all-night restaurants | Restaurant-ing through history

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April 13, 2014 · 5:23 pm

We never close

One way of sorting eating places is by the hours they keep. Those that are open 24 hours a day stand out from the crowd by their tirelessness and involvement in sometimes unwanted adventures.

Mostly there are three kinds of customers for all-night restaurants: those who travel at night, those who work at night, and those who play at night.

In pre-Civil War NYC all night eateries were haunts of “b’hoys,” a class of rogue males (sometimes accompanied by their g’hals) prominently made up of firemen and the more prosperous newsboys. They enjoyed oyster cellars, but one of their favorite places in the 1840s was Butter-cake Dick’s, where for a mere 6 cents they could get a generous plate of biscuits with butter and a cup of coffee.

The authors of the many Victorian “lights and shadows” books about urban immorality were quite fascinated by the dubious goings on in all-night supper clubs. No doubt their readers felt a shiver of horrified excitement when they spotted signs along city streets advising “Ladies’ dining parlor, up stairs”’ or “Refreshments at all hours.” Was it or wasn’t it?

One such book was George Ellington’s The Women of New York; Or, the Under-world of the Great City. But even Ellington observed that patrons of private dining rooms in these quasi-bordellos were also there to eat. He reported that patrons could be discovered consuming fish balls or pickled salmon at 3 or 4 a.m.

People working at night surely outnumbered the pleasure seekers. Thomas Edison recalled that when his machine shop was on Goerck Street in NYC in the 1880s he used to grab a bite at 2 or 3 a.m. at a rough little place: “It was the toughest kind of restaurant ever seen. For the clam chowder they used the same four clams during the whole season, and the average number of flies per pie was seven. This was by actual count.” No doubt many of his fellow diners included some outside the law but also other denizens of the night such as newspaper printers, trolley conductors, bakers, and factory shift workers.

All-night restaurants were not just found in NYC but in all big cities and were often densest in areas near newspapers, city food markets, and ferries. Chicago’s all-night cafes on State Street were often portrayed as unsavory places where police connected with “stool pigeons” enjoying their midnight snack. Upstanding citizens shrank from the mere thought of all-night eateries but in actuality they were probably some of the most democratic places in that they drew characters from all stations of life.

An all-nighter of renown in the 20th century was Coffee Dan’s, originally in San Francisco, which operated as an eating and entertainment venue, then a speakeasy in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its attitude in the mid-1920s is nicely expressed in the claim, “There will be dancing to the tinkle of a piano; there will be songs and it will never, never close, not even for fire, not even if the supply of ham and eggs is exhausted.” Coffee Dan’s expanded into a small chain and the Hollywood location became something of a gay hangout in the 1950s, a role played by all-night cafeterias such as Stewart’s in NYC’s Greenwich Village.

With so many night shifts for war workers in World War II, the demand for all-night restaurants rose to new heights. A 1948 restaurant sanitation manual noted how difficult it became to clean restaurants during wartime because of the never-ceasing 24-hour influx of customers.

The only figures I’ve run across concerning all-night restaurants were from the mid-1960s when 10% of eating places fell into that category. Some chain restaurants, especially coffee shops, pancake houses, and places offering breakfast at all hours, are founded on the 24-hour principle. Often they are located near highway exits to capture truck drivers and other nocturnal travelers.

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Tagged as 24-hour restaurants, all-night restaurants, Butter-cake Dick's, California restaurants, Coffee Dan's, gay restaurants, NYC restaurants, private supper rooms

July 17, 2008 · 6:45 pm

Joel’s bohemian refreshery

Joel Rinaldo’s was one of the all-night eating and drinking places that thrived around Times Square in New York before the First World War. “Refreshery” was an unusual term that probably related more to drinking than to eating since saloon owners often referred to their offerings as “refreshments.”

Exactly when Joel’s opened is unclear but chances are it was in the late 1890s. The real estate parcel at 206 West 41st Street that became Joel’s was part of his father’s estate when he died in 1895.

Looking at these 1910-ish postcards of Joel’s you might be misled into thinking it was an elegant after-theatre spot. It attracted all kinds of late-night visitors but was mainly famous as a hangout for musicians, artists, writers, heavy drinkers, “hop-heads,” and Mexican revolutionaries. In 1910 the restaurant was the headquarters of the Mexican Liberal Party opposed to the presidency of General Porfirio Diaz. The short story writer O. Henry was a regular also, though he may have spent more time drinking in the first-floor bar than eating in the café on the second floor. It is likely that El Refugio, a café described in O. Henry’s short story “The Gold That Glittered,” was based on Joel’s.

One of the most popular dishes at Joel’s was chili con carne, a dish not easily found in New York in the early 20th century. He also served tamales and “frijoles colorado.” In addition to Mexican dishes, Joel concocted a drink that became famous – or, more likely, notorious — called a Blue Moon. Only one to a customer but that was enough reportedly to “keep the patron pleasantly mellow the rest of the evening.”

Joel’s walls were filled with drawings, which can be seen on in the image above. Some were by caricaturist Carlo de Fornaro who spent time in jail after being successfully sued by a Mexican official in NY courts for libelous statements Fornaro made in his book, Diaz, Czar of Mexico. Joel, born in NYC around 1870, also had intellectual ambitions, was attracted to psychology and philosophy, and wrote an obscure treatise against Darwin’s account of evolution called Rinaldo’s Polygeneric Theory.

Joel took a paternalistic role toward many of his patrons, keeping prices low and announcing on a gilt sign that touring actors and musicians (he was near the Metropolitan Opera House) could send him their money and he would keep it safe for them. It is said that many took him up on the offer. Perhaps his motive for keeping a bank was to insure that eventually he would get paid, to offset all the bad checks he took from his erratic patrons.

The interesting thing about bohemian places like Joel’s was how they loosened up a middle class still under the spell of Victorian correctness. After a few hours in a heady atmosphere like this and they’d be talking to strangers (without even being introduced!), singing out loud, and ordering drinks all around.

Joel’s closed in 1925, a casualty of Prohibition.