Tag Archives: tea rooms
Celebrity restaurants: Evelyn Nesbit’s tea room
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of celebrities have gone into the restaurant business when their careers waned. Their level of direct involvement may be high or low but all these ventures bank on the idea that a famous name will attract customers. … Continue reading
Filed under food, history, restaurants
Anatomy of a restaurateur: Anna de Naucaze
In 1908 two women adventurers opened The Rose Tree Inn, a tea room in a 200-year old house in Northampton, Massachusetts. Both called themselves “Madame” and claimed to be related to European nobility by birth or marriage. They were used … Continue reading
Filed under history, restaurants
Linens and things — part I
I hadn’t thought about this until I started to write this post but now I realize that I’m picky about restaurant napkins. I abhor polyester and am sort of iffy about colors. My favorite fold is a compact, squarish one … Continue reading
Filed under history, restaurants
Dining in shadows
Until electricity became common no one thought dining by candlelight was the least bit romantic. In the later 19th century any restaurant that acquired electricity made a big bragging deal of it. A Chicago restaurant called The New York Kitchen … Continue reading
Filed under history, restaurants
Anatomy of a restaurateur: Mary Alletta Crump
Because she ran a tea room, Mary Alletta “Crumpey” Crump (pictured, age 31) actually would not have called herself a restaurateur. She made a distinction between a tea room and a restaurant: the former served light food, mainly lunch and … Continue reading
Filed under food, history, restaurants
Taste of a decade: restaurants, 1900-1910
It is the dawn of the modern era of restaurant-ing. Patronage grows at a rate faster than population increases and the number of restaurant keepers swells by 75% during the decade. Leading restaurant cities are NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, … Continue reading
Filed under history, restaurants
In the kitchen with Mme Early: black women in restaurants
It’s so hard to find anything about the history of Afro-American women in restaurants that I decided to go ahead with a sketchy story rather than none at all. As far as the “historical record” goes, you’d be tempted to … Continue reading
Filed under history, restaurants
Restaurant-ing on Thanksgiving
As a meal Thanksgiving dinner is steeped in agrarian values and customs that do not thrive in restaurants, which are primarily urban inventions. It is also incongruous to celebrate what has become a domestic festival in a commercial setting. Neither … Continue reading
Filed under food, history, restaurants
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.
