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While public eateries existed in Ancient Rome, restaurants (we know them today), are generally credited to 18th century France. The genesis is quite interesting and not at all what most people expect. Did you know the word restaurant is derived from the French word restaurer which means to restore? The first French restaurants [pre-revolution] were not fancy gourmet establishments run by ex-aristocratic chefs. They were highly regulated establishments that sold restaurants (meat based consommes intended to "restore" a person's strength) to people who were not feeling well. Cook-caterers (traiteurs) also served hungry patrons. The history of these two professions is historically connected and often difficult to distinguish.

According to the current edition of Larousse Gastronomque (p. 194-5), the first cafes (generally defined as places selling drinks and snacks) was established in Constantinople in 1550. It was a coffee house, hence the word "cafe." Cafes were places educated people went to share ideas and new discoveries. Patrons spent several hours in these establishments in one "sitting." This trend caught on in Europe on the 17th century. When cafes opened in France they also sold brandy, sweetened wines and liqueurs in addition to coffee. The first modern-type cafe was the Cafe Procope which opened in 1696.

The French Revolution launched the modern the restaurant industry. It relaxed the legal rights of guilds that [since the Middle Ages] were licensed by the king to control specific foods [eg. the Patissiers, Rotisseurs, Charcutiers] and created a hungry, middle-class customer base who relished the ideals of egalitarianism (as in, anyone who could pay the price could get the same meal). Entrepreneurial French chefs were quick to capitalize on this market. Menus, offering dishes individually portioned, priced and prepared to order, were introduced to the public for the first time.

Who started the first restaurant?
There are (at least) three theories:

1. Boulanger, 1765
"In about 1765, a Parisian 'bouillon seller' named Boulanger wrote on his sign: 'Boulanger sells restoratives fit for the gods'...This was the first restaurant in the modern sense of the term."
---Larousse Gastronomiqe, completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1999 (p. 978)

2. Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau in Paris, 1766
"According to Spang, the forgotten inventor was Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, a figure so perfectly emblematic of his time that he almost seems like an invention himself. The son of a landowner and merchant, Roze moved to Paris in the early 1760s and began floating a variety of schemes he believed would enrich him and his country at the same time."
http://dir.salon.com/books/review/2000/03/24/spang/index.html

3. Beauvilliers, 1782
"However, the first Parisian restaurant worthy of the name was the one founded by Beauvilliers in 1782 in the Rue de Richelieu, called the Grande Taverne de Londres. He introduced the novelty of listing the dishes available on a menu and serving them at small individual tables during fixed hours."
---Larousse Gastronomique, (p. 978)

About restaurants

"...France was the birthplace of what we now call the restaurant...this happened toward the end of the eighteenth century. With the exception of inns, which were primarily for travelers, and street kitchens...where in Europe at that time could one purchase a meal outside the home? Essentially in places where alcoholic begerages were sold, placesewquipped to serve simple, inexepensive dishes either cooked on the premises or ordered from a nearby inn or food shop, along with wine, beer, and spirits, which constituted the bulk of their business. Such tavern-restaurants existed not only in France but also in other countries. In Germany, Austria, and Alsace, Brauereien and Weinstuben served delicatessen, sauerkraut, and cheese, for example; in Spain bodegas served tapas. Greek taverns served various foods with olive oil..where meals were exempt from taxes, served a variety of fortifying dishes such as stews, meat with sauce, and organ meats...All of these places...were apt to serve plain and simple fare rather than more elaborate culinary creations...For a genuine meal one had to look either to a good inn or go to a rotisseur or traiteur (caterer, from the Italian trattorie). In France, these two guilds, together with the charcutiers, had been granted a monopoly on all cooked meat other than pates...Only common people actually ate in the traiteur's shop, perhaps seated at a table reserved for guests in some establishments. Even a moderately well-to-do person would have preferred to order food delivered to a private home or a room at an inn or hotel or an elegant salon rented for the occasion...In 1765 a man by the mame of Boulanger, also known as "Champ d'Oiseaux" or "Chantoiseau," opened a shop near the Louvre...There he sold what e called restaurants or bouillons restaurants--that is, meat-based consommes intended to "restore" a person's strength. Ever since the late Middle Ages the word restaurant had been used to describe any of a variety of rich bouillons made with chicken, beef, roots or one sort or antoher, onions, herbs, and, according to some recipes, spices, crystallized sugar, toasted bread, barley, butter, and even exotic ingredients..."
---"The Rise of the Restaurant," Food: a Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999(p. 471-480)

"Restaurant...The word appeared in the 16th century and meant at first a food which "restores" (from restaurer, to restore), and was used more specifically for a rich, highly flavoured soup thought capable of restoring lost strength...Until the late 18th century, the only places for ordinary people to eat out were inns and taverns. In about 1765, a Parisian "boullion-seller" named Boulanger wrote on his sign: Boulanger sells restoratives "fit for the gods"...This was the first restaurant in the modern sense of the term. Boulanger was followed by Roze and Pontaille, who in 1766 opened a maison de sante (house of health). However, the first Parisian restaurant worthy of the name was the one founded by Beauvilliers in 1782...called the Grand Taverne de Londres. He introduced the novelty of listing the dishes available on a menu and served them at small individual tables during fixed hours. One beneficial effect of the Revolution was that the abolition of the guilds and their privileges made it easier to open a restaurant. The rest to take advantage of the situation were the cooks and servants from the great houses, whose aristocratic owners had fled. Moreover, the arrival in Paris of numerous provincials who had no family in the capital created a pool of faithful customers, augmented by the journalists and businessmen. The general feeling of well-being under the Directory, following such a chaotic period, coupled with the chance of enjoying the delights of the table hitherto reserved for the rich, created an atmosphere in which restaurants became an established institution."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 978)

"The Restaurant Revolution
An eye-witness, Grimod de La Reyniere advances three reasons why restaurants emerged in France with the French Revolution: the rage for English fashions, including the taking of meals in taverns; the influx of large numbers of revolutionary deputies from the provinces; and cooks seeking re-employment after the break-up of the aristocratic households....We need to remember that the near universal way to serve meals until this time [1825] was to place the pot of pots on the table for all to share. The grander the meal, the more dishes. In fancy dining, the artistic creation was at the table...Hotels served limited ranges at fixed time...The caterers (traiteurs) did not provide portions, but whole courses'--an entire joint, say--and anyone who whished to entertain a few friends must order them well in advance'. With the restaurant, artistic creation became the individual plate. In one blow, high quqlity became publicly available; even more significantly, cooking/sharing was individualized...Restaurants hastened the emergence of the sovereign consumer. At the table of a first-class restauranteur, any person could dine as well as a prince..."
---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons [Universtiy of Illinois Press:Urbana IL] 1998 (p. 289-293)
[NOTE: this book contains much more information than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy]

"Restaurant. According to contemporary dictionaries, a restaurant is simply an eating place, an establishment where meals are served to customers. By this definition, restaurants--by whatever name they have been given--are almost as old as civilization. The ruins of Pompeii contain the remnants of a tavern which provided foods and wines to passers-by...the prime function to these early eating places' was to cater to the needs of people away from home who, unless they had brought their own food and cooks with them, were obliged to take whatever was available--or go hungry. From the second half of the 17th century there were cafes, public places where people could meet and talk, eat and drink....In England there were also taverns which, catering to a socially superior clientele, employed well-known cooks and offered an extensive choice of dishes. The restaurant, as it was conceived in Paris towards the end of the 18th century, had a different vocation. Its principal advantage was that it offered diners a choice: according to Brillat-Savarin [he was lawyer and gourmand who wrote the Physiology of Taste], restaurants allowed people to eat when they wanted, what they wanted, and how much they wanted, knowing in advance how much this would cost. The top restaurants of the day boasted a vast menu, with a choice of 12 soups, 65 entrees...and 50 desserts. Prior to this, French catering was highly regulated and shared between various corporations [guilds]...The regulations surrounding these trades gave each one certain privileges. The rotisseur, for example, roasted meat but was not allowed to bake dishes in the oven, nor to make ragouts'[stews]...By 1771 the world restauranteur' was defined...as someone who has the art of preparing true broths, known as restaurants', and the right to sell all kinds of custards, dishes of rice, vermicelli and macaroni, egg dishes, boiled capons, preserved and stewed fruit and other delicious and health-giving foods...The word restaurant', used to describe an eating house, first appeared in a decree of 1786...Restaurants were...an important consequence of the Revolution and concurred with its aims in promoting egality around the table. Eating was no longer the privilege of the wealthy who could afford to maintain a cook and a well-supplied kitchen."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 660)

On Restauranteurs, The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (c. 1828)

About restaurants in early America
Colonial taverns and inns sold food, but they were not generally known for their cuisine. Nor was the food offered on menus. The French restaurant concept was introduced to the newly established USA in the very last years of the 18th century. Food historians place the genesis of grand city restaurants, often based in fine hotels, to the first quarter of the 19th century.

"The French Revolution encouraged the growth of restaurants by abolishing the monopolistic cooks' guilds and by forcing the aristocrats' former chefs to find new, proletarian uses for their talents...Travelers to France excitedly brought the news of these Parisian restaurants to an American public that already enjoyed a spiritual kinship with France ever since that country allied itself with our own Revolution. French culture had already had a considerable effect on our own...This affinity for French cooking convinced a former cook to the archbishop of Bordeaux to open his own French-style eating house in Boston in 1794. His name was Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat, and he called his establishment by his nickname, "Jullien's Restarator," where he became known as the "Prince of Soups," echoing the original meaning of the word "retaurant."...But the growth of the concept of freestanding restaurants depended ultimately upon a large enough number of people willing to accept it and pay for it. In 1800 the total population of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston combined was only 200,000, but soon it began to soar. New York grew fastest--160,000 inhabitants by 1825...By 1805 New York had four coffeehouses, four oyster houses, four tea gardens, two victualing houses, and a cookshop, as well as forty-two combination boardinghouses and taverns and these increased rapidly for absorb the new prosperity...The food available in these new eating houses--which went in and out of business at an amazing rate of failure--continued to be for the most part coarse, heavy, and of mediocre or poor quality. Game was plentiful, including venison, pigeon, racoon, and elk. Turtle was considered a delicacy...Fresh meat went bad quickly, so many workers slaughtered the pigs that freely roamed the streets consuming refuse, and Broadway was lined with vendors selling roast pork. Others hawked oysters, fast becoming a passion with Americans...Once the food was set on the table, the customers tore into it with what one observer called "inconceivable rapidity," and other defined as a technique of "gobble, gulp and go." This was pretty much the standard procedure in most eating houses and taverns. Even in the grand, new, modern hotels like New York City's Hotel (1794), a service philosophy of "come-and-get-it" was accepted as normal, and communal dining rooms serving up fixed meals at set hours were till the rule, although the spendiferous Tremont House in Boston, which opened in 1828, inaugurated "French Service" in its two-hundred-seat dining room, where guests might dine at individual tables and use th new four-tined fork. By the 1830s the "American Plan," by which travelers were forced to pay for room and board whether they ate a meal or not, was becoming standard in the hotel industry. In lesser hotels and taverns, it was not so much a question of "come-and-get-it" as it was "try-to-to-eat-it."
---America Eats Out, John Mariani [William Morrow:New York] 1991 (p. 25-7)

• A restaurant timeline, CuisineNet
• Restauranteur, Meditation 28, Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin [1826],br> [NOTE: If you want the complete text of this passage (in English) we recommend the M.F.K. Fischer translation. There are many recent editions. Your librarian can help you find a copy.]
• menus

See also: Fast food

ABOUT CATERING

"Restauranteurs vs Traiteurs
While competing in the marketplace, cooks have, since ancient times, formed guilds. A little booklet of Notes on the History of the Company of the Mistery of Cooks of London, published by the Cooks' Company perhaps in the early 1960s, dates the Fraternity's formation to 1311-12. The trades regulated themselves and were regulated in terms of fair trading and health, were taxed and given some protection by the City and crown. That is, they operated as a profession, with its mutual promotion and restrictive trade practices--limiting entry through (often exploited) apprenticeships, sharing tricks of the trade, and fixing prices...The guild of cook-caterers, the cuisiniers, paralleled the hierarchy in the court kitchens...Do not forget we are talking about public cooks: cuisiniers are not to be confused with queues, master cooks employed in noble households and convents. Furthermore, the guild of cuisiners was forever splitting and being challenged by new specializations...The tradesmen sold goods to be carried away, but a further offshoot of the cuisiners was the traiteurs--eating-house keepers or caterers. They were popular with the modest people, for they sold small quantities at low prices. From statutes in 1559, they specialized in weddings and banquets, held on their own premises or elsewhere...When Antoine Beauvilliers opened the first great restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres--in 1782, according to Brillat-Savarin, and in 1786 according to others--a new trade, deriving partly from English taverns, had broken from the the traiteurs...The caterers had an exclusive right to sell cooked meat dishes, but limited themselves to selling whole cuts of meat, not an individual helping. That monopoly was contested in 1765 by Boulanger, a seller of bouillons. While the traiteurs claimed the exclusive right to sell ragout, stock fell outside their monopoly and was sold under the name restaurant, in the sense of restorative'."
---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons [University of Illinois Press:Urbana IL] 1998 (p. 315-8)

"When he went to Paris in the early eighteenth century, Joachim Nemeitz quickly discovered what was wrong with the French capital: the food...Forced to eat at an innkeeper's or traiteur's (cook-caterer's) table d'hote, the simple visitor to Paris would soon discover that he "does not fare well at all, either because the meat is not properly cooked, or because they serve the same thing every day and rarely offer any variety."...Throughout the eigheenth century, many a traveler would have cause for similar complaints...food served by French innkeepers and cook-caterers, though inexpensive, would further ruin...health...For centuries before the first restaurants opened their doors, travelers and Parisians without their own kitchens had depended upon the inns, cookshops, and wineshops...Early eighteenth-century Paris was, in fact, home to thousands of retail food and drink merchants, all organized by monarchial decrees into twenty-five different guilds. As defined in their statutes, the retail food trades were characterized by extreme divisiveness and exaggerateed compartmentalism...Master cook-caterers held the right to serve full meals to large parties...The cook-caterers (traiteurs), it is said, quickly brought legal charges against one particularly aggrandizing restauranteur named Boulanger who dared to sell a dish (sheeps' feet in white sauce) that was not a restaurant but a ragout (anything composed of several different ingredients and cooked in sauce). After a series of appeals, we are told, the courts eventually decided in favor of the cook-caterers, and restricted the "restauranteurs" to selling bouillons...The retail food trades were notoriously difficult to delimit, The futility of enforcing divisions among the food trades derived in part form the combinative nature of the work itself...Already in 1704, almost three-quarters of the master traiteurs were also cabaret-keepers; in 1748 the traiteurs' guild noted that "most of our masters" also have the privileges of pastrycooks or roast-meat-sellers...A 1760 decision of Parliment instructed that, in order to prevent monopolies, the Paris caterers should henceforth elect their four "syndics in charge"...The combination of titles, while fairly common in all the retail food trades, was particularly prevalent among the traiteurs. It is evident that the cook-caterers of Paris had long had their fingers in numerous pies, and that by far the majority of them would have been well within their legal rights had they run businesses that sold a variety of foods and a wide range of potables. Such an accumulation of tasks was easily possible, but it did not distinguish the first restauranteurs from the established cook-caterers. Indeed, many of the first restauranteurs were also master traiteurs with close business ties to many of the other established Paris food and drink trades." ---The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 7-11)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Please ask your librarian to help you obtain a copy.]

African American caterers
Historic newspapers and scholarly articles provide but brief glimpses into the catering businesses run by blacks in the late 19th century. They do confirm general observations regarding being edged out by new immigrant arrivals. W.E.B. Dubois observed and studied this trend. For a comprehensive study of this topic we recommend the resources held by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/NYPL

"The African Amercian caterers in particular were comparatively well-to-do; they employed other members of their community, met with prominent white families, and were social leaders and noted abolitionists...Philadelphia caterers developed reputations for particular dishes, such as terrapin stew and chicken croquettes, which were seen as African American specialties and prestigious foods on the tables of socially prominent white families...African Americans continued to dominate the catering business in northeastern cities into the 1890s...African American caterers also held positions of respect in southern cities throughout the era of segregation."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1(p. 24-25)

"Ten per cent of the colored people are skilled laborers--cigarmakers, barbers, tailors and dressmakers, builders, stationary engineers, &c. Five and one-half per cent are in business enterprises of various sorts. The negroes have something over a million and a half dollars invested in samll business enterprises, chiefly real estate, the catering business, undertaking, drug stores, hotes and restaurants, express teaming &c. In the sixty-nine leading establishments $800,000 is invested-- $13,000 in sums from $500 to $1,000 and $200,000 in sums from $1,000 to $25,000. Forty-four of the sixty-nine businesses were stablished since 1885, and seventeen others since the war...Five leading caterers have $30,000 [invested]..."
---"The Black North: A Social Study, New York City," W.E. Barghardt DuBois Atlanta University, New York Times, November 17, 1901 (p. SM10)

"It seemed natural at this time that this leading class of upper servants would step into the economic life of the nation from this vantage ground and play a leading role. This they did in several instances: the most conspicuous being the barber, the caterer, and the steward...he held his own in the semi-servile work...until he met the charge of color discrimination from his own folk and the strong competition of Germans and Italians...the caterer was displaced by the palatial hotel in which he could gained foothold."
---"The Economic Future of the Negro," W. E. B. Dubois, Publications of the American Economic Association 3rd Series, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Feb., 1906), pp. 219-242

"The Italian, Sicilian, Greek, foreign to America's language and instutituions, occupy quite every industry that was confessedly the negro's forty years ago...Think of our city's most famous catereres of forty or fifty years ago. They were the Downings, Mars, Watson, Vandyke, Ten Eyck, Day, Green, and others, all colored. Their names were as familiar and as representative in high class work as are Delmonico and Sherry today. Who have succeeded to the business that theses colored caterers had on those days? With one exception, Italians."
---"The Economic Future of the Negro. The Factor of White Competition ," Alfred Holt Stone , Publications of the American Economic Association 3rd Series, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Feb., 1906), pp. 243-294

"For more than a century the Negro has cominated the catering field in Philadelphia. Thsi buisness has been intimately linked with the history of the Quaker City from its earliest days until the present. One of the first successful Negro ctaerers was Peter Augustine, who started and establishment on Third street above Spruce in 1816. His fame was world-wide. Often he sent his terrapin for which he was noted, to Paris. The firm of Augustine & Baptiste, his successor, continues to provide eatables for some of Philadelphia's oldest and wealthiest famlies. For 100 years this business has been kept in the family. Mrs. Clara Augustine and Miss Tillie Baptiste now conduct it on Fifteenth street, betwen Locust and Walnut streets. Among others of the old guild of caterers was Thomas J. Dorsey whose culianry accomplishments won for him both name and wealth. Henry Jones was equally as well known and successful. James Prosser was given credit for being one of the pioneer caterers and is said to have systematized and stabilized the business. His establishment was at Fourth and Market streets. A contemporary of Prosser was James Porter Sr., who conducted a restaurant at Eighth and Market strets. He was the first steward of the exclusive Philadelphia Club, which in the beginning was housed in the old Napoleon residence on Ninth street above Spruce. George Porter, a son, was associated with him. Prominent Negro caterers in Philadelphia of a later date were Henry Minton at Fourth and Chestnut streets and subsequently Twelfth street, near Walnut and Richard Thompkins on Fourth street, near Walnut. The catering and restaurant business was brought to a degree of perfection by these men of antebellum days and by many who followed. Years ago the Negroes practially controlled these profitable avenues of endeavor and were materially responsible for Philadelphia becoming famous as 'a city of good food.' Philadelphia's Original caterer and creator of this branch of business was Robert Bogle."
---"Phily Citizen Was First Maker of Ice Cream," Lester A. Walton, Pittsburgh Courier, May 19, 1928 (p. 12)

"The institution of catering...reaches its highest excellence in Philadelphia. This occupation was oriingate dby a Phildelphia Negro, Robert Bogle, whose services were marked by such superlative excellence that one of his discriminating patrons, Nicholas Biddle, the leading Philadelphia financier of thsi time, was moved to poetic expresion, and wrote his 'Ode to Bogle' in 1829. The Negro caterers have give to this art a quality and flavor which is unique and distinctive and which tradition is being continued along admirable lines by Holland's, Augustine and Baptiste, and others."
---"Social Worker Cites Contributions of Negro to Philadelphia's Progress," Wayne Hopkins, Philadelphia Tribune, June 2, 1932 (p. 9)
[NOTE: Want to read Ode to Bogle?]

