restauranthistorian

[restauranthistorian]

Mobsters & racketeering

In the 1950s, mobsters offered goods and services to restaurants that could not be refused -- or else!

This post was inspired by a 1959 Life Magazine feature story on the Chicago underworld. The magazine created a fictitious café to show the goods and services that actual mobsters forcibly provided to restaurants. The illustration above indicates those areas of mob involvement commonly found in restaurants then – and probably now to some extent. In the magazine, a brief description of some of the…

[restauranthistorian]

The short life of the Roboshef

In 1940 the restaurant trade magazine Restaurant Management ran a story about a new San Francisco restaurant called Roboshef where one presumably unskilled cook could turn out 120 meals an hour. The feat was accomplished by using an automatic cooker that rapidly cooked steaks, fish, potatoes, and biscuits in hot oil. (Opening 1939 announcement below.) The counter-sized cooker (shown above), the…

[restauranthistorian]

Notable restaurant mottos

In 1925 a restaurant industry publication presented advice on crafting a slogan that would draw customers. The article advised against simply saying “Where to Dine” because that really didn’t signify anything special to the public. The author then gave better examples of slogans that were “clever and appropriate.” As a negative example, the article might have pointed to Teck’s Quick Lunch in…

[restauranthistorian]

Famous in its day: Well of the Sea

A short time ago I had a chance to visit the fascinating second floor of the Fishs Eddy store in New York. It is piled high with not-for-sale dishware of all kinds, collected by the store’s owner Julie Gaines. The collection includes restaurant ware from the golden past when this country still produced such things. (Tours of the collection, hosted by Julie, are given periodically and booked by…

[restauranthistorian]

Continental cuisine comes to Orange County

In the mid 1950s Geril and Gosta Muller arrived on the west coast. They were born in Denmark and had graduated from a Hotel and Restaurant School in Copenhagen in 1943. Following that Geril had served royalty at a Royal Gun Club. [Gosta (left of then-president Nixon) and Geril, 1971, at Chez Cary] After a few years in Reno NV, they would swiftly work their way to the top of the emerging luxury…

[restauranthistorian]

Goodbye, Alice

Last week Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant made her exit from Earth. I wrote a post about her long ago, but thought I’d add a bit more about her life, including more of her colorful quotations. She didn’t find running restaurants easy and made that clear in interviews and in her 1975 book My Life As a Restaurant. [photos by Jane McWhorter, from Alice’s book] In addition to opening and running…

[restauranthistorian]

Restaurant-ing in movieland

In 1916 a newly arrived New Yorker named Adolph “Eddie” Brandstatter and a partner opened a café in Los Angeles. Modeling it on an unnamed New York City restaurant, they named it Victor Hugo and designed it to introduce fine French cuisine and continental service to the cafeteria-loving city. Four years after opening the Victor Hugo, Brandstatter turned his attention to a Santa Monica project,…

[restauranthistorian]

An early health food empire

It’s rare to find business documents from long-gone restaurants, but last weekend I stumbled upon two letters to investors from the Physical Culture Restaurant Company headed by fitness and health food advocate Bernarr Macfadden [shown above, age 42]. Macfadden was a body-builder, natural food proponent, and entrepreneur who decided to spread the gospel by opening inexpensive, largely…

[restauranthistorian]

Sell by smell

Through much of U.S. restaurant history, smells were a problem. Partly this was because of a lack of ventilation that caused the build up of odors of all kinds blended together in a miasma. Then there was also the ideal of the smell-free middle-class dining room where even delicious kitchen aromas were frowned upon. All this kept numbers of people out of restaurants. Eventually this began to…

[restauranthistorian]

Postscript: Don the Beachcomber

A new book has come out about Don ‘s wife, Sunny Sund, who took over the Beachcomber chain and made it a success. Its author is Sunny’s daughter Karen, working with Cindi Neisinger. It is largely a personal account filled with anecdotes, a view of a mother/daughter relationship, celebrity mentions, and some of the harsh realities that shaped Sunny’s life. A drink recipe ends each chapter.

[restauranthistorian]

Free birthday cake!

A trip to Maine to celebrate two birthdays (not mine) got me thinking about how restaurants observe these events with customers. [above: at Wolfie’s, Miami, 1986] The custom of restaurants recognizing birthdays with songs, cakes, fancy drinks, free dinners, and serenades took hold in the 1960s. It’s unclear whether it had anything to do with an IRS decision ca. 1959 not to charge a cabaret tax…

[restauranthistorian]

Beer & barbecue at the fair

The 19th century was the century of world’s fairs, but the United States did not have a fair to call its own until 1876 when Philadelphia celebrated the 100th anniversary of U.S. independence. After Philadelphia, Chicago’s, in 1893, was the largest in this country. [above, outdoor beer garden at the Tyrolean Alps] So . . . for St. Louis organizers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904,…

[restauranthistorian]

Summertime restaurant-ing

Here are some of my blog posts from the past that were about visiting restaurants when it’s hot outside. Restaurant-ing al fresco See also “Dining in a garden.” Americans living in cities enjoyed spending hours in tea gardens in the 18th century and beer gardens in the 19th and early 20th. One example of such a pleasure garden was a grassy Philadelphia spot outfitted with “tables, benches,…

[restauranthistorian]

The Boos brothers of cafeterialand

It was an orphaned family that had gone through some difficult times that developed one of the early, very successful chains of cafeterias in California. The chain of Boos Brothers cafeterias was one of the first in Los Angeles, contributing to the flood of cafeterias that soon appeared in that city and elsewhere in Southern California. Californians to the north ridiculed the trend, referring to…

[restauranthistorian]

In the kitchen at Sardi’s

The 1950s cookbook from Sardi's restaurant is a blend of complex and greatly simplified recipes for home cooks.

To gather recipes for the Sardi’s cookbook Curtain Up at Sardi’s [1957], co-author Helen Bryson spent two and half weeks, six days each week, in Sardi’s restaurant kitchen. She asked a lot of questions about the food preparation. It was the only way to put together a cookbook, something that she said had never been done before in the restaurant’s long history that dated back to the 1920s. [The…

[restauranthistorian]

Happy birthday to a salad?

This morning I heard a story on the radio about Caesar salad that claimed today was the salad’s 100th birthday. I can understand that it becomes difficult to come up with holiday stories that are novel and of general interest. But I have my doubts about the accuracy of that anniversary date. Still, I will take advantage of it to recommend a story about Caesar salad that I wrote in 2019, at a…

[restauranthistorian]

Behind the scenes at Gonfarone’s

This restaurant's owner believed in allowing waiters to do a bit of stealing as a way to keep up their morale.

There is nothing as interesting (to me) as a memoir about a restaurant from an insider who reveals its workings not usually known to customers. Papa’s Table d’Hôte by Maria Sermolino is such a memoir, published in 1952, decades after her father’s ownership of the New York City restaurant, Gonfarone’s. Maria’s career as an editor and writer was extensive. After graduating from the Columbia School…