was ignored completely. Or was asked to leave. Or no one took his order. Or was offered a seat in the kitchen. Or his food never arrived. Or it had been adulterated. Or his check was tripled.
Today in his inaugural address, President Barack Obama suggested his father might not have been served in a Washington restaurant 60 years ago. Beginning in 1949, here are examples of what happened to many dark skinned men and women who put hospitality to the test in various parts of the country.
1949 A citizens’ civil rights group in Washington D.C. visits 99 restaurants in the district and finds that 63 will not serve black customers. Upon subsequent visits, 8 establishments which had previously refused service reverse their policy, however 28 which had accepted black guests on the first visit also reverse theirs.
1949 After being snowbound on a train and then traveling for hours by bus to Spokane to keep a concert engagement, black pianist Hazel Scott, wife of congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., stops in Pasco WA and is refused service in a restaurant.
1955 India’s ambassador to the U.S. is asked to leave the public dining area of the Horizon House restaurant in Houston’s airport. He and his party are served in a private room. Texas laws forbade serving blacks and whites in the same room, however the airport was under Federal jurisdiction and not allowed to discriminate.
1956 A white county health director is fired by county commissioners for having lunch with a black nurse in a restaurant in Madison, Florida. The two women met to discuss a class for midwives.
1959 A Nigerian labor official on a U.S. tour with other international labor leaders is allowed to pass through the line at the Forum Cafeteria in downtown Kansas City, but later, after hearing complaints from white patrons, the cafeteria manager orders him never to return.
1960 Members of the National Council of Jewish Women visit 200 Tucson restaurants urging them to end racial discrimination. Seventy restaurants flatly refuse to comply.
1961 Numbers of diplomats from newly independent African nations are refused service in restaurants on Route 40 in Maryland, including the Ambassador to Chad who is on his way to the White House to present his papers to President Kennedy. The State Department takes action to protect the diplomats from discrimination while leaving black American citizens to fend for themselves. To expose the double standard, three reporters from a black Baltimore newspaper dress in African robes and are well received in Maryland restaurants notorious for their racist policies.
1962 Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein walks out of Miller Brothers restaurant in Baltimore after he is told that a recently hired NY Philharmonic violinist in his party, who is black, cannot be served.
1964 Following passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lester Maddox closes his Pickrick restaurant in Atlanta rather than serve blacks. He claims that communists are behind FBI enforcement of civil rights laws.
1964 The Emporia Diner in Virginia admits to having two menus (and that the higher priced one is used “at any time it is felt that business may be adversely affected”) after a black Baltimore woman brings suit saying her family was charged more than three times what whites paid for the same meal.
1965 Comedian Dick Gregory and a group of blacks testing accommodation at local restaurants are turned away by a steakhouse in Tuscaloosa AL after the owner shows them a list of about 1,000 names of people allegedly holding reservations.
1970 According to a complaint brought by the U.S. Attorney General’s office, Ayers Log Cabin Pit Cooked Bar-B-Que, a restaurant near Washington, North Carolina, displays a sign indicating that any money spent there by black patrons will be donated to the Ku Klux Klan.
1993 Although racial discrimination in restaurants diminishes in the 1970s and 1980s, a slew of complaints against the Denny’s chain demonstrates that problems persist. In May six black Secret Service agents file a federal suit charging that their table was not served breakfast in a Denny’s in Annapolis MD while all 15 white agents received their meals.
Read about how both black and white Americans fought discrimination in restaurants.
© Jan Whitaker, 2009
The name has cast a spell over Americans since the 1890s and bits of its odd history have played out in the U.S. The fortunes of the “world’s most famous restaurant” have risen and fallen. It has won high ratings and lost them. It has been the subject and site of operettas, songs, and movies. It has been declared a French national treasure and an altar to haute cuisine, but also a fraud and a tourist trap. Maxim’s name has appeared on perfumes, airplane meals, and franchised outlets, yet even today it resonates.
According to most accounts a waiter named Maxime Gaillard began Maxim’s in 1893. Yet another report calls him maitre d’hôtel Signor Maximo, while another stakes a claim for Georges Everard as founder in 1890. Everyone seems to agree, though, that the early Maxim’s was a late-night glamour magnet for American and English visitors to Paris, liberally supplied with friendly prostitutes. In 1899 it acquired a flamboyant Art Nouveau interior with enough murals, curves, and mirrors for a loopy carnival ride. Its prices were high, which may explain why many turn-of-the-century patrons, though dressed in silks and tuxedos, preferred to watch the action while munching pommes frites, an early specialty of the house.
Detractors, such as H. L. Mencken, charged that Maxim’s “gypsy” orchestra was composed of Germans and that the toy balloons floating around were from “the Elite Novelty Co. of Jersey City, U.S.A.” In “Paris à la Carte” (1911), Julian Street, an authority on French food and wines, asserted “I abominate it,” and denounced it as “a brazen fake, over-advertised, ogling, odoriferous; a nightmare of smoke, champagne, and banality.” Debauched merrymakers aside, these were the golden years, before World War I, the era of wine, women, and song on which the Maxim’s legend would be built.