"William Walker, a colored caterer, living at 439 West Thirty-ninth Street, with his wife, went into the restaurant of John Stark, at 436 and 438 Ninth Avenue for supper serveral weeks ago. Walker alleged that the proprietor snatched the bill of fare from his wife's hand, and told both that he would not serve them because of theri color. Walker was corroborated by his wife in his testimony that Restaurant Keeper Stark said he would no serve them because of their color. Mr. Stark denied the statements of Mr. and Mrs. Walker, and said that when they entered his restaurant he was closing up one of the rooms, which he usually does every night. When the plaintiffs entered he requested them to take a seat in the other part of the restaurant, which was to remain open all night. He said that the plaintiff became very indignant, and ordered his wife to sit down in the room they were in..."
---"Sued Under the Malby Act," New York Times, October 4, 1895 (p. 14)

See also: Augustus Jackson

Early American women caterers
[In 18th century America some] "women in the food workplace were caterers or confectioners of a sort. They sometimes ran small shops that specialized in their own preserves, candies, or baked delicacies. They were more likely to be situated in towns in which people followed fashion and made their purchases with cash (rather than bartering)...Some women baked to order and undertook simple catering from their homes. Their advertisements appeared regularly in eighteenth-century newspapers."
------Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, (p. 554-555)

The American Historical Newspaper and ProQuest Historic Newspaper databases are excellent sources for find 18th-20th century ads and business listings. Ask your librarian how to access.

• The American Personal and Private Chef Association
• United States Personal Chef Association

"What is the difference between a personal chef and a private chef? A private chef is employed by one individual or family full time, and often lives in, preparing up to three meals per day. A personal chef serves several clients, usually one per day, and provides multiple meals that are custom-designed for the clients’ particular requests and requirements. These meals are packaged and stored, so that the client may enjoy them at his or her leisure in the future...Who hires personal chefs? The typical client mix includes two-income couples with or without children, career-focused individuals, those with special dietary or health needs, seniors and those who enjoy fine dining. How many personal chefs are out there? The current number of personal chefs is estimated at 9,000 serving 72,000 customers. Industry observers predict the number will double in the next 5 years. What do personal chefs do? Personal chefs design and execute menus for clients. They plan, purchase and prepare meals (usually once a week) either at the clients’ home or in a rented professional kitchen. Meals are packaged and stored, either in the clients’ refrigerator or freezer with heating-instruction labels."
---American Personal and Private Chef Association

"While there are many similarities between personal chefs and private chefs, it's important that we distinguish between these two culinary professions. A private chef is one who is employed by a specific person or organization exclusively. She earns a paycheck and is responsible for providing her culinary services to one person or group. She works scheduled hours, cooks menus to satisfy the needs of her employer, whether a family or an organization...a personal chef is a chef for hire who works for herself as a small business operator. There is no exclusivity agreement involved, and she can choose the number of clients with whom she will associated and for whom she will prepare custom menues. As the profession began to gain popularity among culinarians and the attention of the media, many critics called personal chefs a fad profession that would be around only as long as it was fashionable. However, over time, this supposed fad became a trend and gave chefs and cooks around the world the opportunity to work with food on their own terms. The personal chef trend has become a legitimate career path in the culinary industry and a viable alternative career for culinarians looking to leave traditional cooking situations."
---The Professional Personal Chef, Candy Wallace [Wiley:New York] 2007 (p. 1-2)

WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSONAL CHEF?
Industry experts do not credit a particular person with this honor. Candy Wallace, founder ot the American Personal and Private Chef Association, states:

"Culinary history has not officially recorded when the first personal chef opened his doors for business. Was it hundreds of years ago, when a talented chef cooked for several affluent families traveling from one estate to another? Or was the first personal chef someone who cooked for a friend's family that had fallen on hard times and needed help with the day-to-day chores of the household? History provides us with clues, but determining when the personal chef profession emerged is open to discussion."
---Professional Personal Chef (p. 1)

Our survey of American newspapers chronicles the genesis, evolution, issues, and challenges facing of the modern private and/or personal chef industry:

[1978]
"Muhammad Ali had his Aunt Coretta in the kitchen. Joe Frazier's trainer, Eddie Futch, did his cooking. George Foreman had a culinary specialist while training in Africa. And now, Ken Norton has a personal chef at Gilman Hot Springs. It seems a heavyweight champion's camp isn't complete without one. Norton, preparing for the first defense of his World Boxing Council title, against Larry Holmes June 9 in Las Vegas, had been ordering from a restaurant menu until Joe Behar arrived last week...Behar's primary employer is the La Jolla Village Inn, owned by Norton's manager...Behar...prepared Norton's meals at the home of Mike Penrod, manager of the Massacre Canyon Inn, where Norton stays."
---"Norton Has a Personal Chef and a Hearty Diet," Jack Hawn, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1978 (p. E15)

[1979]
"At least seven Cabinet secretaries have personal chefs who prepare their breakfasts and lunches, often at bargain prices, a survey of federal departments disclosed. It costs taxpayers more than $126,000 a year in salaries for the chefs, who put together meals in the secretaries' personal kitchens and serve then in their private dining rooms...Atty. Gen. Benjamin R. Civiletti, whose two chefs are paid $23,000 and $17,000, often lunches with his special assistants and division chiefs in a handsome Williamsburg-style dining room next to his offices. Civiletti and his associates pay only $1.50 for breakfasts, which may include juice, eggs, bacon, grits, sausage or pancakes. According to the chef's menu, Civiletti this week will lunch on broiled whitefish, deviled crab and Swiss steak, plus vegetables, salad, dessert and beverage, for $2.50..."
---"Taxpayers Subsidize Meals: 7 Cabinet Secretaries Have Own Chefs," Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1979 (p. B6)

[1988]
"A Personal Chef. A Chicago company called Room Service has been offering "white glove dining in your home" since February. Bob Horwitz, a partner and vice president, figures he has it easier than a Southern California delivery service because "I can cover 12,000 people in one block. Out there, it would probably be that many in 10 miles." Room Service's partners raised $750,000 to open the business, which delivers selections from eight well-known Chicago restaurants in 10 specially equipped vans costing $26,000 each. Driven by waiters or waitresses, they are stocked with heating ovens, refrigerators and running water. Within an hour of a customer's phone order, a tuxedo-clad Room Service employee picks up a slightly undercooked meal from the restaurant of choice and delivers it to home, office or apartment. There, the waiter or waitress sets up the meal, complete with placements, napkins, heavy-duty plastic cutlery, salt and pepper and wet towels. Most meals (at an average cost per delivery of $35) require a few extra minutes of cooking time. Horwitz said the service, for which the customer is charged 20% over the menu price plus a $3 delivery fee, is geared to upper-income customers....In Philadelphia, Steve Poses, a restaurateur and caterer, recently added a service called Personal Chef to his Commissary restaurant and takeout operation. "Today everyone needs a personal chef," he said. "Unfortunately, not everyone can afford one." The service sets up menus for entertaining at home. The party fare can be delivered or picked up."
---"Special Delivery, Personal Chefs and a Telephone for Your Freezer," Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1988, (p. 5)

[1990]
"Two incompatible types emerged in the 1980's: the couch potato and the insatiable restaurant goer. But by the dawn of the 90's, a few fortnate people were finding a way to reconcile their interests in staying at home and their desire to enjoy good food: hire a chef. Personal, or private, chefs have joined that arsenal of service people, from personal trainers to personal bankers, that smooth the lives of today's rich and famous and, increasingly, more down-to-earth professionals, too. Some chefs...are working full time for the wealthy and he well known, even living in their houses. But others may cook dinners only a few evenings a week for professional singles or couples, or just come in for special occasions. Carole Rydell, placement coordinator at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., said she saw a slow, steady increase in the number of requests the school received for private chefs in the last seven years. 'We get requests from wealthy people for someone to serve on their yacht,' she said. 'But at the lowest end, we get requests from doctors and lawyers and people in finance and advertising who entertain a lot for business or social reasons.' She said the requests increase during the summer, when people hire chefs for their vacation or weekend homes."
---"Tired of Eating Out? Send for Your Chef," Kathleen Beckett-Young, New York Times, August 22, 1990 (p. C1)

[1994]
"The latest trend for baby boomers struggling to squeeze more quality out of their quality time? Personal chefs-they'll do the shopping, cook a couple weeks' worth of gourmet, low-fat meals and leave the food in the freezer to be consumed at will. "It's a business whose time has come. I don't think this would have worked 10 years ago," said David Mac Kay, executive director of the U.S. Personal Chef Assn., which in less than two years has grown to more than 300 members serving clients in 46 states."
---"What's for Dinner? Personal Chef Has a Gourmet Answer Lifestyle: Harried baby boomers hire professionals to do the marketing, cook a couple weeks' worth of gourmet meals, and leave them in the freezer. The service isn't cheap, but it's growing in popularity," Luis Cabrera, Los Angeles Times, Sep 11, 1994, (p. 5)

"Pursuing Rosie Daley through a supermarket takes some agility. She zips through the produce section at Whole Foods Market like a kid in a candy shop, grabbing red peppers with one hand and scooping up porcini mushrooms with the other. She wastes no time filling her cart with carrots, oranges, lettuce, greens, edible flowers and, later, bags of bulk whole-wheat flour and other grains. There's reason to tail her: Daley is Oprah Winfrey's personal chef. She knows what Winfrey wants, or at least what Winfrey ought to eat to maintain her slimmed-down figure. And Daley knows how to satisfy Winfrey's tastebuds while not straining her caloric budget. That's why three years ago Winfrey whisked Daley, 32, away from her job as chef at the Cal-a-Vie health spa in Vista, Calif., where Winfrey was spending a couple of weeks getting into shape. Personal cooks are fine for those who can afford such individual attention, but now Daley-with Winfrey's help-is putting some of Winfrey's favorite recipes into a cookbook for everybody to share. "In the Kitchen With Rosie, Oprah's Favorite Recipes" (Knopf, $14.95) goes on sale next Thursday, with a kickoff appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show and at Marshall Field's book department. But though it has an introduction by the famous talk show host and little Oprahesque vignettes that precede many of the 50 recipes, it is not a book about Winfrey, Daley says. "It's about making healthful food realistically." Daley cooks at Winfrey's Chicago apartment, at her farm in northern Indiana and at her condo in Telluride, Colo. And she stocks the Winfrey refrigerators with juices and healthful snacks and prepares foods for her to eat at the studio, on airplanes and elsewhere."
---"OPRAH'S FAVORITES PERSONAL CHEF PUBLISHES COLLECTION OF LOW-FAT RECIPES THAT FUEL STAR'S BUSY SCHEDULE," Steven Pratt, Chicago Tribune, Apr 21, 1994, (p. 3)

[1995]
"When Stephanie Hersh got her fist job as a private cjef for a family of four in Milton, Mass., in 1989, she did what she though private chefs do: she spent each day preparing haute cuisine for dinner. At the end of the first week, her employer sat her down and said they needed to talk about menus. As Ms. Hersh recalled it, her employer was reassuring but firm, telling her: 'Not that this hasn't been wonderful--it's jut not the way we eat. We like foods like macraoni and cheese and meatloaf and lasagna.'...Ms. Hersh promptly switched gears and began making simpler meals. There was a time when private chefs provided five-course meals for the leisure class. Now, both the clientele and the cuisine are changing. Because of time-crunched, nutritionally conscious, two-career families, a new breed of private chef has been spawned: one who goes into a home and cooks affordable meals that are meant to appeal to those who are tired of restaurant and takeout food. Now, there is even a business-support association for those wishing to start a personal chef service: the United States Personal Chef Association, which has 650 members in 46 states. It was founded in 1991 by David MacKay and his wife, Susan Titcomb, who is a personal chef in Albuquerque, N.M. Work as a personal chef usually offers an easier life than in restaurants. Four days a week, Nancy Davis, a former restaurant chef who runs a personal chef service in Austin, Tex., called Chef on the Run, dons her chef fatigues, loads her car with cooking equipment and groceries, and spends the day cooking in clients' kitchens--a venue she says she vastly prefers to a restaurant kitchen, with its high stress level and nighttime hours, which makes social life difficult. Ms. davis leaves 10 individually packaged entrees wand side dishes for two in the refrigerators of those clients who are on an every-there-week schedule. Her portions are large, and clients sometimes stretch two meals from one. Although she makes things like lemon-grass chicken and crayfish enchiladas, she will also accommodate blander palates. Her charge is $260 for 10 meals for two people...It often happens that clients who are initially skeptical about the prospect of a stranger in their kitchen cooking what they fear could turn out to be no more than expensive Lean Cuisine quickly become converts to the luxury of sitting down to professionally prepared meals withing minutes of arriving home from work...'When you look at the economics, it's a bargain compared to going out to eat three times a week,'...'Even so, most people regard us as somewhat extravagant, and the notion of having someone come to your home to cook is considered a but much.'...Members of the United States Personal Chef Association are not required to be trained chefs--though some are--and they range from retired jewelers to hairdressers and former military personnel."
---"Private Chefs for Busy People Who Like Their Meatloaf," Anne S. Lewis, New York Times, April 26, 1995 (p. C4)

[1998]
"Personal chefs--people who plan, shop for and prepare meals for clients in their homes--offer a novel approach in the vast food service industry that is catching on across the country...At an initial consultation, Linkens [a personal chef] sits down with customers to find out dietary preferences, and restrictions, and how they want the service tailored to fit their needs. A typical bimonthly contract includes 10 meals for two with Linkens bringing all ingredients and even his own pots and pans to the homes of customers, where he spends an entire day preparing their food. When he leaves, the refrigerator and freezer are stocked and the kitchen spotless. The menu and the budget are entirely up to the client."
---"Chef Creates a Business Providing Personal Service, Shopping to Table," Philadelphia Tribune, August 11, 1998 (p. 2B)

"Once considered trendy or a perk for the wealthy, the personal chef business is gathering steam. Zierke is one of 1,800 personal chefs around the country and Canada, according to David MacKay, founder of the U.S. Personal Chef Assn. of Albuquerque, N.M. About 11 years ago, MacKay said, he "created a concept" to get his wife, Susan, out of the hectic restaurant business. "I thought, 'Hey, if the yuppies are paying to have maids come in to their house, they'll pay to have personal chefs come in,' " he said. In 1992, he started the association with five members. Today, there are conventions, training sessions, correspondence courses, certification and a bimonthly magazine. At the present growth rate there will be more than 5,000 personal chef service businesses in the United States in five years, MacKay said."
---Demand for Personal Chefs Heats Up; Business: Cooks travel to customers' homes to prepare meals. For many, service is a lifesaver," Greg Smith, Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1998 (p. 16)

[2000]
"Personal fortunes have always demanded personal service. And over the past quarter-century the vogue in one-on-one attention has shifted from psychiatrist to personal trainer to nutritionist. Today, those flush with fortune--or seeking to emulate serious wealth--want a chef to call their own. Friends who used to ask for restaurant recommendations now ring up requesting referrals for personal chefs. The United States Personal Chef Association of Rio Rancho, N.M., estimates that only 1,000 American families employed cooks 10 years ago compared with at least 100,000 families today. Cooking schools ike Peter Kump in New York have established referral services. Dozens of personal-chef placement services have sprung up, primarily in large cities..'I was out with several well-known chefs, and as we left the restaurant, I heard one rich guy say 'There goes so and so. He's my chef,'...'Can you imagine that? Wealthy people used to put chefs in business by backing their restaurants. Now forget about the restaurant--they just want to own the chef.'. Al Martino, who owns Chef's International, a placement service in New York says that former assistants to celebrity chefs like Daniel Boulud, Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck are in the highest demand. 'The very young and newly rich haven't lived long enough to educate their taste,' Martino says. 'Employing a brand-name private chef is a way of appearing to have taste.'"
---"A Chef of One's Own," Molly O'Neill, New York Times, October 15, 2000 (p. SM119)

"Local cooking school officials and industry groups say a raging stock market, strong economy and long workdays have left people with more cash and less time, feeding the demand for personal chefs whose cuisine ranges from Asian fusion to macaroni and cheese. The product of a prosperous, health-crazed age, personal chefs have been popular on both coasts and now are gaining grounding the Midwest. "The more two-income households there are, the more people you find looking for personal chefs," said Tara Foulks, director of career services at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. The number of people seeking personal cooks through the school has roughly tripled in the last two years, Folks said. Once reserved for the aristocracy, chefs are cooking for a different clientele these days: health-conscious upper-middle-class parents and professionals sick of skipping meals or gorging themselves on fast food. According to the American Personal Chef Association (yes, there is one), some 100,000 U.S. households are sitting down to professionally cooked meals at home."
---"TIME-STARVED FAMILIES TRY PERSONAL CHEFS FAT WALLETS, BUSY DAYS FEED DEMAND FOR COOKS," Vanessa Gezari, Chicago Tribune, Aug 11, 2000, (p.1)

