So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[2jakes]

Almost the same story as Zombie_61, except this time
the owner had completed the project and invited the media
for the opening of his '50s Happy Days Diner which included
genuine malts and shakes.
Being with the news, the owner gave me a sampling when
I requested a chocolate malt.

The soda jerk went to a dispenser and pulled the lever
on chocolate.
Out poured a gooey substance so sweet I had to drink water
to stop from gagging.

I mentioned how the '50s original malts were made to
the owner.
He said,"oh yeah... I know that, but that takes too much
time and trouble!"

His shop lasted a few months before he
closed down for lack of business.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Several years ago my wife and I were taking an after dinner walk with a couple of friends in the "uptown" area of our city when we came across a crew of three young men converting and re-decorating a shop that had formerly been a candy store. They told us they had taken ownership and were going to open it as "a traditional American diner". When we asked about the menu one of them, without a hint of humor, said, "Oh, you know, pizza, sandwiches, spaghetti, stuff like that." We weren't too surprised when that "American" diner never materialized.

The thing with a traditional diner is that was completely unselfconscious about being "A Diner." The real diners of the Era were cheap counter-oriented facilities intended for working-class people who needed to eat and run, serving a simple, generic short-order menu with no frills of any kind. The idea of a diner as a concept restaurant is antithetical to the very idea of what a diner actually was.

Pizza, at this point, is probably the most American meal there is -- it has had pretty much every bit of Neapolitan or Sicilian authenticity ground off to where it can be anything you make it and still qualify as pizza. In Lewiston, Maine, traditionally the most French-dominated town in Maine, pizza was popular as far back as the 1930s, and today, with a burgeoning Somali population, Lewiston serves some of the finest Halal pizza you'll find in New England. Now that's American.

 

[GHT]

Pizza, at this point, is probably the most American meal there is -- it has had pretty much every bit of Neapolitan or Sicilian authenticity ground off to where it can be anything you make it and still qualify as pizza. In Lewiston, Maine, traditionally the most French-dominated town in Maine, pizza was popular as far back as the 1930s, and today, with a burgeoning Somali population, Lewiston serves some of the finest Halal pizza you'll find in New England. Now that's American.

That's much the same here. Indian, Pakistani & Bengali restaurants abound and one of the favourite meals is said to be Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a dish of chunks of roasted marinated chicken in a spiced curry sauce. The sauce is usually creamy and orange-coloured. There are multiple claims to its place of origin, including the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent or Glasgow in Scotland.
Food from the Indian subcontinent is very popular, but is it authentic? It's probably created for a British palate.

 

[Fading Fast]

At least in New Jersey (a diner mecca), the diner was, when I was growing up in the '70s, most of the time, a Greek-owned family restaurant with a massive - insanely massive and varied - menu offering every dish under the sun - omelettes, steak, lasagna, slovakia, sesame noodles, beef goulash, shrimp scampi, French Toast, burgers, fries, BLTs, dover sole, clams casino, and on and on. While there were always many Greek dishes, almost every major world cuisine was represented.

The menu was several pages and in small print. And here's the thing, most dishes were good, some were great and only a few bad. The NJ diner was not a small affair with a small American-centric menu; it was usually a pretty big place with, as noted, a crazy big and varied menu. And the desserts were ridiculous - pies, cakes, pastries and cookies that rivaled large bakeries in selection, quantity and quality (as a treat, we'd sometimes "run in" to pick up a few things from the bakery to take home - and most encouraged that business).

When I see these small diners in old movies with a board menu of, maybe, twenty items - a place which I love and which NJ had some - they don't reflect for me the diners I knew as a kid. When I first moved into NYC, there were many of those exact same diners - Greek owned, big, varied menu, etc. - but, sadly, each year sees fewer of them as rent increases and "the next generation" not wanting to take over is slowly killing them off in the NYC, but I'm told, they are still thriving in NJ.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Pizza, at this point, is probably the most American meal there is -- it has had pretty much every bit of Neapolitan or Sicilian authenticity ground off to where it can be anything you make it and still qualify as pizza. In Lewiston, Maine, traditionally the most French-dominated town in Maine, pizza was popular as far back as the 1930s, and today, with a burgeoning Somali population, Lewiston serves some of the finest Halal pizza you'll find in New England. Now that's American.

Could not agree more. I've noted this before here, but in NYC, in the '80s, the pizza joints were still mainly owned by Italian families, but by the '90s, Indian and Pakistani immigrants had taken over many of them and, now, many of them are owned by Latin American immigrants (and, yes, if they have a liquor license, a margarita goes quite nicely with a couple of slices).

