July 20, 2025 · 12:03 pm

What was a restorator?

The early French restaurants in this country probably were the best places to eat in the late 18th century and early 19th. Along with gourmet food (they said), they offered to improve the health of ailing patrons. This was in keeping with restorators in France at the time. [Above: part of an 1800 advertisement for a new Portland ME restorator]

Among customs that differentiated restorators from eating places in general was their soup. As in France in the early days of the development of the restaurant, soup was an important part of the business. It was meant to restore health, leading the eating places that specialized in it to call themselves restorators.

Restorators in this country offered other dishes as well as soup, of course, but the fact that they served soup tended to set them apart from other eating places which generally did not offer it at that time. Julien, whose restorator is considered the country’s first “restaurant,” was known as the “prince of soups.” His soups included barley, turtle, and “brown soup,” which was a beef consommé. Like many restorators, he also offered alcoholic beverages including wine.

Most of their advertising does not mention cost, however one that does quotes shockingly high prices in 1797. A Philadelphia restorator named Bossee offered “Jelly Broths, and every thing that may be wished for, as well Liquors and Meats of all kinds. Exactly at Three o’clock there will be a Dinner served, at One Dollar for each person, with half a bottle of old Bourdeaux wine.”

That, and a few comments I’ve found from the days in which they flourished suggest that restorators were patronized by men who were wealthier than the average.

Of course, restorators also provided a wide range of dishes beyond soup. Pastries were specialities too. Boston’s Dorival & Deguise advertised in 1796 that they furnished “every thing that the season affords, such as Meat, Poultry, Fish, Vegetables, Fruit, etc., which will be varied with a great variety of excellent Creams, Pies, Cakes, etc. – such as never fail of pleasing the palate of Gentlemen who are in, or out of Health.” Note that American cooks of that time were not known for their skill in creating pastries.

The custom of many restorators of providing alcoholic beverages put restorators on the list of objectionable public resorts in the eyes of the anti-alcohol forces that gained strength in the 1830s. A magazine titled The Youth’s Companion published an article in 1837 that worried about how (male) youth would spend time “at the fashionable ‘Restorator,’ where the taste of its delicacies and the fumes of the wine cup and the cigar will soon obliterate the salutary impressions you may have received by reading the Youth’s Companion, or at the Sabbath School.”

It is true that the period in which restorators flourished in cities was in fact considered by historians as “probably the heaviest drinking era in the nation’s history.” [Drinking in America, Edward Lender & James Kirby Martin] But most heavy drinkers were imbibing liquor, not wine.

Nevertheless there were still places called restorators as late as the 1880 census, though maybe they were just restaurants calling themselves that, or a designation made by old-fashioned census takers. Advertisements did not mention soup or an emphasis on health beyond the 1830s.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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June 30, 2025 · 10:02 am

Popcorn at the movies

Popcorn isn’t a meal, and a movie theater isn’t usually (with a few exceptions) a restaurant, but it’s summer and my mind is straying. I became curious about how popcorn got so popular with movie goers.

Turns out that popcorn in theaters was a topic destined to become a popular topic with journalists. Columnists were attracted to it, and newspapers often raised the question of popcorn eating in their “people on the street” surveys.

There seemed to be quite a lot of people who strongly disliked listening to popcorn crunching in theaters. And before popcorn boxes and tubs were introduced they also complained of the rattling of paper bags that popcorn was served in.

The earliest complaints I found began in the teens. But long before people began complaining about popcorn in theaters, they complained about peanuts. As early as 1865 a story titled “The Peanut Nuisance” appeared in a New Orleans paper. Of course the theater would not have been showing movies then, but the complaint foreshadows the popcorn debate. The theater goer wrote: “. . . we hold that no gentleman will eat peanuts in a theater. No man can be a gentleman who, for a little self-gratification, will annoy and disgust all those around him.”

Popcorn came to theaters in the early 20th century. Already by 1916 the Majestic theater in Monticello IN was popping and buttering corn with a newly invented “beautiful” electric Butterkist popcorn machine [shown above] that stood proudly in its lobby. The Monticello Journal remarked that the theater was now “in line with the progressive picture houses of the big cities.”

It didn’t take long for complainers all over the country to register their opinions. A letter to the editor of a newspaper in Stockton CA announced that the writer disliked the “rattlings, scrunching and smacking” so intensely that they could barely restrain themselves from “having a violent fit.” By the 1920s commentators were calling popcorn eating at the movies a “craze.” Still, negative reactions filled papers across the country for decades, finally beginning to die down in the 1960s.

