Swingin’ at Maxwell’s Plum

In 1965 impresario Warner LeRoy, son of Hollywood producer Mervyn LeRoy (Wizard of Oz, Mr. Roberts, Quo Vadis), opened Maxwell’s Plum as part of his theater on First Avenue and 64th Street in NYC. Hamburgers and a good wine list made it a hit with the swinging singles who crowded into the café. It was [...]

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 [...]

Sweet and sour Polynesian

One remarkable accomplishment of Polynesian restaurants was how they lured the male diner without using steak as bait. Who would have believed mid-century Homo Americanus Modernus could swallow so many sugary rum drinks, pineapple chunks, and sticky sauces?
Another notable coup was that these tropical resorts were so obviously fake it was preposterous to accuse them [...]

Drinking rum, eating Cantonese

Will the real Don the Beachcomber please stand up and mix me a Zombie? As is true with so many business histories it’s difficult to lock down the true story. Confusion in the case of Don the Beachcomber mainly arises from a divorce between the principals, Don (or Donn) Beach (born Ernest Beaumont-Gantt) and his [...]

Cabarets and lobster palaces

Around 1908 Murray’s Roman Gardens in Times Square, pictured here, was just the place to sample the “high life” after seeing the popular operetta The Merry Widow. Murray’s, which has been called “New York’s first theme restaurant,” demonstrated a kind of decadent Roman-Pompeian-Egyptian-Babylonian grandeur that appealed to tourists. It was one of the so-called lobster [...]