While they are still very recognizable as "American" pizza joints - and most of the food is the same - each culture that takes over does make its small mark as, in the '90s, you'd see some Indian influence on the menu and now some Latin America ones. That said, and kudos to the smarts of the new owners, they keep the pizza places as classic pizza places as that's what they invested in and they bring in plenty of business.

To me, the ever evolving ownership of "American" pizza places in NYC is grass-roots, real multiculturalism - that's awesome to see and shows America at its best. It is the opposite of the PC, top-down-pushed "multiculturalism / diversity" that NYC's educated elite carry on and on about from their multimillion dollar apartments in new glass towers in gentrified neighborhoods that have chased out much of the real diversity they claim to love.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Greek immigrants dominated the independent cheap-restaurant trade in most of the Northeast and Midwest for much of the first half of the twentieth century, to the point where the figure of the dialect-speaking "Parkyakarkus" type of Greek lunchroom operator was a prominent comedy stereotype. That stereotype still had some steam left in it as late as the 1970s, with the "cheeburger-cheeburger-cheeburger-no fries-cheeps-no Coke-Pepsi" business on Saturday Night Live.

Most of these "Greek joints" didn't emphasize ethnically-Greek food , stressing a hamburger-pork chop-veal cutlet blueplate special type of menu, but they often had names like "Athens Lunch" or "Olympia Grill," and there would usually be some kind of pseudo-Greek motif inlaid on the white tile walls and a couple of pictures of the Parthenon and the Acropolis on the walls. These places very often clustered around college campuses, and "going to the Greek's" was common 1930's collegiate slang for hitting one of these joints for a fast, cheap, generic meal.

There used to be a place in Boston near Fenway Park called Aegean Fare, which was a sort of second-generation Greek Joint -- it had the feel of one of these old-style greasy spoons, but it did serve Greek-style food alongside the more Americanish stuff. They always advertised in the Red Sox scorecard, and I always wanted to go in and see what it was all about -- but it was always too full of college kids whenever I was in the neighborhood.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Greek immigrants dominated the independent cheap-restaurant trade in most of the Northeast and Midwest for much of the first half of the twentieth century, to the point where the figure of the dialect-speaking "Parkyakarkus" type of Greek lunchroom operator was a prominent comedy stereotype. That stereotype still had some steam left in it as late as the 1970s, with the "cheeburger-cheeburger-cheeburger-no fries-cheeps-no Coke-Pepsi" business on Saturday Night Live.

The inspiration for the Olympia Café skit was the original Billy Goat Tavern. It's now a chain, but by the 1970's the original Goat located to Lower Wacker Drive. It really was a hangout for reporters and other Chicago newspaper people when I was a starving student. Haven't been there in years, though.

 

[tonyb]

Going back closer to 40 than 30 years ago I worked in an office accessed off the alley on the east side of the 2300 block of Second Avenue in Seattle. I frequently took meals at a joint called Athen’s Cafe at 2200 Second Avenue, Nick Athen, proprietor. The space Nick’s place occupied later became the Crocodile Cafe, which is something of a hallowed ground to grunge enthusiasts, as many “name” bands played the venue before and even after becoming famous.

I’ll always remember Nick for his habit of feeding the scruffier of our brethren, the truly down-and-out fellows who congregated in that part of town before it got “discovered.” He’d whip up an omelette and drop it on the counter in front of such a character. Words were few. There was just a tacit understanding that Nick wouldn’t let a reasonably well-behaved person leave his place hungry, no matter his finances.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I've never heard eating out sound so complicated.

 

[GHT]

I’ll always remember Nick for his habit of feeding the scruffier of our brethren, the truly down-and-out fellows who congregated in that part of town before it got “discovered.” He’d whip up an omelette and drop it on the counter in front of such a character. Words were few. There was just a tacit understanding that Nick wouldn’t let a reasonably well-behaved person leave his place hungry, no matter his finances.