Some theaters also disdained popcorn. The Loew’s theaters took the initiative in prohibiting patrons from eating popcorn in their theaters. Not only did the theaters not sell it, they asked anyone bringing it inside to check it. The name of the owner was written on the package and it was returned after the showing.

The official response to complaints about popcorn in theaters included exploring the possibility that popcorn drew rats. The Wichita KS city council, for example, asked the health department to investigate this risk in 1939. No evidence that popcorn threatened health was found.

Even without rats as an excuse, some officials took the route of outlawing popcorn in movie theaters. In the late 1940s there were attempts to pass state laws to ban popcorn in movies in Oregon and Wisconsin. They went nowhere.

Theaters insisted that they needed the revenue produced by their refreshment counters — where popcorn was the big seller. In 1946 a theater in San Diego admitted that one week their candy counter took in more money than the movie that was playing. By the early 1950s concession sales were seen as essential for economic health, all the more so as television became common. A story reported that an accountant representing theater owners told the House Ways and Means Committee in 1953 that “only popcorn and candy had kept the movies in business during the last two years.”

The popcorn wars came to an end. If some people disliked popcorn crunching they kept it to themselves.

Public attention turned to what kind of movies stimulated popcorn sales most successfully. Gangster and cowboy movies and musical comedies were said to rate highly unlike “the serious and thought-provoking types.” Elvis movies were said to sell the most popcorn in 1956 and 1957. The Exorcist was the winner in 1974 and Jaws was said to be the “popcorn picture” of all time. Some psychologists were of the opinion that the hand-to-mouth activity was soothing.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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June 16, 2025 · 11:35 am

Colosimo’s charm

Many restaurants through the decades have built their popularity on a genial host. That was true of Colosimo’s in Chicago and its owner and host Jim Colosimo.

To a large degree the restaurant’s reputation was built around “Big Jim.” Before 1920 that was because of his pleasant manner. And, maybe, the spaghetti at Colosimo’s really was exceptionally good.

But the genial host was also a big-time gangster.

The restaurant was located in a part of Chicago known as the levee, an area specializing in prostitution. Colosimo had opened his restaurant in 1910, having previously run two “single-hour” hotels.

He expanded his operations to become a crime boss who not only provided illegal services but also had procurers recruiting naive young women as prostitutes in and outside of Chicago. And he handled the police, seeing to it that they didn’t interfere with these activities. His lieutenants collected payoffs from other illegal operators — and killed people as necessary — leaving Big Jim’s hands clean. (Of course, the police knew very well what he directed his minions to do.)

Many of Colosimo’s patrons also must have known about his other activities. In 1914 a letter appeared in the Chicago Tribune from a woman who feared for the fate of young women that might venture into the place:
I have been reading The Tribune about this vice upheaval and notice what is said about Colosimo’s. This recalls that when I first came to Chicago last winter I saw, I believe, [full] page ads in the leading Chicago theater programs which advertised what a fine place was to be found at Colosimo’s. I didn’t know what kind of a place it was and didn’t go there to find out, but I’ll warrant any number of younger girls went there, led by the page advertisement in the Chicago theater program, and undoubtedly a great many of them can now trace their downfall to Colosimo’s. [above: 1914 advertisement]

Its reputation evidently didn’t bother many of its patrons. The theatrical profession was said to flock there. And a publication reported that “The café . . . is crowded nightly after the show with a merry making throng which makes it one of the brightest spots on the city’s map.” It served as an ongoing attraction for the city’s “society slummers.” And in 1916 an advertisement for Colosimo’s appeared in the Official Program of the Republican National Convention to be held in the city.

His execution helped perpetuate the restaurant’s appeal after Colosimo was gunned down on the premises in 1920. It also helped that Al Capone was associated with the restaurant. He had been hired as Big Jim’s bodyguard, replacing him as the city’s crime boss after he was killed.

