April 13, 2010 · 4:23 pm

Good eaters: Andy Warhol

He certainly wasn’t from the same category of eaters as James Beard, yet both Beard and Andy Warhol celebrated American cuisine, even in its more humble pancake/sandwich/barbecue forms. Warhol was a typical American eater in many regards. He was conservative about his food, preferred simple dishes, and was happy eating in front of the TV.

As for restaurants, he explained in his 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol that he stayed thin by ordering things he disliked in restaurants — even fashionable and expensive ones such as La Grenouille. While his companions ate, he picked at his plate and then had the food wrapped up so he could leave it somewhere for a homeless person to find. He called this the “Andy Warhol New York City Diet.”

He much preferred “good, plain American lunchroom[s] or even the good plain American lunchcounter” to chic eateries. His favorites, already vanished by 1975, were the “old-style” Chock Full O’ Nuts and Schrafft’s. “The days were carefree in the 1940s and 1950s when I could go into a Chocks for my cream cheese sandwich with nuts on date-nut bread and not worry about a thing,” he wrote. He felt that people could not handle many challenges to their food habits without becoming upset. As he put it, “Progress is very important and exciting in everything except food.”

He came close to becoming a restaurateur himself when he announced the coming of the “Andy-Mat,” an unpretentious neighborhood restaurant serving homely comfort food at reasonable prices which was slated to open in fall of 1977 on Madison Avenue at 74th Street in NYC, perhaps launching a chain. (See photo with Warhol and his partners, [standing L to R] architect Araldo Cossutta, developer Geoffrey Leeds, and financier C. Cheever Hardwick III.) Described as “a tinker toy for sophisticates,” Warhol’s concept included pneumatic tubes through which customers’ orders would be whooshed into the kitchen. The meals served in Andy-Mats, in keeping with the times, were to be frozen dinners requiring only reheating.

For some reason — poor location or failure to raise capital or maybe because the whole plan was cooked up over “twelve stingers at El Morocco” — the restaurant did not materialize.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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April 1, 2010 · 7:02 pm

Birth of the theme restaurant

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Credit for the development of the first theme restaurants goes to Paris cafés and cabarets which opened in Montmartre in the later nineteenth century. They were primarily drinking spots rather than full-scale restaurants but they served food also. Like American theme restaurants today they were built around a concept and created an environment which appeared to be something other than a mere eating and drinking place.

In their early years these artistic cafés had a counter-cultural impetus that in some cases celebrated the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871 which had been rooted in Montmartre.

That was particularly true of the Café du Bagne (Café of the Penitentiary) established in 1885 by Maxime Lisbonne (shown with waiters), a member of the Commune long exiled in a South Pacific penal colony. Posters on the wall of his café, which replicated a prison eating hall, hailed Commune heroes. Waiters were dressed as real convicts but with fake balls and chains. The place caused an instant sensation when it opened, with patrons lining up outside to get in. Possessed of a socialistic mission, Lisbonne posted a sign in 1886 announcing a free breakfast for the poor residents of Montmartre: “Come, and eat your fill, your appetite sharpened by the knowledge that it was from their [the capitalists] coffers the money was extracted.”

The Chateau d’If’ of the 1880s, possibly an imitator of the Café du Bagne, was designed to resemble the prison by the same name in Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Outside it had an imitation drawbridge which stretched from the street to a large oak door, while inside were cells and dungeons. The L’Abbaye de Thélème, with a medieval theme, dressed its servers as monks and nuns.

At Le Chat Noir, the decor was in Louis XIII style, with waiters dressed in the authentic green jackets of the Immortals of the French Academy whose job it was to protect the purity of the French language – the object being, of course, to mock them. When it was established in 1881, Le Chat Noir, which was also decorated with images of black cats throughout, served as a club for artists where they exhibited their work. Its fame spread quickly and it became a magnet for visitors to Paris. (Later incarnation of Le Chat Noir pictured below.)

