Tag Archives: 1930s

December 25, 2022 · 10:58 am

Dinner in Miami, Dec. 25, 1936

Judging from the number of restaurants and hotel dining rooms advertising Christmas or Xmas dinner that year, there must have been quite a few prospective diners around. It was still the Depression but prohibition had ended several years earlier, tourism was well underway, and Art Deco buildings were going up all over.

The not-at-all modernistic Old Heidelberg shown above – which had opened in the unfortunate year of 1929 — gave no details about its offerings that day, other than to characterize it as an “Old-Fashioned Dinner.” That’s a fairly meaningless description if you ask me. Given that Germany had withdrawn citizenship from Jews in 1935, this probably was not a restaurant popular with Miami’s Jewish community.

Most of the advertisements mentioned price, not surprising since most people had to watch their spending. They ranged from a low of 50¢ per person to a high of $2.00 at a place called the Rose Bowl, a restaurant specializing in Southern dishes, with a woman serving bread dressed as a “mammy.” Like the Heidelberg, the Rose Bowl made no effort in its Christmas advertisements to tout its dinner or whatever other attractions it might have possessed.

Others went to great length to attract diners. The Big And Little Grill had no end of attractions, including music, “gifts to all,” free parking, a chef who had formerly worked at a New Hampshire resort hotel, and a Santa Claus who once appeared in Charlie Chaplin’s movie “Circus.” All dinners were 75¢. The list of comestibles filled ten wide lines of text. It contained 35 separate items, among them a “Big and Little Salad,” Boiled Lobster Stuffed with Oysters, Supreme of Sole Florentine, Sizzling Steak with Wine, and numerous vegetables and desserts.

The Big and Little offered an equally good deal for its New Year’s celebration, with a return performance of Charlie Little, now in the role of clown. As for its advertisement, as a New Englander I’m obligated to point out that there is no Dixieville in New Hampshire – it’s Dixville.

Attraction-wise, the Big and Little was hard to top. But George’s Restaurant tried hard, with even more inches of advertising, not to mention wine and bottled beer. Its 75¢ dinner comprised six courses: Cocktail (tomato juice, half grapefruit, etc.); a soup accompanied by olives and hearts of celery; a choice of five entrees that included Whole Broiled Lobster, Maitre d’Hotel (chances are these were clawless Florida lobsters, considered inferior to Maine’s); a salad; eight vegetables; choice of many desserts (six kinds of pie, a cake, a sundae, ice creams, jello, or stewed prunes). For those who didn’t have big appetites there was George’s Special 50¢ Dinner, which of course offered fewer choices and only half a lobster, but still looked like a bargain.

The Studio Grill’s turkey dinner included wine, which may have accounted for the $1.00 charge. Shortly after it opened a few years earlier, the suburban Miami curb service eatery had advertised for “Girls with Blonde Hair” who were 5’6″ tall, weighed 118 lbs., and had “striking” personalities. Undoubtedly reflecting Depression conditions, 800 showed up. The grill was owned by a magazine cover illustrator and was filled with his paintings of nude women.

The Laura Jacobsen Café, a high-class Chicago transplant, was located in a residential apartment hotel. Her Christmas dinner in the ritzy-looking Colonial Towers accommodating snowbirds from the North was $1.25.

Wherever and whatever you may eat, I hope you will enjoy your holiday dinner.

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Filed under food, restaurant prices

Tagged as 1930s, bargain prices, Christmas dinner, Miami restaurants

August 22, 2021 · 12:21 pm

Fish & chips & alligator steaks

The menu shown here caught my eye as I was browsing the internet. Of course, I wanted to know more about it. The first thing I discovered was that it is available as a reproduction.

Evidently the Trebor Dinner was a specialty menu for complete dinners of multiple courses. Three dollars was a steep price for the Depression when this menu was introduced, at least double what a comparable meal would have cost in a moderately-priced good restaurant then.

The illustrated menu shows 14 entrees. But the restaurant almost certainly did not have all the exotic items available at all times. Another fish & chips, inc. menu from 1937, for example, offered one appetizer, one soup, and only four entrees.

