurants packing up take-out meals for customers, makes me think it’s time for a repost of this one — with a few additions.

Selling prepared food ready to be eaten off the premises, known as carry-out or take-out, is as old as the restaurant itself. In Colonial days, James Hearn of New York City advertised that “families may every day be provided with plates of any dish, that may happen to be cooked that day, by sending their servants for the same.” In addition to full meals, early “restorators” and restaurateurs were also happy to deliver oysters and sweets such as freshly made ice cream, sherbets, and pastries.

After the Civil War, advertisements appeared offering “lunches put up” for travelers and tourists. Such ads became more common as time went on, especially in the 1920s as many first-time car owners took to the roadsides for vacations and Sunday outings. With relatively few restaurants outside cities, the service was a welcome one. The ads continued into the 1950s in areas that attracted seasonal fishers and hunters.

For most customers, carry-out was an added service meant to accommodate them. Not so if the customer was Black, though. Under Jim Crow in Southern states, Black customers were unwelcome in dining rooms and at lunch counters – and could only obtain food to go (if that). In the early 1960s, Black activists fought for the right of table service in white restaurants.

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The post-World War II era produced not only a baby boom but also a television boom. TV-watching suburban families with young children fueled the advance of a carry-out trend in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1950s the restaurant industry realized it had a “television problem” but found a way to deal with it. A restaurant consultant offered 2-day seminars detailing how smart restaurateurs were actually increasing business volume through carry-out. He explained for the slow learners that “people telephone in orders, pick up their food at a set time, then go home to eat before their television sets.”

The carry-out trend was well established by the mid-1950s, when a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association remarked, “the way the business is booming, pop not only brings home the bacon . . . he brings it home ready to eat.” A restaurant in New York’s Grand Central station offered a commuter’s dinner, while an inn in Nebraska was set up like today’s fast food restaurants with a speaker post in the driveway for dictating orders and packaged food ready to go at the check-out window farther along.

In the 1960s certain foods achieved greater popularity with diners on the dash than with sit-down restaurant customers, particularly fried chicken and pizza. Other favorites were Chinese, Mexican, and barbecue. Regular “meat and three” dinners did not fill the bill, it seemed, plus fast food chains were able to deliver the goods faster. Why take-out orders are so common in Chinese restaurants, which do offer full meals, is still something of a mystery to me.

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So, little wonder that in the early 1960s before the chain added indoor seating, McDonald’s dubbed itself “McDonald’s Carry Out Restaurant.” According to a report released in 1962 one-fourth of all restaurant orders nationwide were “to go,” with drive-ins at the top and pizza parlors not far behind.

Although Chinese and fast-food have clearly dominated the take-out marketplace for some time, there has been some space for more elaborate cuisine. Take-Out Alice, opened in 1972 by Alice Brock, made famous in song and film (“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant”), may have been one of the early places supplying gourmet meals to go, such as sushi, borscht, and salmon mousse. Beginning in the 1980s there was something of a blossoming of take-out eating places with more ambitious offerings, including some with catchy names, including The Joy of Not Cooking and Good To Go.

As long as Americans want the convenience of meals prepared by someone else but are disinclined to step inside restaurants for table service, we might expect take-out to enjoy an increase in business.

© Jan Whitaker, 2015, revised 2020

Drive-up windows

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A short time ago I read a Serious Eats article about how drive-through fast-food restaurants are filling a gap during the coronavirus epidemic because they make it possible for customers to get ready-to-eat food without getting too close to others. It also gave a brief history of drive-up windows.

Reading it reminded me that I had put this topic on my to-do list a while back (along with ideas for about 500 other future posts!). Now’s the time.

Over the years, drive-throughs have come in for criticism for environmental issues around idling car engines. I think there is a genuine problem with idling vehicles, but often critiques come with an unfair amount of negative judgement about the people who use them. I reflected on this a few years ago when a journalist asked me about why Americans are so fond of using drive-ups.

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Customers of drive-ups are assumed to be too lazy to get out of their cars and/or blithely unconcerned about air pollution. But it occurred to me that there are some good reasons for getting a meal this way. Certainly it’s worth considering those who are physically disabled, dead tired from a hard day’s work, dressed in dirty work clothes, accompanied by crabby small children, don’t speak the language, or are self-conscious for whatever reason.

Yet clearly most of the enormous number of people who use drive-ups do not fall into these categories. In 1998 when many communities were trying to keep out new drive-throughs, a McDonald’s company spokesperson said outlets with drive-ups made up about half of sales that way.

Fast food restaurants claim, probably accurately, that doing business from windows while providing limited or no indoor seating reduces operating costs and allows them to offer lower menu prices. That may be true, but it’s also true that environmental costs tend to be invisible.

[image error]Initially, drive-ups appeared in warm climates in the 1930s. One reason drive-up windows did not come into use earlier was that prior to the Depression many restaurant-goers still ate hot meat and potato dinner-type meals on a plate, even at noon. So drive-ups could not be a service option until restaurants had whittled themselves down into fast-food providers. They needed a small menu of simple hand-held items that could be prepared in a flash and would not turn into a mass of cold mush within minutes.