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Many of the Montmartre cafés celebrated the macabre, with paintings and decor whose subjects included infanticide, crucifixion, and assassination, but in 1894 The Café of Death opened, furnished with coffins serving as tables. The police objected to its name and its habit of serving beer in imitation human skulls so its name was changed to the Cabaret du Néant [of Nothingness] (see above).

The 1890s marked a turning point at which original owners left the scene, artists stopped coming, bohemianism vanished, and new café owners took dead aim at tourists. Certainly few of the popular cafés and cabarets of the early 20th century had much connection with earlier enterprises even when old names remained. Many felt that the Café de l’Enfer (Café of Hell) exemplified the purely commercial type of enterprise.

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The spirit of Paris’s bohemian cafés passed into the United States first in New York City. Au Chat Noir was in business there in 1895, decorated with a wall frieze of black cats. Otherwise, though, it seemed like a fairly standard small French restaurant of the day serving dishes such as cold lobster, tripe, and deviled crabs. Later at least a couple of other cafés named The Black Cat appeared in NY and Coppa’s in San Francisco adopted a similar theme.

Other early theme restaurants undoubtedly inspired by Paris cafés include beefsteak dungeons in New York and elsewhere, as well as tea rooms and cabarets in Greenwich Village both before and after World War I, a prime example being the Pirates’ Den. As in Paris, theme restaurants and cafés rapidly lost any counter-cultural overtones.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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March 9, 2010 · 5:24 pm

Restaurant-ing with “royalty”

Of course he wasn’t the only “sociopath” ever to become a restaurateur, but Michael Romanoff was very likely the most flamboyant. He was clever, spoke with a British accent, and dressed impeccably. His sense of style never left him. Imprisoned in NYC’s Tombs in the 1920s, he reportedly made quite an impression by strolling in the exercise yard with a walking stick. This story could be false, though, because not only did he twist the facts perpetually but so did some of the journalists who covered his bizarre 30-year career as a con-man.

He came to the attention of the press in 1910 when he presented himself as the grandson of England’s premier Gladstone in order to obtain two cameras on credit. He was unmasked as a former juvenile delinquent named Gilbert E. Gerguson. By the early 1930s he had used at least 17 aliases, including his favorite, Prince Michael Romanoff, younger brother of the former czar of Russia, Nicholas II. Although his “real” name is widely accepted as Harry F. Gerguson, I suspect it was actually Michael Romanoff, from Brooklyn. U.S. immigration authorities, however, were convinced he had been born outside this country and deported him every chance they got, about 10 times.

Romanoff1948MenucoverHe claimed to have spent seven years of his life in jail. At times, when not sponging off rich patrons, stowing away on luxury ocean liners, or successfully passing bad checks, he was penniless and went hungry. He may have spent time in a mental hospital and attempted suicide at least once. Although he was sometimes described as a former pants presser, oil field worker, and buttonhole maker, it was not his style to hold a regular job although he once managed a farm in Virginia for over a year, possibly his longest gig.

He never apologized for his lifestyle. Quite the contrary. In 1933 he declared, “For years I have been supplying adventure, by proxy, to those who have desired it. I have given more enjoyment, I think, than I have received.” By then everyone knew he was no prince, but he defended himself by saying, “At least I have the attitude of a prince – I have lived courageously and have, I think, put up the stock of princes.” Well, the stock of princes wasn’t terribly high in the 1930s and, courageous or not, he engaged in some shady activities.

His life improved immensely when he became a frankly fake prince rather than a fraudster trying to pass for Russian royalty. And where better to be what he called a “real phony” than Hollywood? He opened a restaurant there around 1940 which quickly became one of Hollywood’s famous haunts. By then he was 47 or 50 years old, depending upon which birthdate you accept. According to various newspaper stories, the restaurant’s capital was put up by director Darryl Zanuck, writer Robert Benchley, and others. In 1951 it moved to South Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and somewhat later spread into San Francisco and Palm Springs.