By 1953 the restaurant had earned 3 stars in the Michelin Guide and was starting on a new course. It had developed a frozen food division which supplied airplane meals and was poised to sell frozen sauces and entrées in select American stores. In another twist, Maxim’s authorized a 
No matter whether you prefer Roast Goose, Chicken Tiki Masala, or Chinese, don’t forget to visit your favorite restaurants over the holidays. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Upcoming posts in the works include James Beard (launching a “good eaters” theme), the 19th-century Downing family of black restaurateurs, the spectacular Maxwell’s Plum, famous restaurants in Paris, World’s Fair cafés and restaurants, linen supply and “the mob,” early cafeterias, and more “tastes of the decades.”
In 1890 Harry Gordon Selfridge, manager of Field’s in Chicago, took the then-unusual step of persuading a middle-class woman to help with a new project at the store. Her name was Sarah Haring (pictured) and she was the wife of a businessman and a mother. In the parlance of the day, she was needed to recruit “gentlewomen” (= middle-class WASPs) who had “experienced reverses” (= were unexpectedly poor), and knew how to cook “dainty dishes” (= middle-class food) which they were willing to prepare and deliver to the store each day.
And so — despite Marshall Field’s personal dislike of restaurants in dry goods stores — the Selfridge-Haring-gentlewomen team created the first tea room at Marshall Field’s. It began with a limited menu, 15 tables, and 8 waitresses. Sarah Haring’s recruits acquitted themselves well. One, Harriet Tilden Brainard, who initially supplied gingerbread, would go on to build a successful catering business, The Home Delicacies Association. Undoubtedly it was Harriet who introduced one of the tea room’s most popular dishes, Cleveland Creamed Chicken. Meanwhile, Sarah would continue as manager of the store’s tea rooms until 1910, when she opened a restaurant of her own, patenting a restaurant dishwasher in her spare time.
A graduate of Chicago’s School of Domestic Arts and Sciences named Beatrice Hudson opened the all-male sanctum Men’s Grill (pictured) about 1914 and was responsible for developing a famed corned beef hash which stayed on the menu for 50+ years. Later she would own several restaurants in Los Angeles, coming out of retirement at age 76 to manage the Hollywood Brown Derby and again in her 80s to run The Old World Restaurant in Westwood.
Don Dickerman was obsessed with pirates. He took every opportunity to portray himself as one, beginning with a high school pirate band. As an art student in the teens he dressed in pirate garb for Greenwich Village costume balls. Throughout his life he collected antique pirate maps, cutlasses, blunderbuses, and cannon. His Greenwich Village nightclub restaurant, The Pirates’ Den, where colorfully outfitted servers staged mock battles for guests, became nationally known and made him a minor celebrity.
Over time he ran five clubs and restaurants in New York City. After failing to make a living as a toy designer and children’s book illustrator, he opened a tea room in the Village primarily as a place to display his hand-painted toys. It became popular, expanded, and around 1917 he transformed it into a make-believe pirates’ lair where guests entered through a dark, moldy basement. Its fame began to grow, particularly after 1921 when Douglas Fairbanks recreated its atmospheric interior for his movie The Nut. He also ran the Blue Horse (pictured), the Heigh-Ho (where Rudy Vallee got his start), Daffydill (financed by Vallee), and the County Fair.
On a Blue Horse menu of the 1920s Don’s mother is listed as manager. Among the dishes featured at this jazz club restaurant were Golden Buck, Chicken a la King, Tomato Wiggle, and Tomato Caprice. Drinks (non-alcoholic) included Pink Goat’s Delight and Blue Horse’s Neck. Ice cream specials also bore whimsical names such as Green Goose Island and Mr. Bogg’s Castle. At The Pirates’ Den a beefsteak dinner cost a hefty $1.25. Also on the menu were chicken salad, sandwiches, hot dogs, and an ice cream concoction called Bozo’s Delight. A critic in 1921 concluded that, based on the sky-high menu tariffs and the “punk food,” customers there really were at the mercy of genuine pirates.
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 states where liquor is prohibited shrink from thirteen to six, then to one. Cities grow as young single men pour into urban areas. Restaurants spring up to feed them and cheap lunch rooms proliferate, offsetting the high prices prevalent during and after the war. By the end of the decade, one estimate puts the number of eating places in NYC at an astonishing 5,000 or 6,000.
In interviews and in her two books Alice espoused the value of fresh ingredients, garlic, meals with friends, and an experimental approach to cooking. Her words convey a free-wheeling, irreverent outlook. Some examples:
It's great to hear from readers and I take time to answer queries. I can't always find what you are looking for, but I do appreciate getting thank yous no matter what the outcome.
Restaurant-ing through history 