In subsequent years the name of the restaurant remained Colosimo’s, despite his absence and a new owner. It was remodeled to look elegant, and operated as a nightclub. Its past, presumably firmly behind it, did not deter the crowds in the 1920s. Drinks were available, although the restaurant was shut down repeatedly for violating Prohibition. Apparently that was okay with the alumni of a Vermont military college which planned a dinner there in 1925, including their “wives and sweethearts.” Their invitation noted “At this place we can be entertained by dancing, eating and looking . . .” [my emphasis]

The new owner, who had bought a half share in the restaurant shortly before Colosimo’s murder, operated it until its end in 1948, by which time it had suffered the bizarre fate of being converted into a cafeteria. [Above: the restaurant in the 1940s]

Colosimo’s murder was never solved.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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June 1, 2025 · 11:28 am

Famous in its day: Café Johnell

John Spillson came from a restaurant family, so it’s not entirely surprising he went into the business himself, eventually establishing the Café Johnell in Fort Wayne IN in the 1960s and winning endless awards through the years. [Above: ca. 1974]

And yet his path to success was surprising. After working at his father’s restaurant in Fort Wayne, the Berghoff Grill and Gardens, until WWII, he opened his first restaurant in 1951. It was called Meal-A-Minute. I could learn nothing about it other than it went bankrupt the following year.

In 1956 he had a new restaurant, Big John’s Pizza on South Calhoun, at the same address that would one day become Café Johnell. (The nickname “Big John” stuck with him for many years, referring to his height and overall size.)

In 1960 John opened a second pizza outlet on North Clinton. Soon he began to transform the South Calhoun pizza place into an Italian coffee house called Café Johnelli. When a local columnist visited it he noted that it served a variety of coffee drinks as well as an unusual lettuce salad, and baklava for dessert. He concluded that dining at Johnelli’s was “new and different” and “a rare treat.” In 1962 the size of the coffee house doubled and a year later John dropped the I from Johnelli.

In 1963, he adopted a French identity for the restaurant. As he explained it, “I dropped the Italian food because of the Kennedys. They were serving French food in the White House and wine with dinner. I looked at all the publicity they were getting; the public wanted to do what the Kennedys were doing. . . . So I . . . .decided to go French.”

As The Holiday Magazine Award Cookbook noted in 1976, the pizza parlor was “reincarnated . . . as an elegant French restaurant and [he] ran it with such panache that kings, stars of screen and field, everyone within a 200-mile radius who wanted a truly decent meal, flocked to his Café Johnell. Today, in a city noted for auto pistons, life insurance and high school basketball, it’s Spillson’s restaurant that attracts new top executives.” [Above: advertisement from July, 1959, prior to the transformation]

Holiday Magazine awards were some of the almost uncountable number of awards showered on Johnell’s beginning in the 1960s and continuing over the years. They recognized the restaurant’s coffee, wine, and cuisine. But Johnell did not make it into Playboy’s top 25 restaurants in 1984, instead being mentioned as a “regional favorite.”

As John Spillson grew older he brought his daughter Nike into the restaurant as chef, after she was trained in France’s Cordon Bleu. He also began to groom some of his other children for positions as well. Longtime cook Elsie Grant also visited Paris, presumably under John’s sponsorship, trained at the New Haven Culinary Institute, and apprenticed at Le Mistral in New York and Maxim’s in Chicago. Her career was notable in demonstrating opportunities for professionalization rarely offered to Black women cooks in this country.

Following John’s death in 1995 his children continued to run the restaurant until it closed in January, 2001. In its last years the restaurant’s ratings declined, with many feeling the time for a restaurant of that kind had ended decades earlier. Nevertheless, the restaurant reviewer for the Journal-Gazette, who was quite critical of the restaurant’s decor in later years, praised it after it closed even though she admitted it was “a prime example of a business too long on a respirator.”

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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May 19, 2025 · 1:57 pm

Find of the day: Aviation Tea Room

This past weekend at the giant Brimfield flea market I found the charming small menu shown above and below.

The menu is for a tea house that operated seasonally from 1928 through 1940. I’m guessing it may date from the mid-1930s since the prices match those in an advertisement from 1937 [shown below].

I couldn’t determine if the Providence Airport owned the tea house, renting it to the two women who ran it, or if the women were the owners. Despite the airport’s name, both it and the tea house were actually located in Seekonk MA, 7 miles from Providence RI.

The air field was private, offering flying lessons, short touring flights, and airplane storage. Its owners also sold the newly developed Aeronca monoplane.

