Tag Archives: restaurant brawls

All the discussion about guns in public places these days has me thinking about restaurant security, a subject that, as a patron, I never actually consider. Specifically, I began to wonder for the first time whether ordinary eating places all the way up to elite restaurants have armed employees or a gun stashed away somewhere. Or, might patrons be armed? [shown above is a 1946 Jiggs comic strip scene]

Given that the answer has been “yes” back into the 19th century, and that more Americans are armed now, it’s likely to still be true.

But a more common type of violent incident that occurs in restaurants is a brawl which, thankfully, hasn’t usually involved guns.

Of course restaurants have always had a certain number of problem patrons to deal with. According to one 19th-century account, even Delmonico’s had a man employed to handle difficult guests, such as those who arrived inebriated. He headed off trouble by not admitting them or by whispering a “word of advice” to patrons who drank too much while in the restaurant. Mainly, he said, his job was to recognize by sight the city’s “bunko steerers and confidence men”: “I just meet them at the door and tell them it won’t do, and they know it won’t, so they go away quietly. There is no bouncing or knocking out required.”

His genteel method was similar in tone to that of “The Foreigner’s Club” of Sorrento, Italy, where this card was used.

Alas, such methods were only available in certain restaurants. At others, there were no door keepers, subtle ushers, or “convertible waiter bouncers.” It seemed from time to time that nothing could stop patrons from fighting other patrons or a server or even instigating a mass brawl.

I started thinking about restaurant brawls when I read a story in this year’s January 29 issue of the NYTimes Magazine. It described the scene of a Waffle House in Texas where a melee erupted and was captured on video. It involved patrons standing on the counter, throwing dishes and chairs, and attacking workers who fought back in like manner. Other popular videos show similar scenes in Popeyes and sub shops.

The author, Niela Orr, expressed a degree of longing for the days of Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 painting Nighthawks, where patrons sit glumly in isolation from other sad sacks at the counter. Like the Waffle House patrons, they are alienated but unlike them they aren’t throwing crockery.

They could have been though. Restaurant customers were documented hurling dishes as early as the 1860s.

In 1920 movie patrons laughed at the subject of riots in restaurants.

Restaurant brawls are diverse. Undoubtedly many of the sites where they occurred were lowly eateries but others were mainstream chains, such as the International House of Pancakes, Child’s, and White Castle. And Googie’s – where comedian Lenny Bruce went through a plate glass window. [1957 photo]

Not even Grandma’s Family Restaurant and Pancake House in Rockford IL was safe from disruption. In a 1992 melee there, an estimated 30 patrons “went wild,” breaking out four plate glass windows, jumping over booths, and throwing whatever they could get their hands on.

Incidents sometimes involved brawlers you might not expect, such as students at elite colleges (Harvard vs. Dartmouth in one case), or men in tuxedos upset that a server refused to give them more sugar during WWII rationing. Generally participants have tended to be young, white, male, and intoxicated.

Few incidents could outdo the brawl in New York City’s Bryant Park Grill said to be a repeat of a similar event in DC three years earlier. To quote a 1998 story in the Jersey (City) Journal, 40 of NYC’s firemen celebrating Medal Day in their finest uniforms “annoyed patrons, exposed themselves, urinated in public and invaded a women’s restroom.” They also threw a policeman over a row of planters when he tried to break them up. And, as so often happens, no one was arrested.

Personally, I will try to push all this to the back of my mind when I’m visiting restaurants.

© Jan Whitaker, 2023