The Hollywood Romanoff’s was a celebrity den where Mike entertained his guests — sometimes by snubbing them. How much time he spent supervising staff or bothering himself with mundane chores such as buying provisions or going over the books is unclear, as is the quality of the cuisine. By one account it was so-so but was upgraded to “above-average” in the late 1950s. An undated menu shows numerous dishes with Stroganoff and Romanoff suffixes. He made a good income, but by December 1962 business had fallen off to such a degree that the Beverly Hills Romanoff’s closed. I have not been able to determine the fate of the other two locations.

Mike’s story was clearly movie material, yet it seems that two announced films (“Ellis Island,” “The Incredible Romanoff”) never appeared. He had small parts in numerous films, sometimes playing a butler, aristocrat, or himself as restaurateur. In 1958 Congress voted to grant him permanent resident status and he became a naturalized citizen.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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February 26, 2010 · 8:20 pm

Righting civil wrongs in restaurants

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro NC (pictured) which set off a wave of similar protests across the South and turned the tide against segregated eating facilities. But these were far from the first such actions. Integration of American eating places came about from a patchwork of regulations that sometimes successfully impeded discrimination and by the courageous actions of individuals and groups, black and white, who negotiated with, sued, picketed, and physically occupied restaurants beginning in the 1870s.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offered the strongest protection against discrimination in restaurants up to then, was neither sudden nor was it evidence of the steady march of progress. A federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 was repealed by the Supreme Court just eight years later, after which Southern states enacted separate accommodations laws (Jim Crow), while other states passed or amended civil rights acts.

Few state civil rights laws covered eating facilities, the most controversial area of public accommodations. White public opinion was strongly against blacks and whites eating together in restaurants. Segregationist sentiment grew stronger around the turn of the last century and again in the World War I period when many black Americans migrated North for jobs. Blacks lodged relatively few protests because the odds of winning in court were poor. Also, anyone brave enough to challenge discrimination needed enough social stature to refute the accusation of simply being a low-class ruffian. By the “Catch-22″ logic that long prevailed, any black person who went into a white-only restaurant was considered of poor character since proper black people knew better than to go where they were not wanted.

The following are examples of challenges against racism in restaurants that nevertheless occurred in the 20th century before passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1926 Organized by a cook, the black staff of an Alice Foote MacDougall tea room in NYC unites behind a black waitress discharged for serving a black customer. They all walk out, forcing MacDougall to change her policy.

1929 The president of the United Colored Socialist party is accosted by a waitress as he and a black associate enter the Mills Restaurant in Cleveland. Restricted to a table on the mezzanine, they are treated hatefully and a hefty service charge is added to their bill. They win in court after refusing to give up despite six postponements.

1935 Black activists test a new PA civil rights law in Philadelphia, leading to the arrest of four employees at Horn & Hardart’s Automat who seat five white parties while two black people stand by and wait for an hour. At Stouffer’s three black patrons receive their meals smothered in salt. The manager asserts that all Stouffer’s meals are “highly seasoned.”

1936 After two black New Yorkers are refused service at a restaurant in Bel Air MD, 17 bus loads of fellow (but white) WPA workers en route to a Washington conference protest. The demonstration is peaceful yet 40 state police armed with machine guns and tear gas arrive and arrest the two blacks.

1943 Howard University students sit-in at a “white trade only” eatery in DC, a city in which few restaurants are open to people of color including the cafeteria in the Department of Justice.

1943 The newly formed Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) initiates a sit-in at the Jack Spratt café in Chicago where one of CORE’s founders, executive director James Farmer (pictured in 1965), had been treated rudely the previous year.

1946 The United Packinghouse Workers union (CIO) files charges against Hackney’s Seafood restaurant in Atlantic City on behalf of two black delegates refused admittance and files false-arrest charges against the police department which arrested protesting union picketers.

1947 After 11 bias suits against Bullock’s department store in Los Angeles fail to alter the store’s discrimination policy, CORE initiates sit-ins in the store’s tea room. Several white bystanders join the protest by informing waitresses they will wait to be served after the black patrons.