The two women who ran the tea house for most of its years, Mildred Burrell and Lyle Lincoln, were from Fall River MA. They seemed to enjoy the status of socialites, being free to pursue that lifestyle in the months they were not running the tea house. They were able to make a success of the business for at least 10 years, which was greater than the lifespan of most eating places. It was offered for sale in 1939, but its new operator only kept it open for a year.

According to a 1932 feature story about women and aviation, women had no place in the early days of aviation, and were not expected to ever become passengers. However, that had changed by the time of the story when they had begun to learn to fly, and made up an increasing percentage of passengers and in-flight hostesses. According to the story, the operators of the tea house had made “occasional flights, [but] neither has a license or even any interest in obtaining one.”

Various newspaper stories of groups patronizing the tea house suggest that most came from Providence. Patrons could watch the airfield’s activities, but how many of the field’s plane owners, tour takers, or students taking flying lessons patronized the tea house is uncertain. Yet this 1929 advertisement suggests that there may have been some interest in an air tour followed by dinner on weekends.

By the time the tea house closed after the 1940 season, public airports were well established, and many featured full-scale restaurants that drew the public to dine while watching planes take off and land.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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May 11, 2025 · 11:35 am

Restaurant-ing on Mother’s Day

Beginning in the 1950s going out for brunch or dinner began to be a popular way to treat mothers on their annual holiday. But it seems to have lost its appeal somewhat in recent years. Has the idea of doing that waned with the public or is it because fewer restaurants are open on Sundays? Maybe restaurant staffs would like to celebrate the day themselves. But it is more likely that going out to eat on Sundays, once very popular, has become less so and restaurants don’t find it worthwhile to stay open. And, could it be that brunch has lost its appeal as well? [Above: Allgauer’s ad, Chicago, 1956]

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April 27, 2025 · 11:17 am

Music & food at Café Society

Café Society was the satirical name of a New York jazz club in the late 1930s and 1940s. The name was meant to make fun of people who wanted to be seen as sophisticated rather than merely rich. However, it’s likely that Café Society nevertheless proved to be an attraction to many of those same people.

By the second year there were two locations of Café Society, Downtown and Uptown. The clubs and their owner Barney Josephson have become well known for the number of jazz greats they introduced and nurtured, among them Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Teddy Wilson. And also for their full acceptance of Black customers.

Unlike other “café society” club owners such as the Stork Club’s, Josephson refused to accept the racial codes of that time. He was determined not to follow policies that featured Black performers but would not allow them to mingle with the patrons, and excluded Black guests. Even when these policies began to soften, it was common for Black patrons to be seated inconspicuously in the least desirable spots. [Above: 1939 sign at the Downtown club ridiculing prominent society figures]

When he opened the Downtown Greenwich Village club in late December 1938, Barney recruited three musicians who had been part of a Carnegie Hall Christmas Eve program called From Spirituals to Swing. Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pete Johnson performed at the club a few days later. The club advertised that it featured “boogie-woogie,” which was largely unknown in New York City at the time. [Above: Downtown in 1939; William Gropper mural]

But what about the food? In general, jazz clubs’ culinary output has not been regarded as the finest. Barney claimed that when he started out, most jazz clubs were run by mobsters who didn’t even try to prepare good meals. He tried to do better, but it’s hard to judge how well he succeeded since I’ve found little commentary. Club cuisine wasn’t usually written about.

In a book based on recordings of his memories, published by his fourth wife after his death, Barney commented that in most nightclubs waiters were urged to push drinks not food. For the Uptown Café Society (on East 58th), opened about a year later than Downtown, he made an effort to provide good food by hiring a chef who had managed the Claremont Inn and had been head waiter at Sherry’s. Robert Dana, nightclub editor of the Herald Tribune, was of the opinion that “On its food alone, Café Society ranked with many fine restaurants,” singling out squab chicken casserole and cream of mushroom soup. [Above: Uptown, 1943; Below: Advertisement with the musical lineup on Uptown’s first anniversary, 1940]

By the end of 1947 Uptown was out of business, and Downtown closed in early March of 1949. The problem was that Barney’s brother Leon, an admitted Communist Party member, was part owner of the clubs, having advanced start-up money. In 1947 Leon was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, refused to testify, and spent a year in prison. Barney was seen as guilty by association, attendance at his clubs plummeted, and he lost all his money. It seemed his career as a jazz club owner was over.