The menu could date any time from the opening of the restaurant in 1936 into the 1940s. Its clever design may have been due to owner Bob Winter’s background in advertising. Why the menu is named “Trebor Dinner” is a mystery. It’s possible that Trebor is a play on the owner’s name Robert.

Fish & chips, inc. was conveniently located in the Loop, across the street from the central Chicago library, now the Chicago Cultural Center. It was a handy location for a 1943 dinner of the literary members of the Boswell club, admirers of Doctor Samuel Johnson. In their honor the restaurant posted one of Johnson’s quotations over their table in which he criticized French menus, requesting “thy knaves to bring me a dish of hog’s pudding, a slice or two from the upper cut of a well roasted sirloin, and two apple dumplings.”

It was a popular restaurant, said to be especially well liked by male patrons. In 1944, during World War II, lines formed at the door. The following year it was enlarged to seat 300. [1949 advertisement shown]

With no meat on the menu, the restaurant would have had the advantage of escaping wartime food restrictions and shortages.

Advertising that it had 50 varieties of fish on hand daily, a lunch or dinner could include sunfish, crappies, smelts, cod, brook trout, sea bass, shrimp, and lobster among many others. The restaurant advertised heavily during the Lenten season.

Bob Winter died in 1953 and the entire contents of the restaurant were auctioned, including groceries.

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Filed under alternative restaurants, food, menus, Offbeat places, patrons, popular restaurants

Tagged as 1930s, 1940s, alligator, Chicago restaurants, fish and seafood, illustrated menus, rattle snake, Trebor Dinner

June 3, 2019 · 7:01 pm

Lobster stew at the White Rabbit

On the menu shown here a bowl of lobster stew cost 70 cents and came with crackers, pickles, and chips. Oyster stew was 50 cents, while fried clams with french fries, cole slaw, and coffee cost 60 cents.

The menu is undated but is probably from the 1940s. Fried lobster was one of the White Rabbit’s most popular dishes, according to Duncan Hines’ 1947 guide book, Adventures in Good Eating. With a fruit cup, tomato, pineapple, french fries, rolls, dessert, and tea or coffee, it came to $1.35. And, of course, they threw in pickles and chips.

In addition to lobster fried, sautéed, or stewed, it was also available as a salad.

Admiring patrons quoted in the 1948 edition of Gourmet’s Guide to Good Eating explained that the reason the Rabbit was always mobbed with people on their way to and from Cape Cod was due to its high standards, excellent food, and, specifically, “plates of hot buttered rolls.”

On Saturday nights the White Rabbit offered a traditional Massachusetts dinner of baked beans for 50 cents. Other interesting dishes on the menu include a vegetable salad sandwich (35¢), a sardine and horseradish sandwich (25¢), and a side order of tomato and cucumbers (15¢).

The tea room got its start in 1931, in West Chatham on the Cape, about 37 miles from the Buzzards Bay location which became its long-term home. Prior to its beginning, owner Nate Nickerson was a taxi driver in Brockton MA, where co-owner Mildred Ring may have worked as a waitress.

Nickerson’s two sons were waiters at the restaurant which was open only from April through November.

In 1966, the final year in which I found advertisements for it, the White Rabbit had evidently abandoned the tea room theme. It then featured liquor and steaks. Nickerson had died in 1950 and it’s likely that it was under different management.

A few years ago I received a nice surprise when a stranger sent me this bowl by Syracuse china used in the tea room.

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Filed under food, menus, popular restaurants, roadside restaurants, tea shops

Tagged as 1930s, 1940s, Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod, lobster, Massachusetts tea rooms, restaurant china, seasonal restaurants, White Rabbit Tea Room

December 23, 2018 · 5:38 pm

Christmas dinner in the desert

A red-and-white-striped restaurant named the Christmas Tree Inn located on a desolate stretch of road in the Arizona desert makes a little bit more sense when you learn that its creators were Los Angeles real estate developers.

The Christmas theme was, of course, a publicity gimmick, and one that worked rather well, at least at the beginning.

Ninon Rivé Talbott, a well known “subdivider” in L.A., opened the restaurant in 1939 with her husband Edward. It was intended to kick off an associated project, a housing development called Santa Claus Acres on the road leading to the newly completed Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam in 1947).