[image error]Drive-up restaurants became more common in the 1950s and 1960s, at the same time drive-up banking did. Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, and Der Wienerschnitzel were early adopters. At Der Wienerschnitzel drive-up customers passed right through their A-frame buildings, somewhat similar to a 1964 patent that shows a giant M with two lanes running through it [shown below]. In the 1970s and 1980s, as chains spread across the country, drive-up windows became commonplace.

[image error]Early drive-up windows were often intended to serve customers who had phoned in their orders. Soon some restaurants began to use push-button intercoms, making phone-ahead ordering unnecessary. In the mid-1980s a wireless ordering system became available that permitted the worker to talk to the customer without pushing a button each time, enabling her/him to move around to fill the order while communicating at the same time.

Another innovation was the drive-through with no indoor seating at all. This was the ultimate in paring down the restaurant experience, to the point of non-existence. But this approach did not reach predominance, possibly because the major chains believed that customers wanted the option of going inside.

In 1989 California adopted a plan to reduce emissions by limiting car idling at drive-throughs. Municipalities throughout the country — often those with higher-income residents – attempted to stop the construction of new drive-through businesses in the 1990s and continuing into the present. Beyond addressing environmental concerns, the movement to restrict drive-up windows may be inspired equally by a wish to keep fast-food restaurants out of the neighborhood entirely.

Despite the strong reasons that some customers have for using drive-throughs, especially now, I tend to side with the opposition. Yet, if viral epidemics become more common as some have predicted, we may see a proliferation of this type of food service.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020

Dining during an epidemic: San Francisco

[image error]After spending time isolated or constrained in any way people tend to become impatient and want to break loose. That’s what happened in San Francisco during the “Spanish” flu of 1918, especially as the number of cases began to decline.

It was understandable, especially when World War I ended. Everyone wanted to celebrate. Unlike most U.S. cities, San Francisco – with about 500,000 residents — was a city with a flourishing nightlife. Restaurants remained open throughout, even in October when flu ravaged the city, but the music and dancing that was often featured was banned when the number of cases rose sharply in the middle of October. Solely for the week ending October 26, reported cases had reached 8,682.

Because of the increase in cases, the city ordered all waiters and bartenders to wear masks [see above October 27 advertisement], shortly thereafter urging everyone to wear them. But then the number of cases began to decline. For the week ending November 9 they were down to 2,200. Although that seems like quite a lot, San Franciscans were beginning to relax.

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[image error]On Armistice Day, November 11, the city went wild. In a story headlined “San Francisco Romps Through Greatest Joyfest World Has Ever Known,” the Chronicle reported that hundreds of thousands had poured into the streets parading with noise makers, spontaneous singing, even improvised costumes. The city lifted the flu ordinance that had canceled music and dancing. But whether they had music or not, restaurants and bars were packed. Glamour spots such as Tait’s, the St. Francis Hotel, and the Palace Hotel [shown above] overflowed as did the non-glamourous eatery Coffee Dan’s.

Oddly enough, it appears that despite the overflow crowds in the streets, bars, and restaurants, a surge in flu cases did not occur. On November 21 the Board of Health authorized the removal of masks with a whistle blast at noon. People drank toasts in hotels and restaurants, while others crowded into ice cream shops. On November 25 the city declared the epidemic officially ended. People planned for Thanksgiving as usual and looked forward to the Christmas season.

But it wasn’t over. With war’s end, troop ships began returning to the city. Among the troops were enough new cases that on December 7 the mayor reinstituted the wearing of masks. This time most people ignored the order. Merchants hoping for a strong shopping season wanted the threat downplayed. The masking order was lifted 11 days later, even as cases continued to rise. On a single day, December 30, 540 new flu cases and 31 related deaths were reported. Then came . . . New Year’s Eve.

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[image error]As was true on November 11, there was no stopping the celebrations. Packed trains brought revelers from neighboring towns and states where wartime alcohol bans were still in effect. San Francisco’s hotels were booked, its restaurants fully reserved. The next day the Examiner reported that the celebration was the “Greatest in History of Bay Region,” calling it a “Victory New Year’s Eve” with thousands from out of town. It was almost as if “the whole Pacific Coast and interior neighboring states sent their quotas,” said the Examiner. Among the crowds were many thousands of soldiers and sailors. Hotel dining rooms were full. The Palace had three orchestras, as did Tait’s and Techau Tavern, each of which took 1,500 reservations. The States, Portola [1918 advertisement], Solari’s, and the Odeon [1918 advertisement] were also packed and the same was true in the Latin quarter and other neighborhoods. Dancing continued until 5 a.m.

[image error]By January 8, 2,969 new cases had been reported just since the start of the new year. Two days later a new masking order was issued by the mayor who told the newspapers, “After San Francisco had successfully stamped it out the infection was brought to us once more by persons coming here from other cities.” It wasn’t until March 1919 that the city’s death rate returned to its usual level.

© Jan Whitaker, 2020