Taste of a decade: 1860s restaurants

Half the population of the largest cities is foreign born. San Francisco continues to attract adventurers and French chefs. The Civil War brings wealth to Northern industrialists and speculators, encouraging high living. With German immigration going strong, beer gains in popularity as do “free” lunches. Saloons prosper and the anti-alcohol movement loses ground as the [...]

The saga of Alice’s restaurants

A 1965 Thanksgiving dinner at the former church where Alice Brock and her husband Ray lived inspired Arlo Guthrie’s ballad of his arrest and subsequent draft board rejection for illegally disposing of trash. But “Alice’s Restaurant” also created vibrations so strong they imbued Alice’s whole career as a restaurant proprietor. Although she enjoyed a [...]

The brotherhood of the beefsteak dungeon

During the 1880s rustic beefsteak dinners became a popular form of entertainment among wealthy businessmen who formed beefsteak clubs whose traditions they traced back to England and the early Republic. Then, at the dawning of the 20th century, large restaurants and hotels began to create special banquet rooms for these feasts. Known as beefsteak dungeons, [...]

Famous in its day: Maillard’s

Henri Maillard came to New York City from France in the 1840s bringing with him a bit of Paris represented in the pots and pans and fancy moulds he used as a chocolatier. It wasn’t long before he added a catering department to his confectionery at Broadway and Houston. He let the public know he [...]

Let’s do brunch – or not?

Having brunch in restaurants became popular in the 1970s and remains so today. It was not unheard of earlier – a few restaurants offered brunch in the 1930s. The meal itself was older but usually eaten at home. The word evidently was coined by British university students in the 1890s, late sleepers who woke at [...]

Taste of a decade: 1930s restaurants

Even as the Depression deepens, the number of full-fledged restaurants continues to increase, from 134,293 in 1929 to 169,792 in 1939. Immigration slows in response to restrictive legislation of the late 1920s, reducing the supply of professional waiters and cooks. Female servers make up more than half of waitstaffs. The economical fixed-price meal, which had [...]