The Talbotts had moved from Los Angeles to Kingman AZ in the early 1930s with an interest in developing tourist facilities. In 1929 they formed a corporation to build hotels along The Old Trails Highway (U.S. Highway 66), which went through Kingman. The road’s creation had been promoted by the Automobile Club of Southern California since the mid-teens, was officially designated in 1926, with paving beginning in 1931. The corporation’s first hotel was to be in Kingman, with others in Nevada, Utah, and California. (I could not determine whether any were built.)

The housing development scheme was undoubtedly spurred not only by the budding Route 66 but also the concurrent U.S. government plan to build Boulder Dam. After checking out a number of locations the government auctioned off some of the properties in the vicinity, including a 80-acre parcel acquired by the Talbotts.

However, although Santa Claus Acres building lots were sold, the housing development was foiled when it proved impossible to drill deep enough to access water.

Needless to say, the absence of water was quite a hindrance to the restaurant complex as well. Water had to be trucked in from Kingman, 14 miles away. However, the absence of water did not entirely defeat the Christmas Tree Inn, with its associated gas station and playhouses for children.

The Christmas Tree Inn complex, which comprised the entirety of “Santa Claus, Arizona,” was a classic do-it-yourself mid-century roadside attraction. Characteristically, it occupied an isolated spot in the wilderness, was garishly eye-catching, and somewhat makeshift. Still, the sight of it was so striking in the vast and empty desert that vacationing families with bored children were almost certain to stop there.

Despite the red and white stripes and the Christmas name, the complex had more of an overall story-book feel, with its Cinderella playhouse, Three Little Pigs hut, and indoor murals with goose girls and other characters. A second dining area, devoid of any theme decor, was inexplicably called the French Room.

Any early success was due primarily to Ninons’ initial efforts and those of the couple who acquired it next. Ninon dubbed herself “Mrs. Santa Claus,” claiming in 1939 that this was a character who seemed “to have been neglected up to this time.” Presumably it is a be-wigged Ninon depicted on the 1940 postcard above.

She was evidently quite a high-powered personality capable of motivating others and making deals. Married four times and mother of five children, she somehow managed to build a career as a realtor in the 1920s and 1930s. Additionally, she was said to be a fine cook who produced surprisingly delicious food for a small roadside eatery. A listing in Duncan Hines’ 1941 edition of Adventures in Good Eating recommended the Inn, saying “Perhaps the best rum pie you ever ate, chicken a la North Pole and lots of other unusual things.”

The war years had to be tough ones. Traffic must have been light due to gasoline rationing and elimination of public access to Boulder Dam from 1941 to September, 1945.

By 1946, the Inn seemed to be doing somewhat poorly judging from the listing in Hines’ guide, which tersely stated: “Serve cold sandwiches.” In 1947 and 1948 want ads appeared in Phoenix and Salt Lake City papers offering the restaurant complex for sale at $35,000, citing the seller’s ill health and that it had cost $60,000 to build. Ninon was 50 years old at that time. According to a 2008 article in The Journal of Arizona History by Douglas C. Towne, Ninon weighed 300 pounds and had a gambling addiction.

The second owners, Erma and “Doc” Bromaghim, carried on some of Ninon’s traditions such as answering children’s letters to Santa. The Bromaghins revealed in 1954 that December was a poor month for business, so they would close then, as well as January and February. Soon they gave up running the business completely, defeated in part by their renewed failure to find water.

Although the Christmas Tree Inn survived until about 1994, its later history was rocky, involving at least 10 owners and or lessees and managers. It was advertised for sale almost continuously.

Today, what is left of the complex is boarded up and covered with graffiti. As a quick internet search will demonstrate, it is an ever-popular subject for photographers fascinated by roadside ruins.

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Filed under alternative restaurants, family restaurants, odd buildings, Offbeat places, roadside restaurants, women

Tagged as 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Ninon Talbott, recommended by Duncan Hines, Route 66, Santa Claus Arizona

December 9, 2018 · 5:25 pm

Green Book restaurants

Interest in historical Green Book guides for Black travelers has been growing in the past decade and the new movie of this title will surely increase it.

The Green Books’ slogan, “Covering the United States like a blanket,” nicely sums up its goal of making travel more comfortable (maybe even enjoyable) for Black travelers living in a country that typically greeted them with hostility whenever they moved outside their restricted neighborhoods and social roles.