[2001]
"Personal chefs are a growing specialty -- and the ultimate in convenience foods. They take care of everything -- the meal planning, shopping, cooking and cleanup. Organized through the United States Personal Chefs Association (USPCA), the profession attracts people who love to cook and are good at it but don't want the stress and long hours of restaurant kitchens or the high pressure and late nights of catering. As personal chefs they get the good parts of cooking for a living -- the smiles on their clients' faces and the thank you's. They also get to control their own schedules.Born in the boom years, the USPCA has grown from about 500 people in 1995 to about 5,000 in all 50 states today, including about 100 in the Washington metropolitan area. Despite the current economic slowdown, aspiring personal chefs continue to fill up the organization's classes. Maybe that's because personal chefs don't just cook for millionaires. Their clients range from families with two working parents and too little time to cook, to singles who like good food but don't know how to cook, to people on special diets for medical reasons. Although USPCA chefs usually charge a set fee for their whole package (four portions each of five different dinner entrees), that fee is generally based on the estimated cost of a mid-priced restaurant meal in their locality. In the Washington area that means $17 to $21 per person, one of the highest in the country. It's not a paltry sum but it's well under the cost of many restaurant tabs."
---"HOUSE CALLS; A Day in the Life of a Personal Chef," Judith Weinraub, Washington Post , June 6, 2001, (p. F1)

"A power shift is astir in America's kitchens, and it has nothing to do with those little buttons on your blender. In the not-too-distant future, the country's most sought-after chefs may no longer be the celebs overseeing trendy urban restaurants and starring in TV cooking shows. Takeout food from restaurants and grocery stores may no longer be the automatic in-a-pinch choices for the harried, hungry masses. There may not even be a pinch. The emerging pacesetters are chefs who cook in customers' homes and empower them to specify the cuisine, menus, calorie content, spicing levels and dinner hour. These pros more closely resemble your grandmother than Escoffier: They also do your shopping, wash the dishes, even take out the garbage. They're graduating from cooking schools by the hundreds, and they are beginning to reshape the chef-diner relationship. "This is the kitchen equivalent of day care," says Clark Wolf, a New York-based food and restaurant consultant. "Just as we have accepted other people taking care of our kids with our instructions, we have accepted other people cooking for us with our instructions." What people want the most isn't found in any restaurant or grocery store. "What I'm selling people is time, not so much food, or I'm selling them health," says Jan Sims, who runs the 7-month-old personal chef service And What's for Dinner in Topeka, Kan. The mouth- filling slogan for her business: "Meals Like Mom Made, Made in Your Place to Your Taste." When in-home chef services came to national attention in the mid- 1990s, the prime customer base was affluent couples, usually with families. But the number of personal chefs has mushroomed since then, and today they're increasingly filtering into mainstream markets such as Sunbelt retirement communities and middle-class homes in the heartland. The United States Professional Chef Association, one of the industry's largest training and certifying organizations, places the number of full-time in-home chefs at 6,000, and the customers using them at 100,000 or more. Five years ago, "there were maybe just a few hundred personal chefs," says the association's president, David MacKay. "Today they're in every state and in every city above 50,000 (population)." A cottage industry As the number of in-home chefs has grown, the profession has taken on some of the trappings of a cottage industry. Most services are solo operations, sometimes advertised in free supermarket-shopper newspapers or by note cards pinned to bulletin boards. The chefs usually have at least an associate's degree (or the equivalent) from a culinary school. A service with 20 clients can bring in $30,000 to $40,000 a year. Typically, personal chefs visit a home once or twice a month. They prepare a dozen or more meals at a time and store them in the refrigerator or freezer for the client to reheat later. Clients pay about $14 to $20 per person per meal (usually a meat, starch and vegetable), with extras negotiable."
---"Personal chefs are no longer just for the rich 'Kitchen equivalent of day care' trickles down to the middle class," Jerry Shriver, USA Today, February 9, 2001, (p.1A)

[2003]
"Most personal chefs take food and cookware to a client's home, prepare a couple of weeks' worth of meals, some of which are frozen, and leave the place spic and span. Others cook and package meals at a commercial kitchen, since [Westchester County, NY] health codes prohibit chefs from selling the food that they prepare in their own home...Chefs must also have certification in safe food handling. Increased sophistication about food, spurred in part by star television cooks and celebrity restaurateurs, helped create this new niche in the food service industry, said Candy Wallace, executive director of the American Personal Chef Association, founded in San Diego in 1995. 'We also get a lot of clients with dietary restrictions and people watching their weight,' she said,' People can custom-tailor their food. You can't really do that in a restaurant, but if you hire a personal chef, you can sit there and watch while your meal is cooked if you want.' Ms. Wallace's organization counts 3,000 members, she said, 1,000 more than in 2001. The industry is also an outgrowth of the country's convenience culture. 'Over the years, we started with a baby sitter in the house and we have a house cleaner,' said Nancy Rossnagel of Pleasantville...'Having a chef was the next logical step.'...Being a personal chef offers unrivaled flexibility...One pitfall in a profession with such obvious upside potential is frequent client turnover."
---"Chefs Who Make House Calls," Marc Ferris, New York Times, March 2, 2003 (p. WE3)

[2007]
"As lives get increasingly busy with careers, kids, commutes and other chaos, a growing number of people are turning to personal chefs to make sure that there's a hot meal on the table at the end of a long day. Hiring a professional to cook for you isn't a whole lot different from hiring someone to clean your house or walk the dog, and it's not just for the wealthy, said John Moore, executive director of the United States Personal Chef Association. "It's not 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,'" Moore said. "People don't have personal chefs because they have tons of money, they have them because it solves a problem. It puts dinner on the table. "Personal chefs typically prepare several days' worth of customized meals in advance, potentially for several clients. The meals are prepared and packaged, ready to be popped in an oven or microwave whenever a client wants to eat.Some chefs charge a flat rate; others are paid by the hour. The chef does the grocery shopping, along with the cleanup, and those costs are added to the bill.Total costs usually range between $15 and $20 per person per meal, depending on the kind of food prepared and other related costs. That's not much different from a meal at a restaurant, Moore said."Except that people don't have to go out, pay for parking or leave a tip," Moore said. "And they get to eat a meal that was custom made just for them."Personal chefs have the potential to make more money than their restaurant counterparts, about $25 per hour on average, compared with about $14.75 for a head cook or chef in a restaurant, Moore said.As a result, the personal chef industry has gained numerous "restaurant refugees," who see the profession as a way to both get away from hectic restaurant schedules and make more money, Moore said.The association estimates that there are just over 5,000 personal chef businesses operating in the U.S. and Canada, up from about 1,500 a decade ago."
---"More people acquire taste for personal chefs," Chicago Tribune, October 11, 2007 (p. 5)

[2009]
"It takes a certain kind of personality to be a person's private chef. If that person is, say, R&B artist Keyshia Cole, then the daily menu might be low carbs, high protein and little feedback other than "that was good." If that person is a major league baseball pitcher, the Zone Diet might become a way of life, and the way you cook. Chef Barry Kraemer has that certain kind of personality, and he has cooked, professionally and personally, for Cole and the pitcher."When you're hired by a celebrity, or a family, to cook for them, you become a one-man show of housekeeper, dog walker, babysitter, chef, garbage man, grocer and go-to guy all in one," says Kraemer of the 10- to 14-hour days he has worked making low-carb meals for Cole and others. (Cole was shooting a video during Kraemer's tenure.) His job, with the help of Cole's trainer, was to "transform her body and sculpt her like a body builder." Says Kraemer of his work: "It's challenging, and I love it. But if you're looking for the 'attaboys,' this job's not for you." The chef says it's rare if he actually has contact with the famous people he's cooked for, other than an occasional "hello." The former Arden's Garden sales rep started catering for a few of his clients several years back and finally made the switch to full-time private chef when he answered Cole's trainer's ad on Craigslist. Today he runs a personal chef and catering company, Sage Kitchen. "If I didn't love serving people and taking care of them, I could never succeed at this," Kraemer says. "Because a lot of times you don't get any feedback at all." He also must like long, arduous workdays, because most are spent shopping (often going to several stores to find that one particular requested item) and prepping for not just the day but the entire week --- only to have the whole menu changed at the last minute, or a party of two at 8 turning into a party of 12 at midnight. "I just keep the freezer and pantry stocked and anticipate all the changes," Kraemer says. "And the answer to everything is 'yes.' "Jobs may last from a couple of months to years. It can be lucrative, but often when the show is over, or that transfer to another team happens, Kraemer is left holding the kitchen tongs. Kraemer, who lives in Norcross, is self-taught, learning to cook from tasting and doing. He gives his clients an extensive questionnaire once he's hired so that he can assess exactly what they want. The 43 questions cover everything from low-glycemic food preferences to dessert. The job requires an inordinate amount of organization, and Kraemer says that the kitchen must always look like "you're on TV" because guests --- from television executives to personal friends --- could drop in at any time."These are people who are used to being cared for," Kraemer says. "They have unpredictable schedules. It's a little like a cooking contest I have with myself every day.""
---"Personal chef only part of the job: Role delivers long hours, little feedback. Barry Kraemer works off questionnaire to better serve clients," Meredith Ford Goldman, The Atlanta Journal - Constitution, August 6, 2009 (p. E1)

See also: Ancient Roman cook-caterers

Restaurant menus, as we know them today, are a relatively new phenomenon. Food historians tell us they were a "byproduct" of the French Revolution. About restaurants. In the 20th century children's menus take their place at the table.

"From the early 1770s, at the latest, the use in restaurants of a printed menu, or carte, that allowed each customer to choose his or her own restoratives marked another distinctive innovation in service. Before the emergence of the restaurant, a menu had always been a list of all those foods to be served during a particular meal (as at a banquet today). Cookbooks recommended them and chefs in wealthy households composed them, but all the items on the menu were brought to the table in the course of the meal. A table d'hote had no menu; the eaters (whoever in the course of the meal might be) and the food (whatever it might be) arrived at the same moment. The restaurant's role as a place for the exhibition and treatment of individual weaknesses, however, necessitated a new sense of the menu: the creation of a list of available items from which each consumer made personal choices at the most convenient moment. In the restaurant, the vagaries of each customer-patient's malady demanded different dietary treatments; no two souls or nervous systems were "sensitive" in the same way. When ordering from a restaurant menu, the patron therefore made a highly individualistic statement, differentiating him-or herself (and his or her bodily complaint) from the other eaters and their conditions. By the mere presence of a menu, the restaurant's style of service demanded a degree of self-definition, and awareness and cultivation of personal tastes, uncalled for by the inn or cookshop...Restaurants had printed menus because they offered their customers a choice of unseen dishes...While a restaurant's fare might not be uniform...its monetary transactions were...the printed menu allowed restaurant patrons to calculate costs "before spending a penny." There in print, set and fixed before his or her very eyes, the restaurant customer saw prices and dish names, concoctions and costs. No longer required to share each of the dishes brought to a table d'hote, but permitted to concentrate on the ones he or she explicitily requested, the restaurant patrons could make preference as much a matter of finance as of taste...In a restaurant, the ostentations potlatch of baroque expenditure was replaced by the equally conspicuous and significant economy of rationalized calculation."
---The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 76-8)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information about the origin and history of the menu than can be paraphrased here. If you need more details please ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

Looking for information on the origins and evolution of classic French menus?
We find no print evidence confirming the existence of a standard "classic French twelve course menu." This style of menu making and courses is complicated. It is also fascinating. Below please find our starter notes:

"Composition of the Classic Meal...formal meals consisted of several 'course'--usually there or four but at times five or more--each composed of several dishes brought to the table at the same time. Here is how A.-B.-L. Grimod de La Reyniere describes such a meal in his 1805 Almanach des gourmands: 'An important dinner normally comprises four courses. The first consists of soups, hors d'oeuvres, releves, and entrees; the second, of roasts and salads; the third of cold pasties and various entremets; and lastly, the fourth, of desserts including fresh and stewed fruit, cookies, macaroons, cheeses, all sorts of sweetmeats, and petits fours typically presented as part of a meal, as well as preserves and ices.' In describing the different courses, Grimod de la Reyniere puts different types of dishes in the same category. Some are defined by aspect and mode of preparation...Others are defined by their position and function in the sequence..."
---Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France, Jean-Louis Flandrin, translated by Julie E. Johnson [University of California Press:Berkeley] 2007(p. 3-4)

"Many nineteenth-century authors suggested or justified a reduction in the number of courses and dishes. We have seen that between the sixteenth century and the seventeenth, fewer course came to be served at aristocratic tables. But their number was far from fixed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Important dinner... usually had five courses--soups, entrees, roasts, entremets, and dessert...Menon's Cuisineire bougreoise, published in 1746, offers one three course menu and two four-course menus, which also differ in how the courses are distributed."
---Arranging the Meal (p. 95)

SAMPLE SEVEN COURSE MENU
"Soup
The Remove (any combination of meat, game, fish and poultry is permissable)
The Entree (meat, sweetbreads, poultry, fish)
First Entremets (croque-en-bouche, small fish, pate, etc.)
The Roast (centerpiece of the meal)
Secont Entremets (cooked vegetables, fruit)
Dessert (cakes, pastries, etc.)"
---Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth Century [Harper Row:New York] 1973 (p. 111-114)

• The Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth Century/Jean-Paul Aron
• Arranging The Meal: A History of Table Service in France/Jean-Louis Flandrin
• European Gastronomy: The Story of Man's Food and Eating Customs/Willi Bode
• "Menus,"Larousse Gastronomique [Crown:New York] 1961 (p. 617-620)
• Historical Banqueting (with menus)

• What's on the menu?
  
• Our survey of historic menus
  
• Historic restaurant menu collections here.

About children's menus
The earliest references we find in print to children's menus (developed specifically for children, not a separate list of choices printed on the adult menu) are from the late 1930s. These were developed by railroad companies in order to entertain their youngest customers (thus appeasing their ticket-paying parents).

"Featured by the Frisco is a children's menu card printed in color with pictures of farm and train scenes. One page is black and white which can be colored with crayons provided by the steward."
---"Rail Notes: Ferry's End," Ward Allen Howe, New York Times, February 27, 1938 (p. 167)

"Parents may share portions with younger members of the family; half portions at half prices are served to children. Simple and wholesome food is always a concern when the youngsters go on a trip, and the demand for it is met on many trains by children's menus. The cards, with pictures of nursery-tale characters divert the young patron while the waiter fetches the well cooked cereal of poached eggs and milk toast."
---"Art of Dining Adjusted to Speed," New York Times, May 22, 1938 (p. 128)

"When children rode the train, special efforts were made to add to their dining pleasure. It might begin with the steward, cookie jar in hand, passing through the train handing out complimentary between-meal snacks. When he seated children in the dining car, he might hand each one a peppermint stick. The colorful children's menu, sometimes with a happy story or interesting facts included, often named the meal as to enhance the fantasy children exprienece when traveling by train. So chicken soup, a broiled lamb chop, mashed potatoes, carrot sticks and ice cream became the "Engineer's Special Dinner." Children's mealtime favorites included spaghetti, a broiled hamburger with French Fried potatoes, and French toast...Every effort was made to ensure that all children ate and enjoyed their meals, and that memories of the experience lingered with them. They were, after all, the next generation of riders." ---Dining by Rail, James D. Porterfield [St. Martin's Griffin:New York] 1993 (p. 311)

Children's menus proliferated in the booming years after World War II. They continued the tradition of entertainment set by the railroads. Family friendly suburban restaurants (Howard Johnson's, for example) were well known for their creative children's menus in alternative formats.

Online documents from the University of Washington contain three examples of children's menus. The earliest is dated 1950. Note states menus bgan to be popular in the 1950s.

• Rhodes Mezzanine Tearoom
  Description: Rhodes Mezzanine Tea Room, Children's Menu Date: ca. 1950 Notes: Rhodes Mezzanine Tea Room was located in Rhodes Department Store, 2nd Avenue in downtown Seattle. The Children's Menu is die-cut and illustrated in the shape of a circus wagon with a lion inside. The menu features items for children grouped together under such names as "The Farmer in the Dell" and "Jack Frost" (Egg Salad Sandwich with Malted Milk). Each meal has an illustration of the particular story for which it is named. For the "tiny tots" they have a selection of Gerber's baby foods. Children's menus were a trend started during the baby boom of the late 1940s and lasting into the 1960s, and the Rhodes Mezzanine was a popular place for ladies and their children during lunch. While there one could request one's favorite tune to be played live on the pipe organ that resided on Rhodes' Mezzanine.
• Marshall Field's
  Descrption: Frederick & Nelson, Paul Bunyan Tiny Tots Menu Date: ca. 1965 Notes: Frederick & Nelson (Department Store), 5th Avenue & Pine Streets. Illustrated Paul Bunyan Tiny Tots' menu, includes theme meals, illustrated with clowns, giraffe, Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan was also the theme of the soda fountain restaurant on the basement level. Menu has promotion of Frederick & Nelson children's departments and activities for children on back.
• Ivar's Indian Salmon House
  Description: Ivar's Indian Salmon House Children's Menu Date: ca. 1965 Notes: Ivar's Indian Salmon House, 401 Northlake Way. Mask die-cut and illustrated with a design of a male Indian's head. There are eye holes, a cut out for a nose, and rubberbands for fastening the mask around the ears. This child's menu is from the early days of this restaurant, which later changed its name to Ivar's Salmon House (and still exists today). Adult menus (and the restaurant itself) are decorated authentic Northwest Indian designs. Child's menu items are on the back, which is illustrated with totem poles and wetlands.

historic overview & pictures.

If you would like to read more automat history ask your librarian to help you find these:

The Automat, Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2002
"Age of the Automat," Restaurants & Institutions, October 1, 1996 p.57 (4 pps)
"Echoes of the Automat," Supermarket Business, December 1994, p.91 (4 pps)
"History of the Automat," Smithsonian Magazine, January 1986 p.50 (10 pps)
"Last Automat Closes," New York Times, April 11, 1991, p.B1
"Meet Me at the Automat," Smithsonian magazine, August 2001

How do I find authentic Horn & Hardart recipes?
Evidence suggests that the original recipes used by H & H were closely guarded secrets:

"In the heyday of Automats, recipes were stowed in a safe, and they told not only how to make the food but where to position it on the plate."
---Last Automat shuts its many little doors forever," Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1991 (p.2).