1951 Long-time civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (pictured), in her late 80s and using a cane, joins picketers in front of Washington DC’s Hecht’s department store, which does not permit its many black customers to use its cafeteria. The store changes its policy in 1952.

1958 Dime store lunch counters are integrated in Louisville KY after unpublicized sit-ins, but other restaurants continue to refuse to serve blacks.

1960 Martin Luther King is among the 51 protesters arrested at the famed Magnolia Room at Rich’s Department store in Atlanta. A few months later the store changes its policy.

1964 As passage of the bill nears in the House, Ku Klux Klan members sit-in at a Krystal Hamburger stand in Atlanta to prevent SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) members from occupying it.

Read more about discrimination in American restaurants.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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February 21, 2010 · 10:51 pm

Theme restaurants: barns

At the risk of offending anyone I have to say I find this one of the worst themes ever. I almost feel I don’t need to elaborate, that everyone is thinking “I agree.” Not only is the decor corny and the “atmosphere” non-existent, but the kitchen is usually totally lacking in ambition if not turning out food that is downright bad.

The 19th century was mercifully unafflicted with barn restaurants, presumably because barns were still needed for farming and restaurants that were more than plain, bare-bones eateries tended toward grandeur. Sometimes the grandeur was hokey but at least the aim was to provide guests with an experience that went beyond eating in a shelter designed for animals and fowls. Though theme restaurants weren’t totally unknown, the past had not yet been ransacked to come up with novelties that would attract jaded patrons looking for “something different” or catch the eye of passing motorists.

Barn themes were usually used to attract men. I’m guessing it was because subliminally they seemed to promise large quantities of food while not demanding overmuch etiquette. Some beefsteak dungeons, as they were called, where men ate steaks with their bare hands in basements of hotels and restaurants, adopted barn themes. Occasionally even tea rooms, supposedly appealing to discriminating women of delicate tastes, were tucked away in barns in the 1920s (Hyannis Tea Barn pictured). Men tended to avoid tea rooms, so a 1924 tea room trade journal suggested adopting a barnyard theme to draw them. A headline read “The Barnyard Lunch Shows How to Win and Hold Masculine Patronage.” Oof.

The nightclub and restaurant “renaissance” which occurred in 1933 right after the repeal of Prohibition inspired a host of barn eateries as well as many other kinds of theme restaurants. Many were night spots for drinking and dancing as well as “dining.” Examples included the Village Barn in Greenwich Village, as well as Topsy’s Roost near San Francisco which after Repeal relocated to a larger barn equipped to service over 1,000 merry imbibers at once. At Topsy’s, rooster images decorated the walls while chicken prints crossed the table tops. Is anyone thinking sucker joint?

The 1960s and 1970s saw another spate of barn restaurants, this time chains such as Red Barn and Nickerson Farms, which actually constructed barn-shaped buildings as restaurants. And some people loved them.  And pine over them even today.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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February 6, 2010 · 9:13 pm

Men only

Men’s grills were often located in hotels or were set off as special preserves in venues heavily trafficked by women such as tea rooms and department stores. Schrafft’s, Stouffer’s, Mary Elizabeth’s, Marshall Field’s all featured men’s grills. Designed to resemble clubs, they were decorated in Elizabethan or Dutch style with dark wood paneling and sturdy tables and chairs, in stark contrast to the pastel garden look of women’s tea rooms. Women secretly referred to men’s grills as “tea rooms for men.”

There were plenty of grill-type restaurants in the 19th century – when they needed no gender preface because everyone knew they were men’s haunts. But in the 20th, with more women out and about and entering restaurants willy nilly, the words “men’s grill” were used deliberately lest a misguided female might wander in. Policies varied. In some men’s grills absolutely no women were allowed while in others men could bring women guests (see 1966 Schrafft’s ad). But women “alone” were not admitted. Not until the 1970s, that is.