Prior to the arrival of the Green Book, Black Americans relied on the kindness of strangers – also Black – when traveling. Until the 1960s, Jim Crow laws in Southern states barred them from access to white hotels, resorts, and restaurants. Outside the South conditions were not much better, despite civil rights laws barring discrimination in many states. To deal with this, middle-class Black travelers relied on other Blacks who invited them into their homes, even providing meals despite not usually knowing them personally. According to Willis Duke Weatherford’s Race Relations (1934), “The institution of ‘dining out’ is not established among careful [Black] families – it is a reflection on the home to eat in a restaurant; it simply is not done.”

As travel increased among Black business people, entertainers, and tourists, accommodations in private homes were no longer adequate, especially for longer trips. A number of guides were published, among them the annual Negro Motorist Green Book published by Victor Hugo Green, a mail carrier in New Jersey. The guide was renamed the Negro Travelers Green Book in 1952. At some point in the 1950s, Victor became ill and his wife Alma took over as editor and publisher. The last two editions were by new owners.

The Green Books were first published in 1937, then every year after that except for four WWII years, ending with a 1966-1967 edition. With the exception of 1946 and 1958, all of the editions are available digitally in the New York Public Library. A 1946 edition sold for over $4,500 on eBay in 2016 and a copy is owned by Virginia Union University Library. As far as I can tell the 1958 edition is not publicly available. Several editions have been republished.

Green Books were sold directly to consumers and also distributed by Esso after Standard Oil of New Jersey hired a prominent Black businessman to promote Esso to Black motorists. Thirty-eight percent of Esso gas stations were operated by Black proprietors, according to a 1939 essay. Conoco also ran a Negro Travel Service which prepared custom “Touraides” free on request. Quite a few issues of guides devoted pages to new model cars of the major, and a few minor, automobile manufacturers. In the Black community cars were regarded as liberators, as well as providers of good jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. An essay to this effect, “The Automobile and What It Has Done for the Negro,” appeared in the 1938 edition.

The books provided lists of hotels and tourist homes that were welcoming, most of them located in Black business areas of cities and towns. It also listed restaurants, roadhouses, taverns, nightclubs, beauty and barber shops, service stations, and other businesses. In later years it tended to focus primarily on places to stay. [Osborn’s, 1962]

I’ve looked at all the Green Books in the NYPL collection, paying special attention to restaurants in them. Overall there are not a huge number of restaurants. In 1939, for instance, only two restaurants are listed for the entire state of California.

Most of the restaurants seem to be in Black sections of towns, or are Chinese. Their numbers seem to have been dependent on Victor Green’s informants, who were said to be mail carriers like himself. Coverage was also spotty. Green lived in New Jersey and then New York City, and it’s noticeable that both states are more thoroughly covered than most others.

What seems to be lacking are restaurants in predominately white areas that welcomed Black customers. If Black tourists or business people were visiting Los Angeles, for instance, how would they know which restaurants in the main shopping or business districts would serve them without problems?

Comparing the Duncan Hines’ popular Adventures in Good Eating guide book of the late 1940s with a Green Book of roughly the same time reveals that there is no overlap whatsoever in their listings of Los Angeles restaurants. Not one of the 37 LA restaurants recommended by Hines is to be found in the Green Book or vice versa.

Things had changed somewhat by the 1962 edition. It is striking how many more white-owned and patronized restaurants are listed for New York City that year. Previously the only New York restaurants in the guides were located in Harlem, but now they are all over town. Among them are the Brass Rail chain, Davy Jones Seafood House, and Jack Dempsey’s. It’s hard to know whether the change was due to the policy of the restaurants or the Green Book.

Trying to learn more about restaurants listed in Green Books is difficult. Many I’ve looked for do not show up in city directories, nor in newspaper archives. Judging from feature advertisements for restaurants in later issues, many of the restaurants listed were small neighborhood places that served unpretentious home-cooked meals, quite similar to the majority of white-owned restaurants in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

I recognized a few names of well-known Black restaurants such as Paschal’s in Atlanta (est. 1947 as a small sandwich shop), Little Gray Shops #2 and #3 (considered Harlem’s better eating places in the 1930s), and Dooky Chase in New Orleans (like Paschal’s, still going strong today).