After that he concentrated on the restaurant business. He opened three restaurants, all called The Cookery, with one on Lexington across from Bloomingdale’s, one on 52nd Street in the CBS building, and then in 1955 a third one in Greenwich Village on University Place and 8th Street. The first two did not stay open long, but the Greenwich Village site was successful. [Above: The Cookery on Lexington; wall art by Anton Refregier]

While the two Café Societies had featured jazz with food, his third Cookery was to become a purveyor of food with jazz.

The Village’s Cookery was far from glamorous, generally described as “a hamburger, ham-and-egg type restaurant.” For the first 15 years there was no music. And then one day Barney had a visit from pianist Mary Lou Williams — who had played at Café Society Downtown – looking for work. As he described it:

“. . . this lady, one of the greatest musicians of all times, composer, arranger, not working? It was all this wild, crazy rock. . . . I investigated and found out I didn’t need a cabaret license in my place if I only had three string instruments.” [Above: Mary Lou Williams, at the Cookery in the Village, 1970]

So he told her to go rent a piano and, presto!, he was back in the jazz club business as of 1970. She was a draw. As he put it, “Mary returned to The Cookery each year through 1976 for three-month gigs, always to critical acclaim and crowds.” Other musicians who played there included Teddy Wilson, Marian McPartland, and the elderly singer Alberta Hunter, who had been working as a nurse.

The Cookery stayed in business until 1984.

For those interested in reading more about Barney’s clubs, see the book based on his recorded memoir published by Terry Trilling-Josephson in 2009 (Café Society: The wrong place for the Right people).

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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April 13, 2025 · 11:52 am

Catering to women’s tastes

In the 19th century and much of the early 20th restaurant owners viewed women’s tastes as quite different than men’s.

Women did not patronize restaurants to a great extent in the 19th century, but it seems when they did they preferred places that furnished ice cream, pastries, and cakes, not only for immediate consumption but also to order for the home. For instance, in 1865 in Milwaukee WI there was Thompson’s Ladies’ Restaurant, Ice Cream Parlor, and Confectionery which provided three meals a day plus Tea, along with Wedding and Party Cakes to order. [Advertisement shown below]

Such places were seemingly rare and I doubt that their customers included women of little means. In 1869, it was reported that poor working women frequented “coffee places” where they ordered simply bread or cake with coffee. But even these may have introduced the long-lasting idea that women were particularly fond of sweet foods.

I wonder if it was often the case that they made do with a simple sweet dish because that was all they could afford.

Of course, sweet dishes were not women’s only preferences if they could pay more. Oysters were also popular choices — as they were with men.

Commentary about women’s food preferences was sometimes insulting. The idea seemed to be firmly planted for decades and well into the 20th century that women were frivolous eaters while men chose real food. That would be repeated time and time again in books and newspaper stories. For instance:
1888, New York Tribune: In ladies restaurants a woman might order salad, ice cream, oyster patty, eclaire, cheese cake, “and perhaps one or two other varieties of whipped froth and baked wind.”
1894, Charles Ranhofer cookbook: “Should the menu be intended for a dinner including ladies, it must be composed of light, fancy dishes with a pretty dessert; if, on the contrary, it is intended for gentlemen alone, then it must be shorter and more substantial.”
1917, Housewives Magazine: a woman “expert” reported that men made “habitual food choices” while women “go by eye-appeal.” Typically, she explained, almost all men ate meat, while women preferred fruit salad, beans or macaroni, and cake and ice cream.

By the mid-1920s women were making up a larger proportion of restaurant goers than ever before, possibly as much as 60%. Pleasing them was becoming essential. The trade magazine Restaurant Management advised: “Many managers have not yet seen the light. If you doubt this watch the places that get the women’s trade. In the majority of cases these restaurants serve light, tasty foods in homelike surroundings and at a reasonable price “

But even as women’s patronage became important, there were still commentaries that were insulting. Eating habits were changing, possibly due in large part to Prohibition, leading the former proprietor of Keen’s Chop House in NYC to comment in 1931: “Formerly when a man took a lady to dinner he not only selected the restaurant, he took great pride in ordering a particularly choisi, well-balanced meal.” But, he said, it had become clear that now women “would rather have had the unholy hodgepodges you see them reveling in to-day.”

Even some women criticized women’s food choices. In 1937 a woman who had worked for major restaurant chains said that to succeed in the Depression tea room operators had to recognize that men wanted “real food” . . . not “Canary bird food.” [Above: Boston tea room’s “canary bird food.”]