This might explain why there are only a few H & H attributed recipes printed in books and circulating on the Internet. Are they authentic? Maybe. We are still researching the topic. According to an article printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer [August 8, 1994, section D, p. 1: Horn & Hardart foods are back], "Entrepreneurs Aaron J. Katz and Albert A. Mazzone have recreated recipes from the old Horn & Hardart restaurants..." This article does not indicate whether these recreations were made from original recipes or the product of a good chef's professional approximation. Here are the recipes commonly attributed to Horn & Hardart:

• The Automat, Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart--baked beans, beef and noodles with burgundy sauce, chicken potpie, chocolate-chip cookies, creamed spinach, macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed turnips, oatmeal cookies, pumpkin pie, rice pudding, tapioca pudding
  
• New York Cook Book, Molly O'Neill-- baked beans (p. 155), baked macaroni & cheese (p. 248)
  
• The Automat--macaroni & cheese, baked beans & creamed spinach
  
• RecipeSource--2 recipes for macaroni & cheese, 1 for baked beans (search keywords: horn hardart)

Charlie Trotter's currently offers diners a kitchen table experience. "Most agree the chef's table got its start in Europe more than a century ago. Chefs, who worked long hours, wanted to see their family and friends so they fed them in the kitchen. The concept has evoled into a feast of a dinner than can include six to 12 smaller-sized courses, specially concocted after guests choose their wine or other beverages. many cheftfs' tables are so popular they are booked for weeks, often months, in advance. Trotter, for example, claims his table is the most sought after in Chicago. So who would be willing to shell out as much as $100 to $150 a person...to dine in a busy kitchen? Some are celebrities who want to avoid pointing fingers and autograph hounds...Some are business types looking to stage the ultimate power meal. And still others are out to impress a date or celebrate a special occasion. David Brill, a restaurant consultant, puts it another way. 'Basically, it's for the chef's friends...'...Even Trotter admits that life at a chef's table doesn't always go as planned...He also runs into the occasionally rowdy group that has to be asked to quiet down while in his kitchen. On the flip side, a chef's table helps set a restaurant aparat in cities that are saturated with eateries." ---"Fad or favoritism? The chef's table is all the rage today," Martha Irvine, Philadelphia Tribune, September 1, 1998 (p. 2B)

"Slaves did the cooking (everyone but the poorest Romans had at least one or two), leaving the mistress of the house free to oversee the acquisition of supplies and the state of stock on hand. The richest people even had well-paid cooks (coci); those unable to afford a regular cook hired on when needed for a banquet."
---A Taste of Ancient Rome, Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, tranlsated by Anna Herklotz, forward by Mary Taylor Simeti [University of Chicago Press:Chicago] 1992 (p. 21)

"The Roman matron didn't cook. In all other countries and provinces a woman's place was in the kitchen, but in Rome cooking was a slave's job...Famous gourmets, like Lucullus and Apicious, were a dab hand with the pots and pans but so too were emperors, like Vitellius and Heliogabalus. True gourmets found cooking too important to leave it to slaves: Alexis also makes it clear in the play The Pit' that the art of cooking is a fitting occupation of the freeborn. For the cook in that play is far from being a bumpkin. Indeed, the cookery writers Kerakleides and Glaucus of Locris also clearly state that the art of cookery should not be left to slaves or even to ordinary freedmen.' (Anth. XIV-661e)...On special occasions a hired cook came to demonstrate his arts. The plays o f Plautus, form the third century BC, feature many commercial cooks. They are independent-minded, humorous figures, with a tendency to boast. As freelance businessmen they sometimes had their own retinue of slaves--kitchen helpers, but also waiters, flautists and dancers--so that they could provide complete party service. The chef was called the archmagirus, or magirus, the sous-chef was the vicarius supra cocos, and there were other cooks below him. Some rich people owned hundreds of cooks, whom they took with them when they travelled. Others hired additional cooks only for parties. Most cooks, however, were slaves, with all the restrictions that that implied...Cooks were for sale in the slave markets as bakers, grinders, buyers, carvers, chefs and so on. The question of finding the right person for the right job. This was no simple matter, because the slaves were in competition with each other...Heavy demands were made of a cook: the playwright Nicomedes insisted on an understanding of astrology, mathematics, medicine and art..."
---Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome, Patrick Faas [Palgrave McMillan:New York] 1994 (p. 125-8)

"Cooks were highly paid and sought-after professionals. From the fifth century BC many cookbooks were written by philosophers, physicians, cooks and gourmets for the instruction of philosophers, physicians, cooks and gourmets. Unfortunately, with the exception of a compilation or recipes that survived in two manuscripts from the late fourth or early fifth centuries inder the name of Apicius, and the massive work of Atheneus from the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, none survived. The Deiphosophistae of Athenaeus is, on the other hand, a treasure trove of information, gossip, legend, literary quotation, ethnography, potted history, philosophical and medical lore and the like, all centered around dining, food and drink. ..They claim that the good cook must penetrate nature, know something about medicine, about the seasons, the setting and rising of the stars, in order to be able to prepare food that is nourishing and will be properly digested and exhaled'...On a less exhalted plane, cooks claimed to know what was good for digestions, for promoting regularity, and for averting all sort of sicknesses and plagues and chills."
---From Feasting to Fasting, Veronika E. Grimm [Routledge:London] 1996 (p. 46-7)

Chefs, as we know them today, evolved from several distinguished lines of professions engaged in cooking-for-hire. Antonin Careme is generally credited for elevating this profession to modern status and establising the chef's uniform.

"Chef. A person who prepares food as an occupation in a restaurant, private house or hotel...Chefs have occupied an important role in society from the 5th century BC onwards and in the Middle Ages, with the creation of guilds, they constituted a hierarchical community. In France, in the reign of Henri IV, the guilds split up into several separate branches: rotisseurs were responsible for la grosse viande (the main cuts of meat), patissiers dealt with poultry, pies and tarts, and vinaigriers made the sauces. The traiteurs (caterers) included the master chefs, the cooks and the porte-chapes (the chape was a convex cover to keep dishes hot), and they had the privilege of organizing weddings and feasts, collations and various meals at home. These chefs cuisiniers (head cooks), as they were now called, served a period of apprenticeship, at the end of which they had to create a masterpiece of meat or fish. High-ranking chefs were revered, and some of them, like Taillevent, were raised to the nobility. The most famous of all was undoubtedly Careme. Under the Ancien Regime, a distinction was made between the officier de cuisine, who was the actual cook, and the officier de bouche, who was in fact the butler...From the 19th century onwards, chefs wore a large white hat to distinguish them from their assistants...It seems that the hat first made its appearance in the 1820s."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 264-5)

"Chef is a French word, which has entered other languages, denoting a professional cook. It is a contraction of the phrase chef de cuisine hence originally a description of rank as much as, if not more, than, occupation...Although there had obviously always been cooks in charge of other cooks--there is the 15th-century description of the chief cook whos job was tasting and testing, not cooking--the phrase itself did not appear before the beginning of the 19th century, passing quickly from France to England and other countries...Before that chefs were called cooks, sometimes qualified as man-cooks, master-cooks, cook-maids, professed cooks, principal cooks, or even (in the case of La Chapelle on the title-page of The Modern Cook, 1733) chief cook'. In particularly grand and conservative establishments in France before the Revolution, the head cook might be called ecuyer de cuisine, supported by ranks of specialists such as rotisseurs, patissiers, and so forth, as well as a body of cuisiniers...The adoption of a new professional description must surely reflect a change in cooks' circumstances...Into this vacuum floated the possibility of a new breed of cook: the artist-cook, described with eloquence and conviction by the most influential practitioner and writer of the decades, Antonin Careme, who both orchestrated developments in contemporary haute cuisine and acted as role model to many aspiring cooks...Careme offered an intellectual platform for cooks to redefine their professional status, while the way in which high cookery was developing towards stratified working methods to achieve complex culinary ends gave practical reasons for at least some cooks to rise to the top of the heap...In his own writings, Careme refers to the rank of chef de cuisine..It was the invation of territory hitherto occupied by the steward of the household (in England) that gave the cook new status...when the cook began to compose his own menus as well as design his own pieces montees and supervise the order of service, it was a defininate extension of his duties into the realm of steward, and would be utter conquest when the clerk of the kitchen and provision of all supplies became subject to the chef as well. The job definitions of the British cook and author Charles Elme Francatelli (1805-76), a student of Careme's, indicate the shifts in function. At the outset of his career he was the chef de cuisine...In its passage into other languages, particularly English, the word chef has come to stand alone, and describe function more than status...Victor Hugo, discussing Careme's patronage of the arts during his time with James de Rothschild, calls him cuisiner...never chef; the French trade association was one of cuisiniers, not chefs...It was in fact the organizational reforms by Escoffier's generation that caused the extension of the term chef' to a wider body of workers....Chefs were invariably male, largely because a large restaurant kitchen was a man's world. Women who worked commercially remained cook, cuisiners, or "meres" such as Mere Poulard of omelette fame. Since technology and social progress have allowed the entry of more women into the once all-male brigades, so they have also been given the same titles."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 158-162)
[NOTE: This book has far more information than can be paraphrased here. See also the entry for "Cook." Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

Who was Antonin Careme?
Careme was one of the most famous culinary figures of the 19th century. He is credited for several significant professional reforms and elevating the profession of chef to the status we know today.

"Careme, Marie-Antoine( known as Antonin) French chef and pastrycook (born Paris, 1783; died Paris, 1833). Born into a large and very poor family, the young Careme was put out on the street at the age of ten, to be taked in by the owner of low-class restarurant at the Maine gate; where he learned the rudiments of cookery. At 16, he became an apprentice to Bailly of the Rue Vivienne, one of the best pastrycooks in Paris. Amazed by Careme's abilities and willingness to learn, Bailly encouraged him, in particular by allowing him to study in the print-room of the National Library. Here Careme copied architectural drawings, on which he based his patisserie creations; these were greatly admired by Baily's customers, including the First Consul himself. Careme met Jean Avice, an excellent practitioner of cuisine, who also advised and encouraged him. Then the young man's talents became noticed by Tallyrand, who was a customer at Bailly's and he offered to take Careme into his service. Careme's genius. For 12 years Careme managed the Tallyrand kitchens. The culinary and artistic talents of his chef enabled Tallyrand to wield gastronomy effectively as a diplomatic tool. Careme also served the Prince Regent of England, the future King George IV, and was then sent to the court of Tsar Alexander I; he was responsible for introducing some classic Russian dishes into French cuisine, including borsch and koulibiac. Careme numbered among the other employers the Viennese Court, the British Embassy, Princess Bagration and Lord Steward. He spent his last years with Baron de Rothschild and died at 50, burnt out by the flame of his genius and the charcoal of the roasting-spit' (Laurent Tailhad), but having realized his dream: To publish a complete book on the state of my profession in our times.' The works written by Careme include Le Patissier pittoresque (1815), Le Maitre d'hotel francais (1822), Le Patissiere royal parisien (1825), and, abovea ll, L'Art de la cuisine au XIXe siecle (1833). This last work was published in five volumes; the last two were written by his follower, Plumery... Careme's contribution. A theoretician as well as a practitioner, a tireless worker as well as an artistic genius., Careme nonetheless had a keen sense of fashionable and entertaining. He understood that the new aristocracy, born under the Consulat, needed luxury and ceremony. So he prepared both spectacular and refined recipes, including chartreuses, desserts on pedastals, elaborate garnishes and embellishments, new decorative trimmings and novel assemblies. A recognized founder of French grand cuisine, Careme placed it at the forefront of national prestige. His work as theoretician, sauce chef, pastrycook, designer and creator of recipes raised him to the pinnacle of his profession...Careme was proud of his unique art: sensitive to decoration and struck on elegance, he always has a sense of posterity. He wanted to create a school of cookery that would gather together the most famous chefs, in order to set the standard for beauty in classical and modern cookery, and attest to the distant future that the French chefs of the 19th century were the most famous in the world'...Careme was also concerned with details of equipment. He redesigned certain kitchen utensils, changed the shape of saucepans to pour sugar, designed moulds and even concerned himbself with details of clothing, such as the shape of the hat."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 220-1)

Recommended reading: Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef/Ian Kelly

Why (in history) were most chefs men?
Chefs were traditionally men for the same reasons as lawyers, doctors, professors, military officers, clerics. In most cultures, professional positions of power were restricted to free males. Only recently have women begun to break these ranks.

Who was the first recorded chef in the world?
Interesting question. The food history books do not offer a simple answer. Instead, they describe the history and evolution of the profession we now call chef'. In sum, people have been cooking grand meals for others for thousands of years. They were not called chefs, however. The culinary profession was stratified by guilds during the Middle Ages. Some of these guilds (think labor unions) had the word "chef" in the title. "Chef cuisiner," or head cook was one of these. Many significant professional reforms were made in the early 19th century, including the eventual elevation of chef cuisiner (chief cook) to one in charge of all aspects of kitchen management. Many of the most famous "chefs" (as we think of them today) were not called such during their own times.

Food historians generally credit Apicius (4th century?), a Roman cook, for recording (writing) the first cookbook. There is much discussion regarding the both the author and the cookbook. You will find a brief discussion in Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food (p. 24). In a broad interpretation of the term chef' Apicius might be the answer you are looking for. Certainly, recipes were recorded long before Apicius

Recommended reading

• A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons
  ---traces the evolution of the culinary profession from ancient times to present
• Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession, Amy B. Trubek
  ---focus on classic French cuisine

ABOUT CHEF'S UNIFORMS
The history and evolution of the chef's uniform is a fascinating and complicated topic. Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer, The Culinary Institute of America's reference librarian, observes much of the "popular" literature circulating on this subject falls into the category of folklore. Her research confirms contemporary chef's uniforms descend from the long march of practical occupational costumes. Case in point? The "Toque Blanche." The term, on its most basic level, means a fitted white headcovering. Primary evidence confirms headgear worn by head chefs through the years varied according to culture and period. Long before the "Toque Blanche" denoted a striking headpiece visually calling out kitchen rank, it referred to a respected gastronomic fraternity. It was not until the 20th century that tall, white, pleated culinary crowns reigned supreme. Black chef's toques offer their own curious parallel history. Scholars like Ms. Crawford-Oppenheimer challenge us to question tantalizing stories of chef-wear resulting from cooks hiding in early Greek [Byzantine] monasteries and 100 pleats for 100 ways to prepare eggs. "Facts" repeated by several sources have an insipid way of becoming their own truth. Most of the notes below come from the CIA's special file:

"Evolution of chef's dress...this dress is not really of great antiquity but is the outcome rather of gradual evolution. It appears to have been completely standarized only during the full blossoming of the hotel industry in this [20th] century. Cooks in mediaeval kitchen kitchens appeared to work in a variety of costumes of which some sort of apron would seem to be the only common denominator. Bt Victorian times...There is no doubt that working dress (apart from its functional purpose) plays an important part in establishing morale and in heightening or diminishing job prestige...Because of the nature of the work he has to do it is equally important that it is worn with intelligent regard for its purpose, which includes, importantly, the maintenance of hygiene and the aiding of cool working."
---Chef's Manual of Kitchen Management, John Fuller [Batsford:London] 1962 (p. 19-20)

The Toque, folklore:

"The tall white hat, or toque, symbolizes the art of fine cooking throughout much of the world. Some sources say that the toque originated in Assyria in the mid-seventh-century B.C., when King Assurbanipal lived in fear of being poisoned. He required the head cooks in wealthy households to wear pleated cloth headdreses similar to those worn by the royalty. This headgear served both to identify the cooks of a particular household and to encourage allegiance. A second legend traces the toque back to antiquity, when rulers presented master culinarians with bonnet-like caps studded with laurel leaves, emblems of the ruler's office, in a ceremony that marked the beginning of all official feasts. Yet another tale situates the origin of the toque at the end of the sixth century A.D., when barbarians from northern Europe overran the Byzantine Empire. To escape persecution, philosophers and artists fled to Greek monasteries for refuge, where they found themselves in the company of Orthodox priests who enjoyed good food. This legend tells that many of the refugees became cooks in the monastery kitchens, adopting the cassock and headgear of the priests to disguise themselves. However, they chose to wear white instead of traditional black, as a mark of individualtiy. Of course, none of these accounts can be verified and most likely the chef's toque evolved over time, with no single country or culture entirely responsible for its creation. The French word toque, by was of the Spanish toca, originally referred to a head covering worn by both men and women. Eventually, the toque took the shape of a small, round, close-fitting or "crown" of cloth with a gathering of material that was often pleated to cover the top of the head. By the sixteenth century, the characteristics of the hat varied from country to country...we must credit the famous chef Antonin Careme... with bringing the modern toques into the kitchen. He is said to have been inspired to change his floppy, beret-style cap when he saw a woman wearing a stiff, white hat on the street one day.
---"The Chef's Uniform," The Culinary Institute of America, Gastronmica, Winter 2001 (p. 89-90)

"In the days of the ancient Greek and Roman empires, at festivals which lasted weeks...the Master Culinarians, prior to serving the food, were called before the rulers who crowned them with a bonnet-like cap, studded with laurel leaves, an emblem of their office. This ceremony marked the beginning of the feast...at noted Papal dinners, where the food was prepared by monks, we find only that expert culinarians wore the white cap, whereas the novices remained bareheaded...during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, the ordinary skull caps came into style and these were worn by apprentices, workers, and expert chefs, varying only in colors according to rank. During the same period, deeds of exceptional value and creative skill in cookery were rewarded by allowing the creator to wear the white cap--Toque Blanche--for a period of time befitting the merit of his deed...M. Boucher, chef of the Prince de Tallyrand in thee early part of the 18th century, is credited with having brought the Toque Blanche into mode...An interesting and unusal story is told of Germain Chevet. Chevet, who was the creator of a rose of rare beauty, was ordered to cultivate this specie exclusively for Louis XIV, King of France. When Chevet arrived in Paris, during the outbreak of the French Revolution, he founded a restaurant bearing his name at the Palais Royal which became the favorite meeting place of the gourmets. This restaurant was surrounded by beds of the famous King's rose, and Chevet insisted that each member of his culinary staff wear a fresh rose in the crown of his Toque Blanche every day..."
---"La Toque Blanche," Alfred G. Wagner, Chef, Culinary Review, January 1939 (p. 27)

The facts:

"Of course, the matter of kitchen headgear immediatedly brings to mind the outlandish tower of cloth that is the true chef's hat, or toque (French for a soft, brimless, usually small hat). Could it be that this evidence had evolved or been invented for venerable chefs with career-weakened eyes?...The origin of the chef's toque are somewhat obscure. The distingushed gastronomical authority Andre Simon said that it is a copy of the had worn by Greek Orthodox priests and dates from a time of upheaval (some say the sixth century A.D.) when "many famous cooks to escape persecution sought refuge in monasteries." Other investigations into the subject, however, make it clear that regardless of what may have happened in early Greece, monasteries, today's toque was reinvented around 1900. In both France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, those cooks who bothered with headgear at all wore a soft cotton hat, or bonnet, that looked very much like a nightcap. The great transition from shapelss to shaped can be attributed with some cretainty to Marie-Antoine Careme, the renowned chef of the early nineteenth century, who at the time was in the service of the English ambassador to Vienna, Lord Stewart. As Careme wrote in his Maitre d'Hotel francais (1822), 'Meditating ceaselessly on the elegance of our work, I had dreamed for a long time of ways to change the manner in which we wear our cotton cap; for it appeared to me absolutely necessary not to change the cap itself, whose whiteness allies it so well to the rest of our uniform, and whose extreme cleanliness is the handsomest endowment of the cook. Professionals distinguish themselves by it, and by the order that they bring to their work...At the time that I had the idea of wearing my cap thus trimmed with a circle of cardboard (one could make it an octagon), which lends it more grace, I found myself in Vienna during my last stay in 1821. Every day around eleven in the morning, I repesented the dinner menu to his Excellency Lord S--------. The Ambassador looked at me, smiled, and said: 'This new style better suits the cook.' I pointed out to his Excellency that a cook should be the image of good health, while our ordinary cap is more reminiscent of the state of convalescence. My Lord agreed, and I never gave up my new headgear. My young men took it up, and several cooks of Vienna admired their newly fashionable selves, never doubting that they would find devotees in Paris.' Careme's modest effort at bestowing a little "grace" on the chef's cap ushered in a new era of experimentation. The following decades tossed up a number of new styles, from pill-box shaped porkpie hats...to tam o'shanters...from black berets ato great cotton puffs swept backwards. Out of the welter of invention arose the modern toque, which Phillis Cunnington and Catherine Lucas, two historians of English costume, call 'one of the tallest hats ever to dignify a man.' Dignify, they suggest, is the true meaning of the toque; high hats have quite frequently adorned the leaders of social groups and lent them a commensuraltey imposing physical stature."
---The Curious Cook, Harold McGee [Macmillan:New York] 1990 (p. 28+)

"Unlike Talleyrand or the Prince Regent...Lord Stewart met his celebrity chef in the kitchens--Careme's domain. And here, in 1821, he first noticed a difference in his chef's appearance. Antonin had take to wearing a raised hat, a sort of toque, in contract to the white nightcaps usually worn in kitchens in those days. When Stewart, in his halting French, asked why, Antonin said he felt a chef should not dress as for a sickbed--perhaps after the unfortunate demise of La Grande Bagration who never recovered from the 'almost total inactivity' that overcame her on her diet of pure Careme. Antonin's insistence on stiffening his white hat was imitated first by the chefs of Vienna, then Paris, and then everywhere. Antonin later published an illustration of the cap, stiffened with a round of cardboard and later still he even suggested--in an early example of celebrity-chef product endorsement--the best place to buy one: the bonnetier M. Pannier, on the boulevard de la Madeleine in Paris."
---Cooking for Kings: The Life of the First Celebrity Chef, Ian Kelly [Walker & Company:New York] 2003 (p. 188-9)

Black caps?

