People have strong feelings about their favorite dishes from restaurant chains. I am thankful to all those who poured their hearts out on the subject on Jane & Michael Stern’s ever-fascinating Roadfood forums. I have excerpted the following wistful memories from “Long-gone regional franchises” which took on a life of its own and ran for [...]
Entries from June 2009
June 23, 2009
Chuck wagon-ing
Who was first to realize that they could cover bad plaster on their ceilings and walls with canvas and call their restaurant a covered wagon or a chuck wagon? The idea seems to have struck initially in the 1930s, at least that’s when the first Covered Wagon restaurant I’ve found dates from. It was in [...]
June 12, 2009
Taste of a decade: 1940s restaurants
During the war (1941-1945) the creation of 17 million new jobs finally pulls the economy out of the Depression. Millions of married women enter the labor force. The demand for restaurant meals escalates, increasing from a pre-war level of 20 million meals served per day to over 60 million. The combination of increased restaurant patronage [...]
June 5, 2009
Just ‘cause it looks bad doesn’t mean it’s good
Not many people get as excited as I do about books of obsolete restaurant reviews. I especially like The New Orleans Underground Gourmet. In the 1973 edition reviewer Richard H. Collin zapped a few well-known tourist places as well as some less expensive restaurants which had “little or nothing to recommend them” in order to [...]
June 1, 2009
Suzanne, Lodi
This is a blog about the history of restaurants, so you won’t see me mentioning many contemporary places. Here is the exception. On our way back from a stimulating food conference in State College PA (jointly sponsored by the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society) [...]
We eat in restaurants several times a week and yet know very little about their history. I plan to dip into my archive of research and images every so often to present a little tidbit that highlights aspects of our American restaurant culture. Let me know your thoughts.