There was also a listing for Bagley’s, operated by Black socialite Caroline Bagley in Sheepshead Bay NY, as a kind of tea room with garden dining. A number of other tea rooms are listed, among them the Black Beauty Tea Room in Mount Olive NC, which had the distinction of being raided in 1950 for serving bootleg whiskey.

Probably quite a few restaurants in the Green Book were community institutions in their time, such as Hammond Café in Abilene TX, specializing in spicy chili. Certainly that was true of Harlem’s Aunt Dinah’s Kitchen, run by Broadway actor Richard Huey. Aunt Dinah’s hosted one-act plays and discussion forums in the 1930s and 1940s, and served as an informal support center for actors who needed a place to gather and have a free meal now and then.

Researching restaurants, hotels, etc. listed in the Green Books would be an interesting way to construct a picture of 20th-century Black life before the Civil Rights Act. It would make a good group project.

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Tagged as 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, black restaurants, Black travelers, travel guides

November 30, 2016 · 9:08 pm

Famous in its day: the Blue Parrot Tea Room

“Hoity toity” was how a resident of Gettysburg PA in the 1980s remembered The Blue Parrot Tea Room in its heyday.

The tea room opened in 1920 on the Lincoln Highway (aka Chambersburg street) through Gettysburg [pictured above, before 1928]. Known initially as the Blue Parrot Tea Garden (rendered on its large lighted sign in pseudo-“Oriental” lettering), it was a soda fountain, candy store, and lunch spot at first. It quickly earned a reputation as an eating place for “discriminating” diners, according to its advertisement in the 1922 Automobile Blue Book [shown below]. Later advertising described the restaurant as modern, sanitary, and perfect for people who ran an “efficient table” at home.

Its creator was Charles T. Ziegler, who spent years on the road as a salesman for a Chicago firm, returning to his hometown to open a gift shop in 1916 with the then-trendy name of Gifts Unusual. His shop featured imported articles such as Japanese household items and kimonos. In 1917 he bought the building his shop was in, turning it into a tea room a few years later.

The tea room’s artistic decor, elements of which had reportedly come from England and Belgium, was of great interest to Gettysburgers. The sign on the front of the building was illuminated with 275 small lights (this was before neon). Thirty feet in length and topped with a blue parrot, the Gettysburg Times declared it “one of the most pretentious between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

In 1927 a visitor noted fine aspects of the Blue Parrot that he observed, many vouched for by their brand names, such as Shenango China and Community Silver. He was pleased to note that the kitchen was shiny and spotless and even the potato peeler was “cleaned to perfection.” He was also gratified by the back yard area where “every fowl is killed, cleaned and dressed by the kitchen staff.”

The Blue Parrot remained the place to go for decades. Local colleges held dinners there, as did fraternal organizations and women’s clubs. Guests included bishops, Washington dignitaries, Harrisburg business men, and traveling celebrities. A high point came in 1926 when Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Gloria Swanson and her husband, the Marquis de la Falause, stopped for dinner on a chauffeured road trip following the New York funeral of Rudolph Valentino.

The Blue Parrot could be counted on to furnish special holiday meals for Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and Easter. In 1924 it published the following menu for Thanksgiving Dinner, served from 11 am to 9 pm.

Grape Fruit
Oyster Cocktail
Bisque of Tomato
Celery              Olives
Salted Nuts
Roast Vermont Turkey English Filling
Giblet Gravy            Cranberry Jelly
Orange Sherbert [sic]
Mashed Potatoes             Green Spinach au Egg
Waldorf Salad
Hot Mince Pie                            Lemon Meringue
Pineapple Parfait                   Chocolate Ice Cream
Mixed Fruit Ice Cream
Mints
Café Noir

Dinners at the Blue Parrot in the 1920s ran from $1.25 to $1.50, while lunches were often 75 cents. The tea room advertised its prices as moderate, yet probably they would have been out of reach for many of Gettysburg’s working class residents. In the 1930s Depression the Blue Parrot, like so many other restaurants, was forced to lower its prices considerably. In the mid-1930s it offered lunch platters at 30 cents and New Year’s and Thanksgiving dinners for as little as 50 cents.