"The mystery of the 'Black Hat Chefs' has been solved thanks to William J. Spry, executive chef, Hotel Dorset, NYC...Spry, who is a native of England, wrote to his friends there to get the factual history...Here is what he reports: 'In the Middle Ages, British cooking was known as Baronial Cooking. As a tradition the main course of a meal consisted of huge roasts, barons of beef, lamb, wild boar, or venison were roasted on a spit above a large roaring fire, which in most casts was beneath a huge chimney breast. The task of suervising this operation was of course undertaken by the Master Cook. This mean that anyone operating a spit was in danger of his hat receiving a large amount of soot and debris falling down the chimney. Thus for all practical purposes, the Black Cap was more serviceable than a white one, and so it evolved that the Master Cook always wore a short Black Cap. As the kitchens of these Baronial Halls were quite often a considerable distance from the dining hall, the cap of the cook was pressed flat to enable him to carry the huge platter on his head..."
---"Black Hat Chefs Mystery Solved," Restaurant Exchange News, June 1981 (p. 9)

"The great Alexis Soyer even when in 'whites' did not wear the high bonnet, the toque...but a somewhat flamboyant creation which approximated to a tasselled beret in black velvet. Even after Soyer's day the white hat was by no means de rigeur amongst all chefs and in the last ten years of the nineteenth century there were many instances of chefs like M. Claudius...who wore a headgear something like a librarian's black skull cap. Indeed, in a cookery book published in 1919 there is a photograph of Victor Hirtzler who was chef of the Hotel St. Francis, San Francisco, wearing a dark skull cap very much of this pattern. He is dressed otherwise in the chef's costume familiar today. In this country [UK], a similar black skull cap is still worn by the master cook...at the famous English-style restaurant, Simpson's in the Strand. It has accordingly been inferred that this is specifically an English cook's distinctive insignia but as has already been noted there is pictorial evidence that chefs of other nationalities have, in relatively recent times, sported a head-dress not dissimilar."
---Chef's Manual of Kitchen Management, John Fuller [Batsford:London] 1962 (p. 19-20)

100 pleats for 100 eggs?

"Pleated toques are usually about eight inches high, but chefs in a position of authority can wear hats ten to twelve inches in height. It is said that the chef's toque blanche has one hundred pleats to represent the one hundred ways to cook an egg. The pleated white hat remains customary to this day and represents a long tradition in the cooking profession."
---"The Chef's Uniform," The Culinary Institute of America, Gastronmica, Winter 2001 (p. 89-90)

"It was regarded as natural that any chef, worthy of the name, could cook an egg at least one hundred ways. Tne most renowned chefs often...[claimed]...they could serve their royal masters a different egg dish every day of the year."
---A Pageant of Hats, Ancient and Modern, Ruth Edwards Kilgour [Robert M. McBride:New York] 1958 (p. 382)

Perhaps this is another twist on the classic chicken & egg conundrum? Period & place fit...

"Louis, Marquis de Cussy. One of the wittiest gastronomes of the early 19th century (born Coutances, 1766; died Paris, 1837). He held the post of prefect of the palace under Napoleon I. If his great friend Grimod de la Reyniere is to be believed, Cussy invented 366 different ways of preparing chicken--a different dish for each day, even in a leap year. In 1843 he published Les Classiques de la table, in which he devoted many pages to the history of gastronomy. He also wrote several articles. As principal steward of the emperor's household, he looked after the wardrobe, the furniture and the provisions of the court. When Louis XVIII succeeded Napoleon, it is said that at first he refused to have anything to do with Cussy, but that later, learning that he was the creator of strawberries a la Cussy, he gave him a post of responsibility. Chefs have dedicated several recipes to him..."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated, [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 389)

About the coat

"Almost as distinguising as the toque blanche is the veste blanche, or double-breasted white jacket. Its military style is no accident of fashion. The earliest chefs were servants of kings and could very possibly have been called upon to serve on the battlefield as well as the dining hall. Much less has been written about the chef's coat than about the toque. Most references suggest that white was chosen to emphasize good sanitation. Jackets ranged from long-sleeved coats fashioned after papal dress to costumes derived from rural dress, which included a jacket covered by a long apron and worn with a knotted kerchief around the neck. The jacket protected the chef from the heat, as it still does today. The coat has other advantages, as well. A split at the cuff seam allows the cuffs to be turned back, giving the chef a neat an professional appearance that would be lost through rolled-up sleeves; at the same time it ensure protection to the forearms and wrists in the event of a splatter or spill. The double-breasted design offers a quick fix for hiding soiled areas, since the panels can easily be reversed to regain a crisp, white, professional appearance."
---"The Chef's Uniform," Gastronomica, Winter 2001, Vol. 1, No. 1 (p. 90)

"Changing the lady?" Common sense suggests this phrase describes swapping coat buttons to make clean appearance. To date, we have not found any definative print references regarding the originator/first date of this phrase.

Chef's Pants and Apron

"The history of the chef's checkered pants is the most difficult to document. Most sources assume that this fabric was chosen to couflage spills. While bakers wore white, chefs turned to either regular black-and-white checks or a houndstooth pattern, with the exact color and pattern varying from place to place. Some believe that the houndstooth check originated in the costume of the English master huntsman. Designed with built-in safety features, chef's pants sometimes have snaps instead fo a zipper so that they can literally be torn away to prevent bodily burns in the event of an accidental spill. The pant legs are straight, not cuffed or rolled, so that liquids cannot be trapped at the ankle. The very first chef's uniform was no more than an apron worn to protect clothing from inevitable splashes and spills. The messier the work, the longer the apron. Butchers wore long aprons; skilled artisans and craftsmen wore theirs shorter."
---"Chef's Uniform," (p. 90)

Recommended reading: Occupational Costume in England/Phillis Cunnington

Too much information? Check these sites if you need a quick summary for a short report:

• The Uniform/Culinary Institute of America
• History of the Chefs Uniform
• Chef's Togs and Badges
• La Toque Blanche/Chef Harvey

Anniversary celebrations from The Culinary Institute of America: I, II & III.

Sources for current market information & statistics

1. The American Culinary Federation accredits USA programs
2. EBSCO's magazine article databases (MasterFile, Business Source, Hospitality & Tourism) provide news on the latest trends and noteworthy events. Search "cooking schools" or the name of a particular institution. Many of these articles are available full-text. Ask your librarian how to accesss these databases (they're not free on Google).
3. Chef occupational data & outlook (USA)

Delicatessen, definition circa 1911

Recommended reading:

• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America/Andrew F. Smith editor
• Hungering For America: Italian, Irish & Jewish Foodwasy In the Age of Migration/Hasia R. Diner
• New York Times Historic Database/Proquest (1851--2004):sample menus, popular delis, market trends, etc.

Recommended reading: Save the Deli/David Sax

• Street food
• Ancient Roman taverns
• Elizabethan England
• 19th century French Bistros
• 19th century British fish & chips
• Fast Food, St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture
• Survey of American fast food options
• Fast food franchise time line (20th century USA)

ANCIENT ROMAN TAVERNS

"Rome had countless bars, restaurants and inns...Tabernae, taverns, were found chiefly near the bathhouses, but also near temples, libraries and other public buildings. There were several different kinds. Engravings show that they all had an L- or horseshoe-shaped bar made of stone and cement. In comparison with a modern bar, it was low-just over a metre height. Four or five clay pots were permanently bricked into the bar, sometimes with a mortar. This meant that they were well insulated so food and drink could be kept warm or cold in them for a long time. Near the bar stood a small bronze oven, usually portable, in which water was kept at a boiling point. The larger taverns had a separate kitchen and a cellar. If the space was large enough, low tables and stools were arranged close to the bar; otherwise customers had to stand...Food in the taverns was less spectacular than in wealthy houses, but the proprietors prepared it freshly. Typical dishes would have included the popular puls (a porridge or rissoto) and dishes with beans, peas or lentils. From the time of Emperor Vespasian these were the only dishes dishes taverns were permitted to serve. Claudius and some other emperors had prohibited the sale of boiled meat, and any tavern foolish enough to offer it was closed down. Thus to circumvent the law, meat was usually boiled on the street...We can conclude form this that boiled meat was popular. Frescoes, ancient graffiti and other sources suggest that roasted meat was also served, such as ham and pig's head, with eel, olives, figs, possibly sausage, fishballs, meatballs, salads, poultry, marinated vegetables, cheese, eggs, omelettes and all manner of light snacks (think of Italian antipasto and Spanish tapas)...Fornax means oven', and this restaurant was a sort of pizzeria."
---Around the Roman Table, Patrick Faas [Palgrave MacMillan:New York] 2003 (p. 41-2)

"The more convival side of Rome's night-life is represented by the taverns and hot food stalls. These were more than a nocturnal luxury: they were also a daily necessity in a crowded city many of whose poorer inhabitants could not possibly have risked lighting a cooking fire in their tenements...The noise and aroma of Rome's street food began before sunrise...and continued throughout the day...Everybody ate street food, even emperors. It was slightly less respectible to eat in the pervigiles popinae ever-open cookshops'...The bars and taverns in and around the great Baths were the nearest thing that Rome had to restaurants. In some you could choose wither to sit or to recline; and in some you could spend serious money...while the snacks available in others would be converted into a full meal only by a miser...In some you could demand a certain level and variety of cuisine for which the ordinary cookshops had no time at all..."
---Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and Indulgence in the Roman World, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2000 (p. 218-220)
[NOTE: some of the foods referenced in this sections include: sausages, hot chickpea soup, lettuce, eggs, chub mackerel, beetroot, gourds, radishes, black pudding, white bread, salad (dressed with oil), mustard, ham, grilled fish, venison, wild boar, chicken, hare, cabbage, boiled meat, turtle-doves, pheasant, honey, fatted goose, pickles, yogurt, halva, and wine. Water was for washing, not drinking.]

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
In Shakespeare's day, street/fast foods were sold to playgoers. About these foods

19TH CENTURY FRENCH BISTROS
According to the food historians, bistros are offshoots of cafes. The menu is generally the same. The difference? Bistros are quick service; cafes are more leisurely establishments.

"Bistro, a term which dates back only to the late 19th century in French and to the early 20th century in English, is elastic in its meaning but always refers to an establishment where one can have something to eat, as well as drinks. Such an establishment would normally be small, and its menu would be likely to include simple dishes, perhaps of rustic character and not expensive. If it is correct that the word comes from a Russian one meaning "quick!", this would fit in with the general idea that one can eat quickly at a bistro. However, the concept of simple inexpensive food served in a French atmosphere has wide appeal, and as a result the use of the term, whether as a description of eating places of of food, had, towards the end of the 20th century, begun to be annexed by more pretentious premises."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 77-8)

"Bistro. A bar or small restaurant, also known as a bistrot. The origin of this familiar word is obscure. It first appeared in the French language in 1884, and perhaps comes from the Russian word bistro (quick), which the Cossacks used to get quick service at a bar during the Russian occupation of Paris in 1815. There also appears to be a relationship with the word bistreau, which in the dialects of western France describes a cow-herd and, by extension, a jolly fellow--an apt description of an innkeeper. The most likely origin is doubtless and abbreviation of the word bistrouille. Modern French bistros are of modest appearance and frequently offer local dishes, cold meats and cheese with their wine."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 116)
[NOTE: The first edition of LG (1938) does not contain a separate entry for this word.]

"1815. Russian soldiers bivouac in the Place de la Concorde and under the trees of the Tuileries and the Champs-Elysees at Paris following the Battle of Waterloo...and by some accounts they introduce the word "bistro" for cafe by ordering waiters to bring orders "bystro, bystro" (quickly, quickly). French cafe owners cover their counters with zinc to protect them from fist marks and wine stains (the word "zinc" will become a generic for cafe.).
---The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1995 (p. 205)

According to the current edition of Larousse Gastronomique (p. 194-5), the first cafes (defined generally as places selling drinks and snacks) was established in Constantinople in 1550. It was a coffee house, hence the word "cafe." Cafes were places educated people went to share ideas and new discoveries. Patrons spent several hours in these establishments in one "sitting." This trend caught on in Europe on the 17th century. When cafes opened in France they also sold brandy, sweetened wines and liqueurs in addition to coffee. The first modern-type cafe was the Cafe Procope which opened in 1696.

First American bistros?

The earliest references we're finding in print for American establishments specifically called bistros are from the 1940s. Presumably, the fuzzy line between cafes, bistros and similar European-style eateries makes it difficult to establish with certainly the first one here. Two of the oldest print references we find are for mid-town establishements in New York City. Curiously??! They are both on Third Avenue, only a few doors apart. Lawton Mackall's Knife and Fork in New York [Country Life Press:Garden City 1949] describes Le Bistro, 814 Third Ave., thusly: "In Prewar France a vistor overtaken by hunger needed only to apply to the nearest small eatery-and-drinkery. Were it ever so humble, it would scare up a worth-shile meal for him. This Third Avenue spot was designed as a certified copy of a typical bistro. French owned spick-and-span. Should you need nutriment and/or quenchment other than hard liquor, it has it for you, noons or evenings, tasting as of France." (p. 103) According to an article published in the New York Times ("Parisian Milliner Leases Floor Here," NYT December 10, 1941, p. 46), Le Bistro was established that year. Another New York Times article describes Le Moal as "a small restaurant at 811 Third Avenue, near Fiftieth Street, but in an unpretentious way the place is typical of some little bistro in Brittany. Well-cooked food and prices as modest as the decor are the attractions on which Mme. Frank Le Moal relies for patronage--and with satisfactory results."
---"News of Food: A Small Restaurant on Third Avenue is Typical of a Little Bistro on Brittany," New York Times, January 17, 1948 (p. 15).

About restaurants

19th CENTURY ENGLISH FISH & CHIPS

"Fried fish, sold in pieces, cold, must have been established as a standard street food in London by the 1840s or earlier...At that time the fish was sold with a chunk of bread...Chips had an earlier history, probably from the late 18th century...The marriage of fish and chips, wherever it was comsummated, gained popularity swiftly and spread...The number of fish and chip establishments grew steadily until the Second World War."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 301,303)

History of Fish and Chips restaurant industry/National Federation of Fish Friers

A SURVEY OF AMERICAN FAST FOOD DINING OPTIONS

[1872]
Night lunch wagons (Providence, RI) inspire the first diners.

[1876]
Some food historians believe Harvey Houses were the first fast food chains in the United States. These were the brainchild of Englishman Fred Harvey, who began positioning his eateries along key points of Santa Fe Railroad in 1879. These restaurants were known for extremely high quality food served in record time. An entire trainload of people needed to be served in 20 minutes or less. The menu was varied and food was served quickly.

[1900]
Louis' Lunch (New Haven, CT) is said to have sold the first hamburger on a bun.

[1902]
Horn & Hardart's first automat opens in Philadelphia, PA

[1905]
Gennaro Lombardi opens the first pizzeria in the United States, New York City.

[1916]
Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, Coney Island NY

[1921]
White Castle (Witchita, KS) hamburger stands serve standard "fast food" fare at cheap prices. Food and buildings were uniform throughout the chain.

[1921]
According to the food historians, The Pig Stand (Dallas, TX) was the first drive-in restaurant chain. It also offered the very first drive-thu window, 1931 in California (Pig Stand Number 21).

"The drive-in idea came about because its creator, J.G. Kirby, a Dallas tobacco and candy wholesaler, had come to the conclusion that "People with cars are so lazy they don't want to get out of them to eat." With the help of Dr. Reuben Wright Jackson, Kirby designed and opened a drive-in pork barbecue eatery he called the Pig Stand in September 1921 on the Dallas-Fort-Worth Highway. Within a decade Kirby and his franchises had Pig Stands all over the Midwest as far away as New York and California...The drive-in was a direct expression of the appetite of an automobile-obsessed culture for basic food and social interaction."
---America Eats Out, John F. Mariani [William Morrow:New York] 1991 (p.122)

[1926]
Taylor's Maid-Rite debuts in Iowa

[1953]
McDonald's first store with the classic golden arches opened in Phoeniz, Arizona in May 1953 with this menu. Ray Krock joined the company in 1955 and opened his first restaurant one year later.

RECOMMENDED READING:

• America Eats Out, John Mariani "Eat and Run. Fast Food in America" (p. 163-177)
• Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age, John A. Jakle & Keith A. Sculle
• Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Harvey Levenstein "Fast Foods and Big Bucks" (p. 227-236)
• Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser

See also: take out foods.

Like passenger railroads and cruise lines, the first commercial airlines catered specifically to wealthier classes. These customers demanded the finest service and were willing to pay the price. En-route meals served two purposes: stay the hunger and pass the time. Railroad moguls starting thinking about passenger food from the beginning. So did the airline companies. As techology advanced, so did the catering possibilities. Inflight catering presented a unique set of challenges for the cooks and crew serving the food. In the early years, on-site kitchen full-service facilities were not possible, as they had been on railroads. Which airline was the first to offer inflight catering? Both United and American claim this distinction.