My grandmother had a fish & chip shop, and back in the 1950's, as a schoolboy, I would spend the long school breaks at my grandmother's shop. She spoiled me so much, but I didn't shirk from helping preparation of the potatoes. Grandmother filletted the fish, I tell you, she could fillet the flesh off the skeleton so skillfully that you could see right through the bones.
Cooking the fish in one pan and the chips (fries) in the other two, there would always be small pieces of batter float off the fish and small pieces of potato would sometimes break off too. These pieces were known as scratchings, my grandmother never threw them away.
One day I found out why. Usually I never ventured into the sales part of her shop, but on this day granny had asked me to run an errand. On return I saw a young girl, of clean but shabby appearance, she asked my grandmother if she had any scratchings. Granny not only gave her the scratchings but made sure that there were extra chunks of fish and a generous portion of chips. Later I learned that the child was one of six being raised by a young widowed mother. Granny told me that another of the child's siblings would ask the greengrocer for over ripe fruit and veg, and yet another would ask the butcher for any bones.
It was an age before welfare, the community always looked after one another, it's a lesson that I have remembered all my life.

 

[tonyb]

My grandmother had a fish & chip shop, and back in the 1950's, as a schoolboy, I would spend the long school breaks at my grandmother's shop. She spoiled me so much, but I didn't shirk from helping preparation of the potatoes. Grandmother filletted the fish, I tell you, she could fillet the flesh off the skeleton so skillfully that you could see right through the bones.
Cooking the fish in one pan and the chips (fries) in the other two, there would always be small pieces of batter float off the fish and small pieces of potato would sometimes break off too. These pieces were known as scratchings, my grandmother never threw them away.
One day I found out why. Usually I never ventured into the sales part of her shop, but on this day granny had asked me to run an errand. On return I saw a young girl, of clean but shabby appearance, she asked my grandmother if she had any scratchings. Granny not only gave her the scratchings but made sure that there were extra chunks of fish and a generous portion of chips. Later I learned that the child was one of six being raised by a young widowed mother. Granny told me that another of the child's siblings would ask the greengrocer for over ripe fruit and veg, and yet another would ask the butcher for any bones.
It was an age before welfare, the community always looked after one another, it's a lesson that I have remembered all my life.

These days, for every eatery such as your grandmother’s or Nick Athen’s there are a hundred (at least) chain restaurants whose ownership’s commitment to the health of the community extends no further than its capacity to put a sufficient number of Camrys through the drive-thru every day.

 

[GHT]

These days, for every eatery such as your grandmother’s or Nick Athen’s there are a hundred (at least) chain restaurants whose ownership’s commitment to the health of the community extends no further than its capacity to put a sufficient number of Camrys through the drive-thru every day.

Ain't that the truth. In my corporate days there would be times when my night manager would call to say that he was shorthanded owing to someone going sick. More often than not I would go back to work to help him out. He was very good at man management, so I never interfered, I just did something manual like driving a forklift truck. Panic over I would have a brief meeting with my night manager and head on home at about two am. No matter how many times I did that, I was always impressed/bewildered at the length of the drive through queue at the nearby McDonalds. There was three other similar fast food places near the estate where I worked, all very busy at two am.

 

[Edward]

That's much the same here. Indian, Pakistani & Bengali restaurants abound and one of the favourite meals is said to be Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a dish of chunks of roasted marinated chicken in a spiced curry sauce. The sauce is usually creamy and orange-coloured. There are multiple claims to its place of origin, including the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent or Glasgow in Scotland.
Food from the Indian subcontinent is very popular, but is it authentic? It's probably created for a British palate.

As with Chinese food it varies a lot.... though for the most part, in my fairly extensive experience of Beijing and more limited experience of India (Chicken tikka masala aside), the UK generally does it very well. The biggest compromise on accuracy with Chinese food in the UK is rice being such a staple, and egg-fried rice at that. In China, if you're being posh, you wouldn't see rice at all - it's 'poor people' food to fill a space and bulk out the veg and meat dishes. Egg-fried rice is how you use up leftovers from yesterday's steamed; serving it to a guest would be like inviting someone over for a formal dinner and then serving them oven chips. Of course, what we don't get in the UK are things like chicken feet or duck hearts - or donkey - but for the most part what we see here is fairly accurate in my experience. I think a lot of it comes down to the cooks - in London at least you're much more likely to find a Chinese has a Chinese cook, while a curry house will be run or cooked for at least by Bangladeshi / Pakistani / Indian folks. I do think to get it 'right' you have to be well steeped in the food culture.

Interestingly, Chinese food in the US seems to vary a lot more - over there, if you ask for Chow Mein you'll get a dish with rice and vegetables rather than, well.... Chow Mein (noodles). There are also a large range of US-Chinese equivalents of Chicken Tikka Masala. AFAIK, this goes back to the early days of Chinese restaurants in the US when they served what was popular locally - specifically Chinese food of any kind (authentic or otherwise) came in later.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Dinner at great Italian restaurant last night. Figaretti's in Wheeling, WV is special, but hadn't been there in years. Awesome dishes of pasta, peppers, sausage, shrimp, Chianti, and much more. All with Steubenville OH native, Dean Martin playing in the background.