No doubt the end of Prohibition was a life saver for the Blue Parrot. As soon as beer became legal in 1933, Ziegler opened a Blue Parrot Tap Room and Grill on the second floor, with extended hours, Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap, and 10-cent crab cakes and sandwiches. He was at the head of the line for a full liquor license when they became available a few months later. The bar and grill had a western slant with rustic log cabin decor, knotty pine paneling, and a wagon wheel light fixture, all likely meant to appeal to a wide range of male customers.

In 1944 Ziegler sold the business to Gettysburg’s fire chief, James Aumen, who ran it for the next ten years, after which it had a succession of owners. Even in recent times, the original name has continued as the Blue Parrot Bistro, and now the Parrot.

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Tagged as 1920s, 1930s, Gettysburg PA restaurant, holiday menus, tea rooms

October 16, 2016 · 6:25 pm

The “mysterious” Singing Kettle

A veil of ominous mystery has spread over the remains of a California roadside tea room once known by the homey name Singing Kettle.

It was located near the summit of Turnbull Canyon, high above the San Gabriel Valley, on a winding road running through the Puente Hills in North Whittier. The road was completed in 1915, opening up a route filled with what many regarded as the most impressive views on the entire Pacific Coast.

Today young people drive into the “haunted” canyon at night determined to be frightened to death. Gazing out car windows they eagerly tell each other tales they’ve heard of satanic rituals, murders, and human sacrifice, hoping that behind that fence are unspeakable horrors they might be lucky enough to witness. Even the Singing Kettle tea room, perhaps because remnants of its entrance are visible from the road, has become enmeshed in dark fantasies.

Why am I laughing?

Because it strikes me as funny that a tea room from the 1920s and 1930s could be associated with horror and paranormal events. Or even that people would find its existence mysterious, wondering why it was ever there or what it really was.

I suppose that given enough time and imagination mysterious auras can envelop any mundane place, even a deserted mall or a parking garage. But still, finding a tea room scary is like being frightened by a club sandwich.

I have experienced a somewhat similar attitude before. I gave a talk on tea rooms of New York City when my book Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn came out in 2002. Afterwards a man in the audience came up and asked me why I didn’t mention the darker aspects of tea rooms. He was fixated on the idea that a lot of them had been speakeasies and houses of prostitution.

Really? If that had indeed been the case, why would I not have mentioned it? It would be a good story. I’ve found little evidence of prostitution in tea rooms. It’s true that some, a minority, of tea room proprietors were found selling liquor during Prohibition. A few places in Greenwich Village were raided in the early 1920s, and here and there the mob would open a joint and call it a tea room, though that was purely a ruse. They were totally fake. I feel certain it was impossible to order a diet plate or a Waldorf salad in a mob tea room.

The dining area of the Singing Kettle tea room was up the hill from the pergola entrance shown on the black and white postcard above. As can be seen from a bird’s-eye view of the property, terraced stairs with fountains and shrubbery led up to the main tea room which today appears to be a residence. The view while dining would have been spectacular.

The tea room was frequented by students and staff from Whittier College, the Whittier Chamber of Commerce, and women’s clubs. It was a popular place for business meetings, card parties, wedding receptions, and bridal showers. Weddings were held in the inner courtyard of its entrance pergola.

I have not been able to discover exactly who ran the Singing Kettle. It was said to be owned and operated by a major Southern California agricultural land developer, Edwin G. Hart, but I can’t establish if he was headquartered on the property or was directly involved in the business. He did promote the tea room in a 1927 advertisement for his new residential development, Whittier Heights.

The Singing Kettle was in business from 1926 until at least 1939, but probably not much longer. It surely would not have survived gasoline rationing during WWII.

With many thanks to the reader who told me about the Singing Kettle.

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Filed under atmosphere, odd buildings, Offbeat places, roadside restaurants, tea shops

Tagged as 1920s, 1930s, roadside restaurants, Southern California restaurants, tea rooms

March 28, 2016 · 2:32 pm

Surf ‘n’ turf

In the 1960s steak and seafood dinners became popular across the U.S. The lobster component of the dinner was frozen lobster tails from South Africa. Since the 1930s South African lobster tails had been appearing on restaurant menus. In 1937 Naylor’s Sea Food Restaurant in Washington D.C. offered a simple $1.00 Lenten special of Broiled African Lobster Tails with Drawn Butter, French Fried Potatoes, and Sliced Tomatoes.