First foods

"The first airlines were created after World War I by former military pilots. Their purpose was mail deliversy, not passenger transport. Passengers were gradually included on flights...Since passengers were considered an necessary evil by the pilots who ran ...the airlines, no thought was given to any foodservice for them, although the pilots and other members of the crew might sometiems share a box lunch sandwich or a thermos of coffee with them. It was not until 1936, with the development of the DC-3, that the first airplane galley was introduced by American Airlines. That galley was quite primitive by modern standards as there was no electical power available for heating foods or beverages, and all hot foods and liquids were boarded at ready-to-serve temperatures and held in hot thermoses. Three years later, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, the first aircraft with a pressurized cabin that permitted commercial flights above the weather, was developed with a galley no more advanced than that of the DC-3. Primitive though it was, the DC-3...revolutionized air travel in the United States, and it was in this plane that routine, planned passenger foodservice became the standard for the industry...Also in the 1930s, Pan American Airways developed extensive galleys on their flying boats. The clippers that were used for overseas flights. Although there was no electric power available for these galleys for either heating or cooling food products, the last of these famous aircraft, the Boeing 314, had food-heating capability from a glycol circulating system which piped glycol from the galley to one of the plane's four engines. The engine heated the glycol, which, in turn, heated water in the galley...from the very first, these flying clippers had the capability of making fresh coffee on board...There was no refrigeration system on board these flying clippers, and weight limitations precluded boarding more than the minimum amount of ice that was needed for bar service requirements. However, because of the poor reliability of the glycol heating system, cold meals or cold buffets were served on these flights whenever climatic conditions allowed. Except in places such as wake Island, where there were no ammenities available and Pan American had had to establish and staff kitchens, food for the clipper flights was procured from high-quality local hotels or restaurants. The finest foods were procured as Pan American was competing with the elegant steamships of the day for their passengers. However, canned foods,' such as ham, potatoes, peas, and so on were always carried on board for emergency purposes and for second meals that were required on long flights...By the mid-1930s, airlines were beginning to realize the importance of inflight foodservices and were becoming concerned about both the quality of the food products available and the high prices charged by the airport terminal restaurants wehre they usually bought their food supplies. United Airlines...was the first airline to recognize the marketing potential of inflight foodservice as the competition of airlines increased...[a consultant] developed United's answer to the problem--build its own flight kitchens at airports where its flights landed. The first experimental kitchen was completed in Oakland, California in December 1934. Operating its own kitchen was so successful for United...United eventually built a chain of twenty kitchens throughout the United States..."
---Inflight Catering Management, Audrey C. McCool [John Wiley & Sons:New York] 1995 (p. 17-22)

Pioneering caterers

"Marriott was one of the earliest inflight caterers as a result of innovative actions by William Kahrl, the manager of a new Marriott Hot Shoppe across the road from Washington's Hoover Airport (now Washington National Airport) in the late 1930s. In late 1937, at th request of one of his customers who was the manager of American Airlines' operations there at that time, Kahrl started putting coffee and sweet rolls on American flights coming from the West Coast...The airline furnished the thermoses; the Hot Shoppe furnished the food and paper supplies; everything as loaded on a flat pushcart and pushed across Route 1 from the Hott Shoppe to the airport in the very early morning hours and loaded onto the airplane...Dobbs' entry into the inflight foodservice field was in response to James K. Dobbs' concern with the poor-quality food that he received on flights as he traveled around the country checking on his Toddle House operations. He enjoyed quality food, and felt that airline passengers were entitled to the best food possible...His work was instrumental in the airlines' transition from serving only cold box lunches to serving hot, restaurant-style meals...Mr. Dobbs' concept was to service the airlines through the terminal restaurants. He also had a theory that there should be a recipe for everything, and he demanded that all the products in all these restaurants be prepared by approved recipes. Thus, Dobbs was able to provide consistent food products from one airport to the next."
---Inflight Catering Management (p. 26-27)

[1925] First aerial restarant
"The First aerial restaurant car in the world is now engaged on the regualr London-Paris airway service. A uniformed steward, the first aerial waiter, is in attendance, and passengers, and passengers on the aeroplane can obtain hot and cold meals while flying thousands of feet in the air."
---"Paris-London Airway Has First Aerial Cafe," Daily Record [Morris County, NJ],October 2, 1925 (p. 14)

[1936] United Airlines opens the first flight kitchen.

[1938] Gourmet standards

"Just before you step aboard one of the bright-winged planes that is to carry you along the sky route North, South, or West, from the airport at Newark, New Jersey, a meal will be stowed in the plane's compact kitchen. Mrs.G. Thomas French is an authority on air-bred appetites. For the past six and a half years she has been preparing, or supervising the preparation of, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and in-between meals, to satisfy America's hunger on the wing. She began the service for one of the lines but very soon thereafter was asked to cater also for the other three at the Newark terminus. It takes rather a large staff and a very efficiently directed kitchen to supply food for several meals a day, to four airlines, each with its own timetable. Mrs. French's husband and her mother both have an active part in the business. There are ten girls in the kitchen (including two cooks), and six boys who help with the commissary work. There is also a baker who takes possession of the kitchen after the day-force leaves, and works there alone all night. "Except for the sandwich bread, we do all our own baking--pies, tarts, pastries, creamroll desserts, breads, and muffins." She pointed to the day's supply--orange bread, date-and-nut bread, and rolled cinnamon bread, all very delicious...OM airplane service special features...are particularly important. "And we also make a gerat deal of our salads,"..."They constitute a part of the meal that you can dress up to look particularly attractive."...a first-class salad can transform a commonplace meal or, served right along with the main course, can make yesterday' roast seem an inspiration of genius. Only--don't make your salad of left-overs. Use those somewhere else...Not to be repetitious in the matter of main dishes is just as important on a plane as it is at home. Here Mrs. French is guided by the commuters. "We get to know them," she explains, "and to expect them regularly on the same days. So we are careful not to plan the same dish for successive Mondays--or whatever the day may be." Yet the fact that the food must be cooked in advance and kept palatable until it is served makes a real problem. This is a difficulty, however, that Mrs. Frwench considers a challenge. The roast meats--turkey, beef, or lamb, for example--are the simplest to plan. Beef-steak-and-mushroom pie is also good. Moreover it is a noble suggestion for the family at home--not expensive and not spoiled if you have to keep dinner waiting for a late homecomer or a dilatory guest. Baked stuffed lamb chops are also very delicious and they bear up well under delay."
---"Picking a meal out of the air," Grace Turner, Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1938 (p. J15)

[1941] Transcontinental fare

"Ten years ago sandwiches were the only food put on transcontinental airplanes. Today, full course meals, hot breakfasts and luncheons are routine fare in the clouds. The story behind this transition holds a promise of high interest for homemakers attending Marian Manners' regular weekly cooking class this afternoon. Miss Esther Benefiel, Miss Avis Peak and Dave Chasen, all of Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc. will be Miss Manners 'guests on a program called "Mile High Menus." They will discuss the cooking problems that airlines have to solve and the way they solved them. Coupled with demonstrations, the discussions will bring forth many ideas that housewives may utilize in their own homes."
---"Cookery Class Studies Airline Cuisine Today," Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1941 (p. A7)

"Food by the mile! That's the result of the advancement of transportation. Fifteen miles for tomato bisque, 100 miles for fried chicken, 15 miles for the salad, 20 miles for the dessert, and 10 miles for your coffee. That is the way a 160-mile dinner in the air may be eaten. It hasn't been so many years since cheese and ham sandwiches were served for breakfast, lunch and dinner to air passengers by the co-pilot. But that type of service disappeared along with the single-motored transports--now delicious, nutritious meals, "jsut like mother cooks," are regularly a part of air service. It's fun to watch the stewardesses serve 21 dinners from her kitchenette in less than an hour, as you skim past gorgeous scenery, and soft, billowy clouds. The dinners that are seved in the air are complete from soup to nuts, including a large variety of food. The menus are carefully chosen--balanced and nutritious--with the idea of pleasing most of the people most of the time. Food is not cooked on board, but kept hot by using thermos jugs and bottles. All food is cooked and supervised at the airport commissaries. Some of these commissaries are owned and operated by the airlines, others are operated by food caterers. On every ship's departure from the airport along goes some kind of food, all the way from hot coffee, light and heavy breakfasts to fill dinners. Then there is the snack box for the in-betweeners. The stewardess can soon assemble a delightful lunch from it--cold chicken, fancy cheese, olives, crackers, cookies--anything to hit the spot, with milk, hot chocolate and coffee. And deveryting is on the house. When the Post Food Editor delved into "sky eating" she learned there were several favorite foods of air-passengers. One of these is Southern fried chicken. Ice cream leads in airway desserts."
---"160-Mile Airline Meals Good to the Last Mile," Martha Ellyn, Washington Post, July 25, 1941 (p. 12)

[1945] Jet travel & frozen foods

"Then, around 1945, Pan American worked together with Clarence Birdseye and Maxson Company to create the convection oven, which would allow frozen foods to be heated on board the aircraft. Maxson called the first convection oven it designed the Whirlwind Oven: it had a heating element in the fort of a fan and held six meals. Soon afterward, the microwave oven was developed; it has since become the industry standard in aircraft food service preparation. The first meal trays were served on pillows on passengers' laps, until trays have been developed with lids that would serve to elevate the food in front of the passengers. Finally, foldout service trays were installed in the seat backs. The three-course meal that has become the standard for airplane food trays grew out of the creation by United Airlines in 1937 of the first functional airplane kitchen, conceived in an effort to improve the quality of food offered during flight...The first successful frozen three-course meal fitting the tray's specifications--consisting of meat, potatoes, and vegetables--was marketed by the Maxson Company; the meals were sold to Pan American Airways in 1946."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 28-9)
TWA meals

[1948] Timing is everything!

"Although there has been some talk recently by airline heads of ending the custom of free meals on skyliners, catering for air travlers is still a bustling branch of the aviation business at Logan International Airport. Those tasty meals you eat on flights from Boston to points around the world have become so much a part of flying--an anticipated treat by travelers taking the air route--that airline heads here see little danger of aeronauts having to bring along their own victuals for a sky hop anytime in the near future. Hundreds of meals, ranging from short snacks for "short hoppers" to full course meals for overseas and transcontent trips, are prepared by three catering houses at Boston's big air terminal. At Sky Chefs, Boston unit of a nation-wide chain of airline caterers, cooks, salad makers and bakers work almost around-the-clock to provide meals on some 50 flights a day...the Sky Chefs staff starts to work at midnight to prepare meals for "breakfast flights" that leave Logan Airport between 6 and 8 a.m. The type of meal served on thes flights depends upon the length of the trip...the free meal is considered part of the travel ticket...Typical breakfast on a hour hop from Boston to New York offers fresh fruit, sweet rolls, hot drinks or milk, but there's more substantial fare for the morning traveler who soars off for far points. Long trip breakfasts also incldue scrambled eggs and ham. Dinner on a long flight like a jaunt from Boston to London includes soup, olives and celery, filet mignon, fried chicken, or pork chops, vegetables and salad, hot rolls, hot drinks or milk. Hard part of airline catering is timing the food preparation so the meals will be hot and tasty when the stewardess rings the dinner bell aloft. This is accomplished at Sky Chefs by first cooking the foood as short a time as possible before the flights leave; then placing the cooked meals in an electric oven till plane time, when the food is rushed to the skyliner and given more electric heating at the same voltage used in the kitchen. As a result, sky meals do not suffer from being dry, mushy, lukewarm or cold...Fogs and bad weather in the winter often "upset" the skyline carerer when planes remain grounded and the food is unused...The caterer works on a deadline like a newspaper man, too, for planes don't wait for tardy cooks and the caterer's men must stow their food aboard the liner 15 minutes before it leaves...Food taken off a plane is never used again and the Sky Chef's staff of 18 often take home tasty steaks and pastries that were cooked up for a flight which didn't go up. Faster airline speeds, incidentally, are greatly complicating the caterer's problems. Where there was formerly time to serve a meal betwen New YOrk and Boston, it's about all a stewardess can do now is just hand around cookies and a beverage."
---"The Log of Logan Airport," Christian Science Monitor, September 8, 1948 (p. 2)

[1950s] Technology marches on...

"The development of jet aircraft in the 1950s began a new era in inflight foodservice. Not only were the galleys in the aircraft newly designed, but changes were required in the inflight kitchens...The end result was a near doubling in size of inflight kitchens...In the early 1950s, hot food packaging was changed from the thermoses...to heated ovens... Throughout this period, Pan American Airways continued its development of elegant service for its transoceanic flights. An innovation developed by Bert Snowden was the precooked frozen entree, the forerunner of today's pop-out meals. Its development of the convection oven in 1945 (termed the Maxson Oven...) led to Pan American's increased usage of these frozen meals... The new precooked frozen entree was flexible item that could be used in any system. In addition to being heated on board planes equipped with the new convection oven, it could also be thawed, heated on the ground, and boarded as a hot casserole meal... the precooked frozen entree was very controversial. Many chefs felt that it posed a threat to their security. Also... many of the early products that appeared on the market were of inferior quality and gave the system a bad reputation...These concersn with meal quality caused Pan American to seriously consider eliminating this frozen meal concept in 1948. However, to revert to locally prepared meals at that time would have meant the development of flight kitchens in such areas as Damascus, Suyria; New Delhi and Calcutta, India; Bangkok, Thailand; and Johannesburg, South Africa. At the same time, they were in need of new aircracraft to expand their fleet; so funding and development of inflight kitchens in these rather remote areas was not economically feasible....the problem was not the system, but the quality of food products being prepared for the system...[Kenneth Parratt] installed equipment such as high-velocity blast freezers and low-temperature storage freezers...Products produced in this faciltiy were shipped around the world to the Pan American commissaries...TWA was also producing frozen entrees at its flight kitchens at Orly Field in Paris and at Laguardia Airport in New York City...The 1950s was also the era for the development of many standardized products suitable for use in inflight foodservices...The boarding of glass carbonated beverages bottles had been a major problem...The new cans were not only lighter and disposable, but their flexibility helped alleviate the explosion problem...The advent of the 707 jet aircracraft brought fine restaurant dining to first-class passengers in the late 1960s. Efforts were made to adapt menus from well-known fine dining establishments to airline sevice...Pan American['s]...partner was Maximes of Paris."
---Inflight Catering Management (p. 32-37)

[1962] First class plates

"I have just discovered one of the world's really spectacular restaurants. Sort of out of this world. Well, almost, that is. It's an intimate little place operated by Trans World Arilines at about 35,000 ft. over the Atlantic. There's just one drawback, thoug: Passengers become so spoiled by the food and serve that occasionally someone refuses to deplane when the jet lands. ..let me tell you about TWA's Royal Ambassador service...First off, TWA found out it was my birthday and insisted on throwing a party (the reservations clerks check every passenger's passport for this very reason). The stewardess brought a vanila-frosted two-layer cake that spelled out "Best Wishes."...As the movie ended the three stewardesses and steward in the first class section began serving a feast unseen since the Beverly Hills Food & Wine Society banded toghether last. Before leaving Los Angeles everyone was given a booklet which explained: "A Royal Ambassador meal is a series of impressions...the soft clink of cocktail glasses...the crisp, frosty tang of expertly mixed dirnks...tasty snacks..." There was a great deal of clinking all right; the beverage list alone contained 36 drinks. At any rate, the booklet explained that this was merely the beginning--just a warm-up for dishes to come, such as Beluga caviar, smoked Nova Scotia salmon and fresh lobster medallion. Among other selections were just about anything you can name from chateaubriands to hot dogs and hamburgers. They even served malts to those who asked for them. The list contained so many selections this column would run overtime telling about them. But just to name a few: Le Canard a L'Orange Au Grand Mariner, or duckling with orange sauce; Les Filets de Sole Ambassadeur--meaning filet of sole with truffles and mushrooms. Sirlion steak, roast filet of beef, double thick lamb chops, etc. As for the salad, it was composed of hearts of palm imported from Argentina. Dawn was breaking as the meal ended. Through a rent in the clouds I caught a glimpse of the River Seine twisting through Paris. It was like coming home. Vive le TWA!"
---"Travelines: Airline Cuisine? Plane and Fancy," Jerry Hulse, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1962 (p. G11)

[1965] Meal time roulette

"Airline meals prove one thing--you don't have to be hungry to eat! If the clock says it's time to eat, you eat. So, you've just had breakfast on the way from Boston to Chicago. When you leave Chicago, the clock says it's time for brunch. And brunch is served--for two hours and a thousand miles. (Why, on the way from New York to Honolulu, you can have have three breakfasts, and no one blinks an eye!"
---"Eating away into the wild blue yonder," June Bibb, Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 1965 (p. 6)

[1973] Awful food??!

"'Welcome aboard,' said a steward to a coach passenger on American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York, 'We've got... a fantastic gourmet meal.'...The gourmet meal stunted the memory like a fishbone...flaccid bacon...overcooked chicken leg...tasteless broccoli...and everything was jammed together...Over the past few months...an airline that had overcome...the food problem...turned up only failures wrapped in plastic..."
---"That Airline Meal Was Awful? Blame the System, Not the Chef," Raymond A. Sokolov, New York Times, April 5, 1973 (p. 96)

[1977] Class differentials

"Sipping sake in happi coats as you wing your way toward the Far East...Butterscotch sundaes, hoagies, and deli buffets at 30,000 feet. A rack of lamb, skewers of barbecued pork done Polynesian style. Salads with poi dressing served in orchid-clad monkeypots...Hoisting up a few pub style in the clouds as you munch on pretzels and watch a gem of Pong...Beautifully illustrated, glossy menus boasting both unusual and familiar fare. Long wine lists and numerous liqueurs...As one radio commercial proclaimed about a flight to the Orient, "You will dine on lobster, caviar, and exotic cuisine based on authentic, ancient recipes...You are our honored guest." And one might ad, a captive one. The food gimmicks are many. The airlines will do just about anything to lure you aboard their planes. And food is one of their major bargaining agents. Most airline food service personnel would agree that "the selling of an airline" depends largely upon what goes into the mouths of its passeners. But let's face it, airline food is far from being a gastronomic experience. An experience at times, yes, but not necessarily a gastronomic one. Several reasons for this are cited by the airline caterers themselves. The time factor, costs, and the cramped quarters and galleys on even the large, wide-body jets limit the possibilities of an airline ever being able to compete with the fare served aboard a cruise ship, in a fine restaurant, or even the luxury dining cars of trains past. From the caterer's viewpoint, the main purpose of an airline food service is "to serve a good, wholesome, nutritionally balanced meal and be innovative about it...And what makes a "good" airline meal? According to Juegen Brinker, regional vice president of Sky Chefs, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines, it's one that has eye appeal, that is substantial enough to fit the time of day it's being served, and one that's being presented in a manner to be palatable and enjoyable within the restriction of the airlines. As Michel J. Dick, international account manager for Marriot's In-Flite Services at O'Hare, said "You start to eat with your eyes." Unfortunately, though, it's your stomach, and not your eyes, that makes the final judgement. So who's to blame for a that wilted salad, cold dinner roll, burnt peas, soggy desert, or tough piece of mystery meat drenched in a sauce that resembles Gravy Train? The obvious answer would be the chef, of course. But with the airlines themselves "dictating" the menus and setting up very rigid guidelines the role of the chef in airline catering is quite different from that of his counterpart in the restaurant business...."Passengers expect too much,"...With air fares what they are, however, the passenger is inclined to disagree...Looking at it economically, there is more money set aside by an airline for a first-class meal than a coach one, which, of course, results in a more elaborate service. But "in terms of quality, a coach passenger is not treated as a second class citizen," said R.J. Henely, manager of Continentals' flight kitchen at O'Hare. If you are dining first class rather than coach, these will be the differences: larger portion sizes, more courses, more choices of entrees and other items, higher priced cuts of meat, fancier salads and deserts, and free cocktails along with a greater selection or wines and liqueurs. The meal's presentation is different, also, such as china versus plastic and linen opposed to paper..."
---"O'Hare's flight caterers," Connie Coning, Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1977 (p. C3)

[2009]
American Airlines, Continental Airlines & United Airlines

Need more information? We suggest:

• Airline Food/Barry Popik
• The History of Inflight Food Service/Philip J. Parrot
• ProQuest Historic Newspapers database identifies ads run by airlines promoting food. Menus are often included.
• Inflight Inflight Food Service Association
• International Travel Catering Association

Primary accounts confirm kitchen, commissary, and dining facilities on early airships were well planned and technologically advanced. As airships transformed from military to commercial use, meals improved. Catering to the wealthiest classes of society (early passengers were accustomed to premier dining facilities provided by cruise liners) while juggling physical *lighter than air* requirements (food weights, kitchen facilities, dining room design) must have taxed even the most creative minds to the max. Huzzah for lightweight aluminum! Passengers aboard the ill-fated Hindenburg dined first class, all the way.