All of which reminded us of recently in Steubenville for the Dean Martin Festival. We made special trip there in 2017 expecting plenty pasta, tomato sauce, Chianti & Dean Martin music, but found none to be had. Instead settled for a hamburger while a cover band played the Eagles. Shameful......

And half the attendees said "Dean who?"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

As for the probable origin of curry, it was most likely some regimental cookhouse where the Glaswegian cook added some local spices to liven up the mutton stew.

 

[GHT]

Of course, what we don't get in the UK are things like chicken feet or duck hearts - or donkey

When I read that I immediately thought of the horsemeat in burgers scandal a few years ago. One of Fleet Street's political cartoonist had burgers for sale. Small size at £1:05, medium at £2:10 and the big family pack at £3:15. The caption read: They might be a good price but I'm wary of meat being sold in guineas.

For those not versed in our antiquated ways. The guinea was a unit of currency worth one pound, one shilling, which translated to one pound and five pence in our now metric currency. Despite the guinea not being in use for over a century, racehorses in the UK are still sold in guineas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Most American Chinese food never saw the shores of Canton -- it was an amalgam thrown together by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries using whatever ingredients they could find locally prepared thru techniques similar to those used in their homeland. When the fad for "Chinese Restaurants" began in the 1910s, this approximation of Chinese cuisine was modified even further to suit the American palate, largely thru the addition of a great deal of sugar. Real Chinese food, such as you might find deep within an urban Chinatown, is much less sweet than the American kind. Nor does it have common white onions, carrots, or broccoli in it.

The "Chop Suey Palace" restaurant idea dominated Chinese food in the US during the Era -- pretty much the only "Chinese" dishes the average American knew anything about from the 1920s thru the 1950s were chop suey and chow mein, both of which are entirely American creations. It wasn't until the 1970s that Hunan and Szechuan "hot and spicy" type Chinese food made an impression here, and the definitive American Chinese dish of the modern era, General Tso's Chicken, wasn't even invented until the early '70s.

It's somehow typical that the "Chinese Food" that's become common all over the world outside of China is primarily the American kind, to the point where, I am advised by one of the Kids who went to Beijing on a class trip this year, you can even get it at tourist-oriented places in China itself. That's like going to Milan and ordering Domino's.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I read that I immediately thought of the horsemeat in burgers scandal a few years ago. One of Fleet Street's political cartoonist had burgers for sale. Small size at £1:05, medium at £2:10 and the big family pack at £3:15. The caption read: They might be a good price but I'm wary of meat being sold in guineas.

For those not versed in our antiquated ways. The guinea was a unit of currency worth one pound, one shilling, which translated to one pound and five pence in our now metric currency. Despite the guinea not being in use for over a century, racehorses in the UK are still sold in guineas.

Horsemeat was a scandalous deal in the US during the war, when Old Dobbin was the primary ingredient in most of the "black market meat" sold off the back of trucks. It was especially common along the East Coast -- the sale of horsemeat for human consumption was legal in New Jersey, where a great many of the worn-out milk-wagon horses from New York City ended up, and it would often find its way into neighboring states marked as beef. New Jersey didn't get around to banning horsemeat until 2012, but there's a push on to make it legal again, with Les Garcons proposing to market it to the they'll-swallow-anything-with-a-poncy-name foodie crowd under the name "chevaline."

 

[Edward]

I imagine horse is lovely - I've never knowingly eaten it, but I wouldn't say no. I enjoyed donkey immensely when I had that in Beijing - unexpectedly, it tastes like roast beef, but with a much less fibrous texture. I might feel a bit guilty about it now, mind, as we've made pals with the donkeys at our local city farm!

Around the time of the horsemeat scandal, some wag plastered Brick Lane with perfect imitations of Evening Standard newsstand posters reading "Shergar Found!"

 

[tonyb]

Ain't up on the legality of horsemeat in the places I've resided, although it's a safe bet it was legal in Seattle in the mid-1970s, when a horsemeat market was operating in the Pike Place Public Market, where I did a good deal of my shopping back then, when I lived a mile or so up the hill from there. Walked down, took the bus back up.

As to the horsemeat itself …

It was okay. Not bad. Etc. Leaner than beef.