The imported lobster tails roused Maine to mount a campaign to convince consumers to stick with Maine’s lobsters. Advertisements appeared in newspapers in 1937 stating that frozen lobster tails were inferior to Maine lobster, and in fact weren’t lobster at all! Rather, the notices said, they were clawless crawfish, aka spiny or rock lobsters. At that time, South African lobster tails – the only edible part as far as humans were concerned – were being sold at 1/3 the price of Maine’s. In 1938 Maine lobsters appeared in the marketplace with an aluminum disk attached to the claw stating they were a product of Maine.

Despite the campaign, imported lobster tails did not stop arriving from South Africa. After WWII a NY importer began flying them in from Cuba. Soon big shipments were also coming from Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

I had hoped to figure out why it was not until the early 1960s that restaurants began to combine lobster tails with beef, calling the combination surf ‘n’ turf, beef ‘n’ reef, etc. So far I haven’t been able to “crack” that one. It wasn’t a totally novel idea: in 1931, for instance, the LaJolla Beach & Yacht Club offered a “special steak and lobster dinner” for $1. Yet it took 30 more years after the cheaper lobster tails came to America for the surf ‘n’ turf vogue to begin.

Even though they could be dry and somewhat tough compared to Maine lobsters, ever-practical American diners liked rock lobster tails because it was easier to get the meat out of the shell without making a mess.

In 1964, a restaurant in Van Nuys CA combined steak and lobster tails for $3.00, making the combo cheaper than a steak dinner and affordable enough that it quickly caught on around the country as a “special dinner,” one likely to be chosen by middle-class diners for an anniversary or New Year’s Eve. Surf ‘n’ Turf was not likely to appear on the menus of luxury restaurants — but let’s be honest – there were very few luxury restaurants then, and even now they make up a small percentage of all restaurants. It was a dish more suited to a middle-class restaurant such as Schrafft’s, which in 1970 ran humorous advertisements suggesting their “Beef and Reef” platter was perfect “for executives who are tired of making important decisions.”

The public’s love of lobster tails paired with steak continued through the 1970s, even as prices rose. By the late 1970s Surf ‘n’ Turf could easily run to $11.95 and more, and in Washington, D.C. restaurants were caught substituting Florida tails for the superior South African ones. By the 1990s, S&T’s desirability had faded. No doubt it can still be found today here and there, but, like cheesecake and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, it would scarcely be the restaurant sensation it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Tagged as 1930s, 1960s, imported seafood, lobster tails, special occasion dinners, steak and lobster dinners

March 20, 2016 · 8:29 pm

Odd restaurant buildings: “ducks”

Ducks are commercial buildings that look like what they sell, as illustrated by the Freda Farms ice cream stand in Berlin CT. The term was actually inspired by a Long Island store that sold ducks (to eat). It has been generalized to apply to any buildings that looks like some familiar object or animal, etc, whether or not their merchandise is related. These types of buildings are also known as programmatic or mimetic architecture.

Though they reached a peak of popularity in the late 1920s and early 1930s, ducks trace back much further in history. An introduction to Jim Heimann’s book California Crazy by David Gebhard links the mimetic architecture of the last century to garden buildings of the 18th century and even earlier. One of the first examples in the United States was the 65-foot elephant of Margate NJ built in1881 to attract attention to a real estate development.

In addition to housing stores and offices, many ducks have featured restaurants over the decades. They have taken the shape of all kinds of animals, kegs, barrels, ships, castles, cups, coffee pots, bowls, hats, chuck wagons, dirigibles, items of food, shoes, and windmills.

The earliest restaurant duck I have found was a café planned for Cincinnati in the shape of a huge beer cask in 1902. Unlike later examples, though, it was meant to occupy a location in a row of Main Street storefronts. Most later ducks, arriving with the spread of car ownership in the late 1920s and early 1930s, occupied empty lots in developing areas of cities. Not too surprisingly, southern California’s car culture provided a nurturing environment. In addition the climate was favorable to the somewhat makeshift carnival-type structures, while the city’s movie industry supplied inspiration. As Los Angeles grew, giant dogs, toads, ice cream freezers, shoes, and other bizarre apparitions sprang up along the roadside, vying for the business of passing motorists.