EARLY ZEPPELIN [aka DIRIGIBLE, AIRSHIP, BLIMP] CUISINE

"Sausage meat, more tightly compressed into the casings than ever before attempted, will form the main ration of the German crew which takes the American Navy dirigible ZR-3 across the Atlantic to Lakehurst, N.J. Specially prepared concentrated foods will make up the rest of the menu. For the Americans on board the aircraft there will be some canned meats, but they will have at least one sausage ration daily. Coffee will be served in the mornings only, provided the weather is fair. Hans von Schiller, who is in charge of the commissary of the airship, is planning to serve cocoa chiefly as a drink, because of its nourishing qualities. There will be in the larder of the dirigible hardtack, concentrated meat cubes and canned vegetables. Fruit will be served sparingly. Schiller will provide plenty of drinking water, but persons may take aboard some "bottled goods" if they so desire. There is to be no smoking tobacco allowed. All the food carried by the ZR-3 will be of German manufacture, no American firm having made an offer to supply concentrated goods."
---"Sausage Chief Item For Crew of ZR-3," New York Times, September 1, 1924 (p. 2)

"The menu for the crew and passengers of the ZR-3 and the entertainment arrangements of the voyage were well worked out before the dirigible set out for the transatlantic trp. Meals on board are being served regularly in accordance with the schedule usually followed on ships at sea. Breakfast is served at 8 o'clock, dinner at 12, tea at 4 and supper at 8 o'clock, a phonograph playing American and German airs during the midday meal. There also are biscuits at 4 o'clock each morning for those on watch. Today's breakfast menu includes coffee, zewiback, biscuits, apple jelly and wienerwurst. For dinner there will be bouillon, ham with Madeira sauce, butter beans, pudding and peach compote. For supper, the crew will have Hungarian goulash with rice, sausage, tea and biscuits. Sausage and various forms of wurst will be served to the crew at tea time, midnight and 4 o'clock in the morning. The Americans on board will have plenty of fruits, which will supplement the ship's menu. All of the cooking utensils as well as the cups and sauces used at table are of aluminum."
---"Menu for the Air Voyage," New York Times, October 14, 1924 (p. 2)

"In order not to overload the dirigible and yet serve the passengers adequate meals, it was decided after careful calculation to allow 7 1/2 pounds of victuals per capita daily, including food and drink, with an additional meal for the night watch. Breakfast between 8:30 and 9:30 will consist of coffee, tea, bread, butter, eggs or sausage. For dinner, form 1 to 2 P.M., there will be soup, vegetables, roast, compote, or desert, and for supper, from 7:30 to 8:30 P.M., coffee, tea, cold meats, bread and butter. The passengers are privileged to order drinks between meals. The drinking water is shipped in the form of ice which is chopped off and melted as it is needed."
---"Zeppelin Books 18 for Passage Here," New York Times, October 7, 1928 (p. 1)

"One of the most interesting places in Friedrichshafen today was the butcher shop of Otto Manz, who will be chef of the Graf Zeppelin. Manz is a butcher only because he had to take over his father's business. Rotund and jovial, he is at heart a cook who dreams of some day getting back tinto his real life work. He has cooked in Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and aboard the liner Majestic and now he is going to cook over the Atlantic. 'I like cooking much better than tending a butcher shop,' he said, 'and I hope that this Zeppelin voyage will be the first step in building up a catering business.' Manz proudly showed his commissary department to visitors. Large, small and middle-size cans lined the rooms of his shop and house. Into them all sorts of delicacies have ben placed and hermetically sealed, then labeled by his sister. The Zeppelin chef is greatly chagrinned because newspapers say only canned goods are eaten aboard the dirigible. 'Naturally people think only of canned meats and vegetables from factories,' said Manz. 'As a matter of fact everything is fresh and is being put into cans now because of course, the food would not keep throughout the voyage unless hermetically sealed. I do all my own canning and my sisters affix the labels. My father way purveyor to the King of Wurttemberg, so we are used to supplying only the best.'"
---"Zeppelin Takes Off On Trip to America...," New York Times, August 1, 1929 (p. 1)

"It was luncheon hour when the R-101 was over London...At 2 o'clock, with London in the distance, Major Scott turned the command over to Flight Lieutenant Irwin and joined the passengers dining in the saloon. Chief Steward Savidge and Cook Meeghan had preapared a tasty hot meal, the menu consisting of soup, mutton, potatoes, cabbage, fruit salad, cheese and coffee, accompanied by popping corks and a toast to the R-101."
---"London Hails R-101 On Her First Flight," New York Times, October 15, 1929 (p. 3)

"The British dirigible R-100 tonight is sailing over the tossing Atlantic...Those aboard are enjoying the flight. When the breakfast of ham and eggs with coffee was served this morning, quite in hotel fashion, hardly a movement of the ship could be felt...As darkness fell tongiht the electic lights were switched on and a bell summoned the hungry passengers to dinner. Plates of hot soup awaited them in the dining room...The printed menu cards, the glitterign silverware and spotless linen made the scene resemble Picadilly or Fifth Avenue rather than mid-Atlantic."
---"R-100 Sets Fast," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1930 (p. 1)

"Everyone is up early to see the sun rise, to scan the skies and to peer at the world far below. Breakfasts start at 6 o'clock--eggs, meats if one wants them, fruits, coffee in quantity, cereals and, for luckless ones who desire a pick-me-up, drinks...About mid-forenoon stewards serve sandwiches and hot soup. In the afternoon, after a bounteous luncheon, tea is served, or cocktails if one prefers. Then there is dinner; before retiring there is more eating and a glass of wine. Six times daily the passengers are provided with food, and plenty of it, aboard the Graf."
---"Voyaging on a Liner of the Air," Lauren D. Lyman, New York Times, April 29, 1934 (p. SM12)

HINDENBURG [aka LZ-129] FARE

"Much attention had been given to "Hindenburg's" public rooms, where Dr. Durr and the airship's designers had excpected that the passengers would spend most of the daylight hours...To port, occupying an area measuring 15 X 50 feet, was the dining room. Here, with all the luxury and refinement of a small restaurant, were seats for 34 passengers--at four small tables for 2 person along the inboard wall, and at six larger tables outboard. The tables--and chairs likewise--were of a special lighweight tubular aluminum design--'as light as possible, as stable as possible'--created for the "Hindenburg" by Professor Breuhaus. In the dining room the chairs were upholstered in red. The inner walls, covered with airship cotton fabric and off-white in color, bore 21 original paintings by Professor Arpke...the colorful paintings in the dining room represented "Graf Zeppelin" on a South American journey... Meals in these surroundings were an unforgettable experience. Passengers were assigned seats by the chief steward (obviously there must have been two sittings)...The tables were laid with white linen napkins and tablecloths, fresh-cut flowers, fine silver, and the special china service created for the "Hindenbug."...Exquisitely confected of "Heinrich Ivory Porcelain," it is marked on the bottom "Property of the German Zeppelin Reederei," bears a chased gold and blue band around the rim, and exhibits the Reederei crest--a white Zeppelin, outlined in gold, superimposed on a blue globe with meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude in gold. On dishes thus decorated the chief steward and three waiters served meals prepared in German style. Breakfast appears to have been a standard affair of rolls freshly baked in the ship's ovens, with butter, preserves or honey; eggs (served boiled in the shell for German passengers, fried or poached for Americans); Frankfurt sausage, ham, salami, cheese, fruit, coffee, tea, milk or cocoa. On Monday, August 17, 1936, "Hindenburg's" passengers ate for luncheon: Strong Broth Theodor, Fattened Duckling, Bavarian Style with Champagne Cabbage, Savory Potatoes and Madiera Gravy, Pears Convent Style, Mocha. For dinner there was: Cream Soup Hamilton, Grilled Sole With Parsley Butter, Venison Cutlets Beauval with Berny Potatoes, Mushrooms and Cream Sauce, Mixed Cheese Plate. All this was served with tall bottles of Rhine and Moselle wines--Deideshiemer Kranzler Riesling, Piesporter Goldtropfchen Spatlese, Freiherr von Fahnenberg Spatlese, and others, as well as a few French red wines and an assortment of German champagnes led by the Deinard Cabinett, Troken (some 250 bottles of wine were carried on each crossing)."
---LZ 129 "Hindenburg", Douglas H. Robinson, Famous Aircraft Series [Morgan Books:Dallas TX] 1964
[NOTES: (1) This booklet has no page numbers. (2) Black & white photos of the diningroom, lounge, galley, and wine list (cover and list) included.]

"The new Zeppelin LZ-129 will start on her first South American flight March 30 or 31...This morning the new Zeppelin, on her first passenger flight, demonstrated to fifty passengers, mostly newspaper men, the same comfort and practicability she had previously manifested in private trial cruises...The luxurious accomodations and stability in flight claimed as the main assets of the new dirigible were fully borne out during today's performance. Sitting in a comfortable armchair beside a long, slanting observation window in the lounge, the passenger enjoys all the comfort of a first-class movie house as he watches the everchanging colorful panorama of land and water below. An excellent luncheon was served while the Zeppelin was flying at ninety knots and the tables, plates and glasses were as free from vibration as they would have been on land...Cigar-loving Germans were a little disappointed when they learned a temporary defect prohibited the use of the smoking room, an unprecedented feature in dirigible construction. Their disappointment, however, was largely offset by the ingenuity of Hans, general factotum in charge of the luxuruious Zeppelin bar, who had concocted for the occasion a stimulating LZ-129 cocktail."
---"New Zeppelin Set For Ocean Service," New York Times, March 24, 1936 (p. 7) [Cocktail recipe here.]

"I found the Hindenburg a scene of domestic activity that reminded me of the preparation for departure of an ocean liner. The simple cabins and small saloon of the Graf Zeppelin in which I traveled more than 50,000 miles could be quickly inspected. The Hindenburg, with its large dining room, reading room, writing room, smart bar, smoking room, bathroom, twenty-five double passenger cabins, kitchen and pantry, officers' dining room and crew's mess, is quite another matter."
---"Mass Will Be Said in the Hindenburg," Lady Drummond Hay, New York Times, May 6, 1936 (p. 16)

"Thrilled by their unique experience, all the passengers were still up shortly before midnight sitting in the dining room and at the bar over sandwiches, champagne, wines and beer."
---"Hindenburg Begins First U.S. Flight," New York Times, May 7, 1936 (p. 1)

"The galley is like the kitchen of a modern small hotel, with many electrical appliances for labor saving. Next to it is the domain of the chief steward, with cupboards full of china, glass and linen."
---"Airship Largest, Fastest of Kind," New York Times, May 9, 1936 (p. 2)

"Dr. Hugo Eckener had shouted: "Auf Schiff!" at Fredrichshafen at 9 p.m. An hour later practically all passengers had tired of peering at the lights of Germany, adjourned to the bar...Next morning, after a breakfast of sausages, hot rolls, honey and coffee, came a spasm of postcard-writing...At dinner, most of the women by only three men, put on evening clothes to eat Black Forest Trout."
---"Luftschiff at Lakehurst," Time [magazine], May 18, 1936 (p. 66)

"...Lady Drummond-Hay...told us how they called her the 'Zeppelin cat' on the Hindenberg [sic], because she crawled down to look at the engines. Her description of life on board the huge air liner was amusing--that piano, for instance, which somebody would insist upon playing all the time......they had an electic oven and hot rolls for breakfast."
---"Sugar and Spice," Alma Whitaker, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1936 (p. A6)

LZ-129 Cocktail

"According to airship historian, Douglas H. Robinson, a New Jersey psychatrist who visited the zeppelin works in Germany before World War II, carousers in the Hindenberg's lounges and pressurized, fireproof smoking room paid extra for drinks. These included the specialty of the ship, the 'LZ-129 Frosted Cocktail' (gin with a dash of orange juice)....haute cuisine [was] served on blue and gold porcelain..." ---"Memories of Hindenburg Crash Are Still Vivid 50 Years Later," Malcom W. Browne, New York Times, May 6, 1987 (p. B1)

Related topic? Inflight catering (aka airline food)

The earliest trains did not have dining facilities on board. Customers brought their own food or purchased before boarding from local vendors. Before long, trackside eateries dotted the country. Fred Harvey's Harvey Houses played a key role in feeding America's rail passengers. Indeed, some folks view his establishments as the first American "fast food" resaurants. Passengers only had a half hour or so at each stop! On-board dining was considered from the start of the industry. It took time, however, to create a workable system capable of producing acceptable (delicious??!) results.

In the beginning...

"Eatinghouses quickly sprang up at [railroad] junction points, and as traffic increased, dining stations or refreshement saloons...were established by the railroads themselves at the towns along the line. A few were excellent and their meals became famous, but most of them were second rate, and in a number the food was inedible. The railroads made constant efforts to improve the poor ones, but many of them were let as concessions, and the roads had little control over them...All through trains were delayed as much as an hour a day to allow time for meals to be eaten, which took from ten to twenty minutes for each meal. In that limited time there was a wild scramble among the passengers to get down at least part of a meal before the train pulled out. In winter or in stormy wather many people were reluctant to leave the train, and the old and inform were barred from eating in such places at any time. The meals were spaced to suit the schedule, and the passengers might get all three meals within a few hours on one section of the road and fast for long period between meals on another. If the train was delayed, they would be without food for hours except for such provender as the news butcher brought round. Each eating place usually had its specialty, which was served every day. After the telepgraph came into use, it was the custom of the conductor to go through the train some time before it was due at a dining station and ask all passengers who intended to eat there to signify the fact. He would then telegraph ahead, so that the proper number of meals could be prepared."
---The Railroad Passenger Car, August Mencken [Johns Hopkins Press:Baltimore MD] 2000 (p. 26-27)

Alongside the railroad station, sometimes part of it, the Harvey House made its appearance--the first one in 1876, at Topeka. Soon there was one at every larger railroad stop. Havery employed pretty, polite, white-aproned, and very competent waitresses, who lived on the premsis, their virtue carefully guarded by chaperones...Guests are from clean plages on spotless linen. The food was excellent because Harvey imported European chefs. It was also hot and cheap. Harvey revolutionized western eating habits."
---Saloons of the Old West, Richard Erdoes [Alfred A. Knopf:New Yrok] 1979 (p. 114)

"Even in the United States the railroads had avoided looking for ways to better the lot of the hungry passenger. American railroad managers thought of themselves as people movers, not caterers...The first coaches looked for all the world like stagecoaches mounted on flanged wheels...The old coaching inn idea of meal stops continued to dominate, although complaints about the food and service...flitted through newspaper and magazine accounts of adventuresome trips on the new but perilous mode of transporation. Ocean liners, river steamers, and canal boats were suggested as role models for food service... and a rail car built in 1835 for the Phildelphia and Columbia Railroad boasted what must have been a food service counter at one end, an innovation that withered as railroad executives concentrated their efforts on haulage to the exclusion of forage. In the early 1860s, cars that were used to provide meals were nothing more than temporary expedients...Some coaches were only half-gutted and fitted out with counters thus surveying as forerunners to the coffee shop/coach cars on the "milk stop" runs...As a result, little thought as given to dining comfort or variety, and only patrons who could not wait for an end to their journeys, or who did not expect anything better, patronized them."
---Dining Car Line to the Pacific, William A. McKenzie [Minnestoa Historical Society Press:St. Paul MN] 1990 (p. 25-25)

Self-contained dining cars made sense on many levels. They eliminated need for stops (faster transport), attracted wealthier clientele (who demanded creature comforts while traveling) and inspired forward-thinking entrepreneurs (George Pullman, for one).