Slowly, insults concerning women’s tastes died down, although differences in restaurant orders based on gender were still observed. In 1934 a woman tea room operator said that “The conventional woman’s taste runs to chicken patties, peas, and ice cream; men like steaks, French fried potatoes, and apple pie.”

Had differences largely disappeared by the 1950s? When I wrote an earlier post I thought that numbers of men still wanted what they regarded as he-man meals and that there were restaurants willing to cater to them.

Yes, a chef commented in 1952, there were those who still believed that men preferred “an exclusive diet of thick mutton chops, brawny steaks, large ribs of beef and mountainous apple pies” while women went for “chicken patties, asparagus points and meringue shells.” But he declared this false, saying in his experience women “want their double sirloins as big as those served to their husbands,” while the most popular choice at a NY men’s club was “creamed chicken with sherry,” despite the fact that the chicken was cut up into small chunks.

But there may still have been some resistance on the part of men about eating foods tagged as feminine. Salads are one example, a favorite with women since the 19th century, but not so much with men. That included meat and fish salads, and in more modern times, green salads. And an industry publication reported in 1960 that a large hotel lured men into ordering a sandwich by naming it “The Mountain Climber.” It was made of turkey, ham, and cheese and had been previously ordered only by women.

However, as much as the differences in the restaurant orders of men and women may have declined in the late 20th century, it seems that with a few exceptions women still haven’t achieved equal stature or full recognition as gourmets or culinary pace-setters.

I’d love to hear readers’ thoughts on this topic.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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March 30, 2025 · 11:28 am

Ruth Stout, her life and tea rooms

A few days ago I read a fascinating article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. It was about Ruth Stout, author of How to Have a Green Thumb, Without an Aching Back, originally published in 1955. It has been reissued and is still quite popular.

There were many engaging aspects to Stout’s life, such as her affair with the radical Scott Nearing, her career as a writer, the fact that her brother was the mystery novelist Rex Stout who created Nero Wolfe, her involvement with ‘no-plow’ gardening, and the fact that lived to be 96. [Below: Ruth in 1923, age 39.]

But what especially interested me was that Stout had been briefly involved in owning and running two tea rooms in Greenwich Village around 1917. They didn’t last long, but that was true — almost typical — of many tea rooms.

The first was the Will o’ the Wisp which she opened with a family friend. It was appropriately named, being short-lived. It was ridiculed by the New-York Tribune in a 1917 story about an imaginary visitor from afar searching NYC for the “real Bohemia.” He and the writer go to “the Wisp” (as it was known), where the “young ladies” (actually about 32 and 50 years old) that operated it invite them to come back the next night and help wash dishes around 1 or 2 a.m. The sardonic piece ends with the trite observation that Bohemia is a fantasy.

If the Tribune writer had known that the two women running the Wisp were both from small towns in Kansas, that would have been another sign of how misplaced his dismissive attitude was. They actually represented the adventurousness and talent of many New York transplants. In this case they were writers, world travelers, and free spirits.

The Greenwich Village tearooms before World War I served mainly as hangouts for local residents, many of whom were artists and who liked to gather with friends in the evening. Alas, they didn’t spend much, so the advent of visitors from outside the Village was a financial boon. The Wisp tagged itself in advertising as a place for writers, “the poets’ favorite,” not a slogan likely to draw the masses.

As the photo at the top shows (by the Village’s photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals), tea rooms were plentiful, with three in the building in this photo. And the building itself is none too impressive, even looks somewhat structurally unsound. The Wisp is on the ground floor.

Not much later, or maybe simultaneously with the Will o’ the Wisp, Ruth opened a second Village tea room called The Klicket, this one with dancing. The Quill, the Village’s magazine, promoted it saying, “Ruth Stout’s ‘Klicket’ has a good floor, and say! Ruth CAN cook!” No doubt she was amused by that since she wasn’t much of a cook.

At the Klicket, Ruth found herself keeping even later hours, but there was little monetary reward.
As she indicated in her advertisement she mainly hoped her customers would end the evening by paying for their tea. It was not a financial success and she kept it going only for about a year.

In a 1917 book about the Village, author Anna Alice Chapin outlined the “phases” which the Village was going through, which included not only “the tea-shop epidemic,” but also psychoanalysis, arts and crafts, masquerade balls, and support for labor activism and anarchy. Ruth took up the call to radicalism. She and Rex were on the editorial board of a leading socialist-communist periodical The New Masses. She also visited Russia as a Quaker volunteer helping alleviate famine there in 1923 and became a helper and romantic partner of Scott Nearing for several years, living with him on his farm.