In May 1970 a prominent NYC editor, a woman, walked into Schrafft’s on the corner of 47th Street and Third Avenue with another woman. They noticed that at the back of the restaurant there was a section that looked especially attractive, with more space between tables, tablecloths, and carpeting that cushioned noise. The hostess told them it was the men’s grill and they were not permitted to eat there. They left. The editor sent a letter to Schrafft’s saying that although she was no “stirred-up advocate of Women’s Lib,” she was offended by the restaurant’s policy which, she asserted, was illegal. She received a reply from a Schrafft’s VP who said that the restaurant no longer had a policy of reserving some areas for men. The hostess’s reaction, he said, was due to a breakdown of communication.

Stuffy as they may have been there was much to envy about men’s grills. As a Chicago woman remarked, they had “fast service, good food, and cheaper prices than a comparable restaurant.” She and a woman friend crashed the men’s grill at the Carson, Pirie, Scott department store in Chicago, noting that a male patron there asked the hostess, “Why don’t you throw them out?” They enjoyed their lunch even though their waitress said, “Don’t you know men come here to get away from you?”

The 1964 Civil Rights Law did not mention gender as a basis for discrimination in public accommodations, but after its passage some cities and states enacted laws that forbade it in restaurants and bars. Chicago passed legislation in 1969. McSorley’s ale house in Greenwich Village, with a 116-year tradition of serving men exclusively, gave way in 1970 after the NY city council passed a bill. Even in states without this legislation changing social mores soon brought about new policies. Men’s grills disappeared, to the consternation of some men who, like the lone dissenter on NY’s city council, lamented, “In this troubled world there has to be an oasis in the desert for men.” However, judging from a 1970 comic book, many men disagreed.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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January 28, 2010 · 5:15 pm

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, and Boston. Inexpensive lunch rooms with simple menus and quick service proliferate to serve growing ranks of urban white collar workers, both male and female. Women patronize places they once dared not enter, climbing onto lunch counter stools and venturing into cafes in the evening without escorts.

Diners worry about food safety and cleanliness. Cities mandate restaurant inspections. Meat preservatives used by some restaurants to “embalm” meat that has spoiled come under attack. Restaurants install sanitary white tile on floors and walls to demonstrate cleanliness.

Cooks and waiters unionize. Restaurant owners follow suit, advocating the abolition of the saloon’s “free lunch,” combating strikes, and targeting immigrants who operate “holes in the wall.” As Italians and Greeks open eating places some native-born Americans complain that foreigners are taking over the restaurant business.

New types of eating places become popular such as cafeterias, vegetarian cafés, German rathskellers, tea rooms, and Chinese and Italian restaurants. Dining for entertainment spreads. Adventurous young bohemians seek out small ethnic restaurants (“table d’hotes”) which serve free carafes of wine. Many restaurants introduce live music. The super-rich are accused of “reckless extravagance” as they stage elaborate banquets. The merely well-to-do hire chauffeurs to drive them to quaint dining spots in the countryside.

Highlights

1901 As restaurant patronage rises “foody talk” is everywhere. A journalist overhears people “shamelessly discussing the quantity and quality of food which may be obtained for a given price at the various restaurants.” Hobbyists begin collecting menus and Frances “Frank” E. Buttolph deposits over 9,000 menus in the NY Public Library.

1902 Restaurants automate and eliminate waiters. In Niagara Falls a restaurant devises a system of 500 small cable cars which deliver orders to guests. The Automat opens in Philadelphia, inspiring the city’s Dumont’s Minstrels to create a vaudeville act called The Automatic Restaurant which features “Laughing Pie” and “Screaming Pudding.”

1903 “Where and How to Dine in New York” lists restaurants with cellars where men’s clubs play cavemen and eat steak with their hands. – Hawaiians croon in San Francisco restaurants; ragtime bands play in NYC’s Hungarian cafés; and at McDonald’s (“a touch of Bohemia right in the heart of Boston”) a “Young Ladies’ Orchestra” serenades patrons.

1903 In Denver, where a large part of the population eats out, a cooks’ and waiters’ strike closes large eating places. Strikes break out in Omaha and in Chicago, where a newly formed union rapidly gains 17,000 members. Restaurant owners replace black servers with white women in Chicago, while in Omaha they replace white waiters and cooks with black men.