The link between the movie industry and roadside fantasy was straightforward in the case of Harry Oliver, a leading designer who brought magic to sets for movies such as Scarface, The Good Earth, and Mark of the Vampire. Oliver designed windmill-shaped buildings for the Van de Kamp bakeries and drive-ins as well as a storybook building occupied by the Tam o’ Shanter Inn.

If architecture is about the enclosure of space, ducks are architecture only secondarily. In most cases mimetic architecture describes a building that serves more as advertising sign than as an innovative enclosure of space. Once a customer stepped inside a giant pig or coffee pot, all whimsy faded away as the interior revealed itself to be a standard rectangle as shown here in one of the many coffee-pot ducks that could be found across the U.S.

If ducks say anything about American restaurants, it is that they are only partially about food.

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Tagged as 1920s, 1930s, Los Angeles restaurants, mimetic architecture, restaurant architecture, roadside restaurants

February 6, 2016 · 8:12 pm

A fantasy drive-in

I am fascinated by restaurants that are bizarrely at odds with their location, climate, and cultural environment. Such as Polynesian restaurants in Arizona.

Drive-ins make sense in car-obsessed Southern California, but a grandiose drive-in such as Carl’s “Colonial” with an Old South theme in Depression-era Los Angeles? With architecture inspired by Southern plantations and white female servers costumed as Southern belles and top-hatted coachmen? With an ornate mahogany doorway leading from the staid dining room into a streamlined moderne barroom? [see below] And a thoroughly modern, thermostatically controlled stainless steel kitchen turning out spaghetti and turkey with New England dressing?

All societies offer some form of escapism, traditionally wild festivals where revelers are released from everyday roles and inhibitions. But restaurants such as Carl’s offered a different kind of escapism that shored up inhibitions and insured that roles were strictly adhered to. Far from allowing revelry or role reversal, gracious Southern dining took place in a forbidding room decorated with murals of slaves picking cotton and a portrait of George Washington looming from above the mantle. [shown above; the murals are barely visible] Only white girls were allowed to dress as Southern belles; ice water and rolls were dispensed by dark-skinned “mammies.”

Yet in another way Carl’s was totally in sync with its environment. A Los Angeles Times story in 1940 noted, “Los Angeles restaurants serving American food often reflect the architecture of other lands.” Undoubtedly part of the explanation for the scenographic quality of Carl’s – and many other unusual theme restaurants in Southern California – was that they played to tourists’ fantasies. And why not, since a hefty 25% of restaurant revenue was estimated to come from tourists?

The “Colonial” Carl’s, on the corner of Crenshaw and Vernon, was built by the Los Angeles Investment Company and leased to its operators, Carl B. Anders and A. V. Spencer. The area was under development with about 13 new stores on Crenshaw skirting the residential subdivision of Viewpark. When Carl’s opened in 1938 there were close to 1,000 homes in Viewpark with more underway following the company’s acquisition of acreage that had housed the Olympic Village in 1932. Under restrictive covenants, houses could be sold only to white buyers.

Despite serving up to 4,000 customers a day, many of them groups such as women’s and businessmen’s clubs, Carl’s Colonial in Viewpark went out of business in 1953. After a brief run as Martha’s Restaurant, it was torched in 1954, destroying the building that had cost the fabulous sum of $115,000 when it was constructed.

Carl’s in Viewpark was one of five in the Carl’s chain (not to be confused with Carl’s, Jr.). The first was opened in 1931 on Figueroa and Flower as a simple hamburger stand built to serve people attending the 1932 Olympic Games. It was so successful it was enlarged three times in four years, serving up to 5,000 people daily in 1937. The chain became known for its multi-purpose restaurants that included a drive-in component as well as full-service dining rooms, banquet facilities, outdoor dining patios, and cocktail lounges. Other Carl’s included one on the Plaza in Palm Springs, one on the Pacific Coast Highway that was featured in the movie Mildred Pierce, and one on East Olympic Blvd. at Soto Street.

According to John T. Edge, Southern theme restaurants have recently resurfaced in Los Angeles.