She published four books in the 1950s and 1960s, including her garden book and Company Coming: Six Decades of Hospitality, Do-it-yourself and Otherwise, in which she mentioned her tea rooms. Until her death in 1980 she spent her elder years in Connecticut where she and her husband Fred Rossiter had acreage.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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March 16, 2025 · 11:42 am

Exploding restaurants

After prohibition ended gangsters were in search of a new game. It didn’t take much time to discover the solution, in fact it was already in progress in Chicago by the late 1920s. [Above, Howard Johnson’s, Chicago, 1954]

As I mentioned in an earlier post on rackets, the new game involved getting protection money from weak sectors of the economy, namely businesses that had low-paid workers such as, but not limited to, restaurants. Unions wanted to recruit the workers but owners resisted. One solution seemed to be a bombing campaign that would soften the owners’ resistance. Some unions hired hoodlums to do the deed.

According to an account by Louis Adamic in his classic 1931 book Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America, workers wanting better pay and shorter hours were threatening to strike. The racketeers, according to Adamic, began to “‘muscle’ their way into the union offices and affairs, and in not a few cases took over the control of the organization.” The racketeers made more money and the unions thrived, at least in terms of growing membership.

To avoid the bombs, restaurant owners also paid gangsters protection money. If not, a bombing campaign might begin, perhaps starting with a weaker bomb, maybe a “stink bomb” or a mild explosive. If those didn’t work, it escalated to dynamite, resulting in heavier structural damage.

Often the bombings occurred late in the night or very early morning, but at other times, especially when stink bombs were used, it was during business hours. Even a stink bomb could put a restaurant out of business, since frequent customers, whose clothes might be ruined in the episode, would probably never return. Plus the restaurant could get a bad reputation. [Above, “humorous” letter sent to a newspaper in 1963]

Although workers unionized at numbers of restaurants in the 1920s and 1930s, especially in New York and Chicago, it’s not clear how much they benefitted. There is no doubt that they needed better pay and shorter hours. Many were working 12-hour days for very low pay.

Sometimes minor improvements did occur. A 1937 trial in NYC showed that if a restaurant owner chose to pay for protection against the mob there was one set monthly fee, but a lower one “if he contracted for increases of 50 cents or $1 a week for his workers and signed a closed shop contract,” that is, hired only unionized workers.

Famous New York restaurants such as Lindy’s were assessed with lower fees for joining protection plans because their fame helped persuade other restaurants to cooperate. A number of New York City restaurants resisted and were bombed., including Childs on 43rd street, many cafeterias, Park Lane, Ye Eat Shoppe, Rectors, Eatomat, Silver Dollar and Marine Grill, and Grant Lunch. Of course, there were many more.

New York succeeded in calming gangster infiltration (to what degree is unclear), but in Chicago it continued in restaurants into the 1970s. Union membership declined, but restaurant owners were still threatened and bombed, with racketeers seeking payment to make it stop.

Invariably, Chicago restaurant owners declared that they had no idea whatsoever about who had bombed them or why. More surprisingly, police also seemed strangely mystified. Very few bombers were ever caught or convicted. [Above, the owner of Wilkos in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn is comforted after 1964 bombing of his restaurant]

In 1964 Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko reported that the Illinois Fire Marshall William Cowhey said he was puzzled about what was going on. During a press meeting, Royko wrote, “Cowhey’s eyes squinted, as if he were peering into the distance for something. ‘The . . . rhyme . . . or . . . the . . . reason,’ he said, slowly. ‘If we could . . . get . . . the . . . rhyme or . . . reason.” In another column Royko explained, “The duties of the fire marshal included going to the restaurant, viewing the gaping hole in the door, the shattered windows, the rubble in the street, and announcing to newsmen: ‘This is arson.’ This job out of the way, it is the fire marshal’s duty to crouch and pick up a piece of rubble and stare at it so a picture can be taken.” [Above, owner inspects damage at his Ivanhoe restaurant in Chicago, 1964]

Although union membership and racketeering had declined by the 1980s, protection shakedowns, sometimes involving bombs, continued in that decade, and possibly still occur today.

© Jan Whitaker, 2025

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