1905 Five hundred guests of insurance magnate James Hazen Hyde don 18th-century costumes and enjoy a banquet at Sherry’s. Two floors of the NYC restaurant are transformed into a royal French garden and supper is served at tables under wistaria-covered arbors set on a floor of real grass.

1906 Afternoon tea is so fashionable that NYC’s Waldorf-Astoria supplements the Waldorf Garden space by opening the Empire Room from 4 to 6 p.m. – Italian-Americans Luisa and Gerome Leone start a small table d’hote restaurant in NYC near the Metropolitan Opera.*

1908 Johnson’s Tamale Grotto is established in San Francisco with “A Complete Selection of Mexican Foods to Take Home.” – In Washington, D.C., the Union Dairy Lunch advertises that they have passed inspection with “Everything as sanitary and clean as your own home.”

1909 The Philadelphia Inquirer features a story about stylish yet practical “restaurant frocks,” showing a coral pink dress and matching hat ideal for traveling in dusty, open automobiles while visiting rural roadside inns and tea rooms.

* Later known as Mamma Leone’s.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

Read about other decades: 1800 to 1810; 1810 to 1820; 1820 to 1830; 1860 to 1870; 1890 to 1900; 1920 to 1930; 1930 to 1940; 1940 to 1950; 1950 to 1960; 1960 to 1970; 1970 to 1980

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January 24, 2010 · 9:16 pm

Celebrating restaurant cuisine

“Recherché viands.” “Splendid appurtenances.” “Bibular veritabilities.” Wonderfully novel words of praise have been spun by proprietors, patrons, and reviewers in praise of restaurants and their fare. Although the modern era produces few phrases so elaborate as those before the Civil War, the examples below show there are no end of restaurant features that can be lauded.

1816 The owner of the Town and Country Refectory in Providence promises his meats and liquors are “calculated to make glad the heart of man, to revivify exhausted nature, to restore the valetudinarian to health, and to refresh the weary traveller.”

1838 A patron says of a dinner at the American and French Restaurant, Washington DC: “…it was one of the most splendid entertainments ever served up at a public house in the United States, and I much doubt whether the London Tavern, the Café de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale, or any other restaurant or hotel in Paris or London ever surpassed it, either in the qualities of sumptuous and recherché viands, splendid appurtenances, or fine wines.”

1855 Touting Shelley’s Restaurant Sans Pareil, NYC, a notice says “Gentlemen curious in gastronomy, and choice in their selection of Epicurean Varieties and bibular veritabilities, must of necessity visit this classically chaste Palazzo, sooner or later.”

1878 Tony Faust’s Café and Oyster House, St. Louis, claims to be where people can “enjoy the finest oysters ever introduced into this market; delicate brook trout, the most delicious wines, the excellent Anheuser beer, a fragrant cigar, or any of those palatable and delicious articles which make our appetites so vigorous and unruly.”

1896 At a small Brooklyn restaurant run entirely by women, a diner is dazzled by its graham bread, which “recalls the hasheesh of Monte Cristo, or the most entrancing story you ever read of the effect of opium. After the first taste you think you’ve found a new kind of nut, the sweetest ever known.”

1921 A Chicago tea room prefers cultured guests and claims “you will observe, seated about the blue tables at Le Petit Gourmet, discerning men and women, who delight in having found a dining room where the cuisine of the most celebrated continental cafes has been equalled.”

1930 At Trotsky’s, 155 West 35th Street, NYC, Hyman Trotsky (brother of Leon*) runs a restaurant “where unusually good food and a strict observance of the dietary laws goes hand in hand!” No butter is served with the meals and “the waiters delight in sassing you back.”

1936 According to its management, the mission of the Riviera Restaurant in San Francisco is to introduce “The famous foods and glamorous environment … of romantic Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, San Remo, Genoa! Tempting dishes, delightfully different menus, prepared by a master chef!”

1949 At Karl Ratzsch’s “old world restaurant” in Milwaukee, the management asserts “our Guest-Book proves that World Celebrities flock to us for their favorite Old or New World Dishes.”

1958 A columnist exclaims that L’Escoffier, in the Beverly Hilton, which brands the hotel “for all times as a gourmet’s paradise” is “the best expense-account spot in town.”

1961 In the Van Nuys CA area, The Quail bills itself as “The Gourmet Roadhouse – The Valley’s Most Elegant Secluded Twosome Restaurant.”

1969 Terry Lomax’s El Rancho in Amarillo TX advertises “All You Can Eat! A Wonderful World of True Authentic Italian Spaghetti Awaits You! Cooked the Old World Way. Truly a Gourmet’s Delight.”

1988 A reviewer writes of 72 Market Street, Venice CA, “The food is as wonderful as a perfect wave …”

* A reader has checked Leon Trotsky’s genealogy and found no sibling named Hyman, so it would appear the source I used for this was mistaken. The NY restaurant was, in fact, spelled Trotzky’s.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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January 15, 2010 · 8:34 pm

Decor: glass ceilings

There are a couple of reasons why I’ve been thinking about glass ceilings in restaurants this week. I took a look at the total number of visits to my top posts and, apart from the various Taste of a decade posts which draw a lot of traffic, Swingin’ at Maxwell’s Plum is #1. An elaborate stained glass ceiling was one of the most striking features of Maxwell’s Plum in New York City, and also at the San Francisco Plum (pictured) which opened in 1981.

The second reason is that last Sunday I went to the antique paper show Papermania in Hartford CT and bought a 1970s-era menu from a pizza restaurant in St. Louis that I used to go to but had forgotten all about. It too had a glass ceiling though, as I recall, it was fairly plain. I won’t name the restaurant but will say that it was located in the vicinity of Washington University where I went to graduate school and there was a second place in Creve Coeur.

On one occasion I went to the city location with a group of friends and we witnessed a kind of free floor show – only it took place inside the glass ceiling. We heard the sounds first, of little claw feet scratching on glass. Then we looked up. We saw silhouettes of a legion of four-footed creatures with long tails which were furiously scrimmaging above us, as though playing a game of football. We laughed, considered leaving, but ended up staying. If the management noticed anything amiss they certainly didn’t show it. No one came over to explain away the incident (not that I know how you’d do that), no one offered us free drinks, nothing!

The menu from this restaurant which I just acquired displays on its cover a pledge of quality accompanied by the signature of the restaurant’s owner. One of the sentences jumps out at me: “More ingredients go into our pizza than the normal recipe calls for.” Yikes, say no more!

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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January 12, 2010 · 8:53 pm

Between courses: don’t sniff the food

Although most etiquette books seem to be directed at the female reader, S. A. Frost’s Laws and By-Laws of American Society published in 1869 appears to be aimed at men. Judging from the recommendations he makes below, there were some diners who sorely needed his advice if they didn’t want to be branded with “the certain mark of ill-breeding.”

In slightly abridged form, here are 10 big mistakes he identifies that you don’t want to make while at the table in a restaurant.

Don’t:

1. appear to question the quality or freshness of the viands by smelling or fastidiously tasting them.

2. [ever], even with cheese, put your knife into your mouth.

3. play with your knife and fork, fidget with your salt-cellar, balance your spoon on your tumbler, [or] make pills of your bread.

4. smack the lips when eating.

5. eat as if you had good fare for the first time in your life – that is to say, do not eat ravenously.

6. take the bones of fowl or birds up in your fingers to gnaw or suck on them.

7. wipe your finger tips, if soiled, upon your tongue or the table-cloth.

8. take a long, deep breath after you finish eating, as if the exercise had fatigued you.

9. suck your teeth, or pass your tongue round the outside of your gums.

10. illustrate your remarks by plans drawn upon the table-cloth with your nail, or butt of your knife, fork and spoon.

© Jan Whitaker, 2010

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