"Dining cars had been proposed as early as 1838 and therafter, and in 1863 two restaurant cars were put into service on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad and operated for several years. These were ordinary day coaches with cross partitions at their centers. Half of the car was used for a smoker, and in the other half, from the seats being removed, an eating bar, with a steam box, was installed. The food was cooked at the terminals and carried in the steam box, and the bar was probably patronized by men only. It was not until 1867 when the first diner was put into service. In that year George. M. Pullman introduced his first co-called hotel car on the Great Western railroad of Canada. This was a sleeper with a small kitchen in one e3nd, and the meals were served on tables that were set up, when needed, between the seats. There was an ample supply of elegant crockery and table linen, and the passengers were given their choice of a number of dishes prepared by a professional cook. These comforts...were reserved for the occupants of the car. The advantage of allowing the other passengers to eat aboard were apparent to everyone, and in 1868 Pullman placed the first dining car open to all passengers in service on the Chicago & Alton."
---The Railroad Passenger Car, (p. 28-29)

"...the idea of eating on the train was introduced, however haltingly, almost immediately after the first trains started running...The absence of any cooking faciltiies indicates the cars were catered at terminals...The first account of a meal served on a train appeared in the Baltimore American of Saturday, November 5, 1842. The article described the run of a special train on Novemer 3 which carried the President and Directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, "and a few gentlemen invited to accompany them," over the 178-mile mainline out of Baltimore to celebrate and show off the completing of the new fifty-five-mile stretch connecting Hancock with Cumberland, Maryland. "As it was not designed to stop on up the road, an elegant cold collation was prepared in one of the cars, fitted up for the purpose, under the direction of Mr. Barnum of City Hotel, whose skill in such matters is too well known to need commendation. The attention of the company was equally divided between the excellence of the fare and the novelty of thirty or forty gentlemen comfortably enjoying a collation while traveling at the rapid rate of twenty-five or thirty miles per hour." Called "refectory cars," these B & O creations and their imitators on other railroads served on similar occasions for nearly twenty years, the pace of dining innovation apparently at rest. But even this earliest account includes the mention of three elements that were to characterize dining-car service for the next 125 years. The food, even in the remote and primitive "wild regions of the Allegheny hills," was termed "elegant." The creative source of the food was the menu of an already-famous hotel, a practice many in railroad management realized established instant credibiltiy among those who requested first-class intercity trains for their dining-car service. And a renowned chef oversaw the operation...It wasn't until the Civil War period that food was systematically prepared and served on trains. Then, boxcars containing straw mats and hammocks were used to carry wounded troops from the battlefield to treatment facilties in the North and East. At first, food was prepared on primitive stoves in the individual boxcars. But by 1863 full realized hospital trains were in operation and included a kitchen car containing a range, cupboards and sink, a food storage compartment, and a dining area with a long table and benches. Food could be eaten there or delivered to the soldiers lying in converted boxcars and coaches on either end. The first dining cars to be called such and to be part of the established make-up of a scheduled train also appeared in war, in 1862 on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. H.F. Kenney, general superintendent of the PW&B described these two cars as remodeled day coaches, each fifty feet in length and each fitted "with a partition running through the center, crosswize, one end being for smokers, and the other as an eating bar, fitted with steam box and other fixtures usually found in a first-class restaurant...The diner of 1862 was a baggage car, retired from heaavy work on account of long service in the transportation of trunks, and bare as to the interior excerpt that it was furnished in the middle with an oblong counter around the four sides of which the patrons ate while seated on high stools...From the insides of the oblong viands were served by colored waiters in white jackets. If memory does not betray me, the bill of fare of the diner on the Washington Express consisted chiefly of oyster stew, pie, crullers, and coffee...The first primitive dining cars continued in operation for just three years, with no public note on the cause of their demise...In 1867 a revolutionary turn in the way people ate while riding the train occurred. George Pullman introduced his "hotel car." Named President, it was the first railroad car designed and built for the purpose of preparing and serving meals on board and en route, and awakened travelers and railroadmen alike to the full potential of eating on the train."
---Dining by Rail: The History and the Recipes of America's Golden Age of Railroad Cuisine, James D. Porterfield [St. Martin's Griffin:New York] 1993 (p. 29-38) [NOTE: This is the one of the best books on American railroad fare. It also includes sample popular [though undated] recipes for the major railroad lines.]

Selected primary accounts of early American railroad dining experiences

[1840]
"Of all traveling, I think that by railroad the most fatiguing...your only consolation is the speed with which you are passing over the ground...At eery fifteen miles of the railroads there are refreshment-rooms. The cars stop, all the doors are thrown open, and out rush all, the passengers are like boys out of school, and crowd round the tables to solace themselves with pies, patties, cakes, hard-boiled eggs, hams, custards and a variety of railroad luxuries too numerous to mention. The bell rings for departure, in they all hurry with their hands and mouths full, and off they go again until the next stopping-place induces them to relieve the monotony of the journey by masticating without being hungry."
---The Railroad Passenger Car, [quoted from A Diary in America, Captian Frederic Marryat (Philadelphia, 1849), pp. 9-10]

[1854]
"The process of watering the passengers, as it is called, is another feature peculiar to American railway traveling. A man or boy, often a Negro, carrying a tin can and tumblers in a frame passes frequently through the cars dispensing iced water to the numerous applicants for that indispensible refreshment during an American Summer, which is provided at the expense of the railway company."
---The Railroad Passenger Car, [quoted from A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada, Charles Richard Weld (London, 1855), p. 222,225,247)]

• Passenger travel and rest stops/Golden Spike National Historic Park, Promontory Point, Utah
• "Last Call to Dinner," John Kelly, Classic Trains Magazine:
• About George Pullman/Chicago Historical Society
• Dining Car/Car Builder's Dictionary [1884]
• Union Pacific 3669 Diner [1921--]

• [1869] Central Pacific Railroad
• [1885] Rock Island Pullman Palace
• [1927] Baltimore & Ohio
• Railroad menus (for sale, but some let you look at the menu)
• Culinary Institute of America has uploaded several historic railroad menus.

• Chesapeake and Ohio: Dining Car Recipes/E. Sterling "Tod" Hanger Jr.
• Dining at Speed: A Celebration of 125 Years of Railway Catering/Chris De Winter Hebron (United Kingdom railway dining)
• Dining Car Line to the Pacific/William A. McKenzie
• Dinner int eh Finer: 300 Recipes from America's Era of Great Trains/Will C, Hollister
• The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West/Lesley Poling-Kempes
• The Harvey House Cookbook: Memories of Dining along the Santa Fe Railroad/George H. Foster & Peter C. Weiglin
• The Railroad Passenger Car/August Mencken
• Restaurant Car: A Century of Railway Catering/Geoffrey Kichenside

Modern food historians readily credit Rich Melman with introducing the salad bar, citing RJ Grunt's opening in June 10, 1971 as the *birth date* for this dining phenomenon. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises is still a viable operation. You might want to contact Mr. Melman and interview him.

BUT THEN THERE'S THIS:
"As it turns out, there are a number of competing claims as to who came up with the first salad bar and when they did it. The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, said the term originated in about 1973, and refers to it as "a self-service counter (as in a restaurant) featuring an array of salad makings and dressings." The folks at Merriam Webster's may have been taking there cue from the Wendy's chain of fast food restaurants, which began featuring salad bars in the early 1970s. But even Wendy's doesn't claim to have developed the first salad bar, just the first one in a fast food chain.

Many sources give credit for the first salad bar to RJ Grunts, a Chicago singles bar and restaurant that began featuring a salad bar in 1971. That claim is trumped by a place called Chuck's Steak House, which advertises that it had the first salad bar in its Waikiki, Hawaii, location in 1959, the same year Hawaii achieved statehood. Chuck's opened a branch in Los Angeles in 1961, which also gives it a claim to having the first salad bar in the mainland U.S.

So where does Springfield fit into this?
That's where it gets interesting, because there is evidence that a Springfield restaurant called The Cliffs, at 1577 W. Wabash Ave., may have had a salad bar up and running as much as a decade before even Chuck's Steak House in Waikiki thought of the idea. The evidence includes a 1950 postcard put out by the restaurant that advertised it as the "originators of the famous salad bar," and a 1951 Yellow Pages listing that said the same thing, this time referring to the "salad bar buffet."

The Cliffs was operated from the late 1940s to the early 1960s by Sam and Viola Cliff, both dead now for more than a quarter of a century. Maybe Sam and Viola had something else in mind when they coined the term "salad bar", something different from the modern meaning of the term, but it's hard to imagine what, especially with the word "buffet" used in the phone directory listing. So maybe it's time to set the record books straight, tell RJ Grunts and Chuck's Steak House to forsake their claims and recognize The Cliffs, and the Cliffs, for the culinary innovators they were."
---"Birth of the salad bar; Local restaurant owners may have invented the common buffet," The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL), December 28, 2001, Magazine section (p. 10A)

History of Chuck's Steak House

• 1831: Delmonico steak--New York City
• 1887: Peter Luger--New York City
• 1926: The Palm--New York City
• 1964: Benihana's Japanese steak house--New York City
• 1971: Cattlemans Steak House--Indian Cliffs, TX
• 1988: Outback Steakhouse--Tampa FL

If you need additional details... Ask your librarian how to access EBCSO and other magazine/business/newspaper databases. These will provide the latest details on the steak house restaurant industry. You can use the Library of Congress Catalog to identify books written on specific restaurants. Your local public librarian can arrange to borrow them for you. The National Cattelmen's Beef Association provides the latest industry data on prices and consumption.

If you need additional historic information on specific NYC steak houses you can contact these places:

• Museum of the City of New York
• New York Food Museum
• New York Public Library

The evolution of modern American take out (& take home foods is a fascinating convergence of social history and packaging technology. A survey of articles in New York Times Historic confirms the 1950s as the "start date" for modern take-home meals in the United States. This also coincides with the explosion of family restaurants, mainstream "ethnic" and backyard barbeques. Why? Returning WWII GI's settled their families in the suburbs. And then came television.

"The term "take-out" describes both a style of eating and a growing list of prepared foods that consumers purchase from a restaurant or food stand and eat in another location. Delivery format, packaging, and types of food vary greatly, ranging from hamburgers to expensive gourmet fare, but all may be categorized as takeout because of this off-premise consumption. In the United States, take-out food is often viewed as synonymous with fast food...The concept of take-out food and the pracatice of buying prepared foods for consumption elsewhere date to early civilization. Roadside stands and food stalls in busy urban markets were commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome...Almost every culture in every era has had its version of take-out foods...Urban industrial workers in nineteeth-century America further popularized take-out foods. Food vendors sold various sausages and stews from carts outside factory gates, catering to workers with little time or money...In many urban areas, ethnic Italian and Chinese restaurants competed with early hamburger outlets for take-out customers. Small storefront pizzerias and "chow chow houses" sold inexpensive pizzas and Americanized Chinese foods on a primarily take-out basis. Using broad, flat white cardboard boxes for pizzas and small waxy paper cartons for chow mein and chop suey, these ethnic restaurants standardized distinctive take-out packaging that became synonymous with their foods. Although popular in city neighborhoods, ethnic restaurants long composed only a small share of the take-out industry. Automobiles revolutionized the take-out food industry, requiring larger-volume production and specialized delivery systems..."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 526-7)

Pizza & Chinese: the "original" take out foods
The earliest print reference we find for Chinese food delivery is this ad from the Kin-Chu Cafe,Los Angeles, circa 1920s. The earliest reference for pizza delivery is Casa D'Amore, Los Angeles, circa 1950s.

A survey of historic New York Times articles indicates by the 1950s, pizza and Chinese were readily available. At least in the city. They were packaged in cardboard containers.

"One of the most popular dishes in southern Italy, espcially in the vicinity of Naples, is pizza--a pie made from a yeast dough and filled with any number of different centers, each one containing tomatoes. Cheese, mushrooms, anchovies, capers, onions and so on may be used. At 147 West Forty-eighth Street, a restaurant called Luigino's Pizzeria Alla Napoletana prepares authentic pizza, which may be ordered to take home. They are packed, piping hot, is special boxes for that purpose."
---"News of Food: Pizza, a Pie Popular in Southern Italy, is Offered Here from Home Consumption," Jane Holt, New York Times, September 20, 1944 (p. 19)

"Hillside Inn [Richmond Hill, NY]...American & Chinese restaurant...Food Put up to Take Out."
---Christian Science Monitor, September 29, 1938 (p. 16)

"Those who wish a ready-prepared hot Chinese dinner may call on several different establishments. The Midtown Chinese Rathskeller, 125 West Fifty-first Street, packs such well-known specialties of the Orient as chicken chow mein, subgum chicken chop suey and lobster a la Canton. Deliveries are made on fairly large orders....Most pizzerias have cardboard boxes large enough to hold even the hugest pizza so it may be carried home. But the Sorrento Restaurant and Pizzeria, 216 Avenue A, delivers this and several other typically Italian dishes as far uptown as Stuyvesant Town on the East Side. Assorted antipasto is 60 cents, manicotti 75 cents, chicken cacciatore with spaghetti, $1.25. Desserts are also of an Italian flavor; spumoni (25 cents a serving) is one."
---"News of Food: Ready-prepared Meal Services Offer Post-Holiday Respite for Home Cooks," New York Times, January 9, 1952 (p. 32)
[NOTE: This article also mentions take-out Chinese and Japanese food sold in little cardboard containers. Other foods to go? Chicken dinners, casseroles, seafood and "TV suppers."]

What about cleverly crafted handled cartons used for Chinese take out? These were modeled after oyster pails.

"Our history is both long and rich in the paper business. Beginning in 1896 as the American Package Company in Newark, New York. Shortly thereafter, the firm was incorporated as the Bloomer Brothers Company. It remained as such from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to Riegel Paper Corporation. After several acquisitions, plant management purchased the company in 1977 and it became Fold-Pak Corp. From Fold-Pak's inception, its success has been based upon serving specific niche markets with innovative value added packaging. Products included ice cream and folded food containers. Early in its history folded food containers were used as oyster pails. This product was used up and down the East Coast as the preferred container for shucked oysters. In the 1940's and 50's the growing Chinese markets found the oyster pails perfect for take out food and the product quickly took off and was renamed the Chinese pail."
---Fold-Pack [NOTE: this page no longer connects, 18 July 2008]

"The white take-out carton is an aazingly elegant product. It is a simple design, yet it connotes so much: Chinesesness, harried lifestyles, working mothers, cheap yet filling, late night, eating together without dining together, meal as afterthought... Pick up a white carton sometimes, and you'll likely see the name Folk-Pak inscribed unobtrusively on the bottom; this is the company that makes some two-thirds of the take-out containers in the country. The industry calls the cartons "food pails"... Tim Roach, a vice president...in the early twentieth century, the cartons were used to hold shucked oysters...At various points... the carton was used to hold ice cream, deli goods, and even goldfish at carnivals...Around World War II, the box found a different audience...Somehow...it worked its way into Chinese restaurants as the take-out container and it became the dominant package for Chinese takeout...Once it evolved into a container for Chinese food, the company put a generic Chinese design on it. The Pagoda was it...The demand for take-out boxes across the country is considerable, so the factory operates three shifts, twenty-four hours a day, nonstop."
---The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee [Twelve:New York] 2008 (p. 139-140)

If you are researching take out connected with a specific town (Dubuque?) let us know. Pizza & Chinese went mainstream after World War II, but that does not mean every town offered these culinary options in the 1950s. About pizza.

Take home meals
"Take home" differs from "take out" in that it is marketed as a home meal replacement rather than fast food or ethnic fare. It is not necessarily cheaper nor is it always quickly prepared. What sells take home? Convenience and taste. Like take out, this dining option was introduced after World War II. Why? Restaurant survival 101: economics.

"Restaurant Chains Open Up New Field. Schraft's, Childs, Bickford's Selling Take-Home Meals to Augment Income. New Industry Trend Seen Prediction Made Housewife Soon Will Be Buying Family Dinners Like Groceries.
Restaurant chains and independents here and throughout the rest of the country are building up new departments which sell meals for home consumption. The three chains here which are entering this field in a big way are Schraft's, Child's and Bickford's. In commenting on this development in the food field, Keith R. Mount, assistant merchandising manager of the Lily Tulip Cup Corporation, the company which furnishes most of the containers in which food for home consumption said yesterday: New Industry Trend "Restaurant sales of food for the home are definately a new industry trend. It won't be long before the average housewife will be buying take-home foods like groceries." Mr. Mount explained that the restaurant business was been sinking steadily the last few years. Operators can't raise prices any more without scaring away what little business they have, he said, but operating costs such as wages have continued to climb. Last year, he said, restaurant earned an average net profit of only about 2 per cent throughout the country and many of these eating places lost money...The take-home trade has come as a solution to the problem...restaurants which build up this type of trade can do so on exactly the same overhead and production facilities they already have to serve patrons at the tables...Consequently [Mr. Mount] said take-home sales are all plus business and should be sold at lower prices than regular restaurant meals because they eliminate waiters, dish washers, table linen, plate breakage and loss of utensils. One of the reasons given for increased demand for prepared meals was television in the home. Some restaurants in New York have regular television menus made up for take-home orders. In stressing the importance of saving the restaurant business from slipping any further, Mr. Mount estimated that the industry represents expenditures by the public of about $12,000,000 each year...take-home orders can easily become the difference between success and failure. Prelimary reports received by his company from all parts of the country show sales increases of 20 to 50 per cent in eating places which have installed take-home departments..."
---"Restaurant Chains Open Up New Field," New York Times, July 5, 1952 (p. 18)

"Home Meal Replacement Finds its Place at the Table"/National Restaurant Association [1996]
"All Signs Point to Take Out Taking Off"/NRA [1999]

Research sources
Trade journals, consumer magazines and newspapers are excellent sources for constructing a timeline of this industry. Ask your librarian how to access databases such as New York Times Historic, EBSCO (Masterfile, Business Source), GALE (Business and Company Research), ProQuest (Newspapers & magazines) and others. Some of these should be accessible from your own computer. All you need is a library card!

Industry experts/research firms

• The National Restaurant Assocation
• NPD
• Food Marketing Institute
• Leatherhead Food International

See also: fast food.

Modern concession stands and vending practices descend from ancient street vendors. These saavy caterers capitalized on the empty stomaches convening at mass gatherings. Where there are people away from home, there is food to be sold. Then, as today, some folks relish foods sold on site while others delight in supplying their edibles and quaffables.

• Ancient Roman colesseum
• baseball stadiums
• boxing rings
• fair fare
• movie theaters
• Shakespeare's Globe Theater

BASEBALL CONCESSIONS
Most baseball history books skip the contributions made by caterers, vendors, and concessionaires who worked hard to feed hungry fans. Presumably, the foods consumed by the earliest baseball fans in the late 19th century were similar to those available in outdoor/sporting venues. Foods served at late 19th century American fairs, race tracks, circuses, railroad stops, and such tended to be portable and inexpensive. These included sandwiches, nuts, ice cream, soft drinks, beer, cotton candy, and yes, the ubiquitous hot dog. Then, as today, wealthy people were generally accomodated with finer dining options: outdoor tea rooms and full-service restaurants. Foods served to fans in the stands were typically hawked by young men who worked very hard for little money. Then, as today, menu items varied according to local place and taste. The menu selections at Fenway and Yankee Stadium are understandably quite different. The history of baseball concessions, as an industry, begins (accoding to some) with Harry M. Stevens. He is also credited for introducing the hot dog to the American public. Notes here:

"Harry M. Stevens, formerly resident of this city [Toledo OH], and now manager of the catering privileges at both the Polo Grounds, American League Grounds, and Madison Square Garden."
---"Cup for Bresnahan," New York Times, January 28, 1909 (p. 7)

What do people eat at baseball stadiums today?

"Consider the plight of the hot dog. Here is an American institution that has quietly and modestly served the nation for more than half a century with far too little recognition. Why has this gross injustice been perpetrated in a country so proud of its record for fairness and equailtiy? Because the hot dog has no know birthday...no one can point a finger to any specific day and say "This was the start of the hot dog and shall be celebrated ever forevermore." Historians admit that the hot dog was born on a cold day in the Eighteen Nineties, but even thE exact year remains obscure. The scene of the momentious event was the [New York] Polo Grounds. Cold winds whilled in off Coogan's Bluff and the baseball fans shivered in the stands. A young English-born concessionaire named Harry M. Stevens was purveying his peanuts and scorecards, but the weather spurred him to history-making action. He recalled that a near-by butcher shop had an assortment of sausages hanging in the window, and he sent a boy to buy ten dozens of them. Mr. Stevens dispatched another lad to purchase rolls from a bakery. He tossed the wieners into a huge pot half-filled with water and boiled them on the clubhouse stove. He sliced the rolls and inserted the hot wieners in them, then told his venders: "Those people are frozen. Go out there and yell, 'red hots, red hots.' The people will buy these red hots if you yell loud enought. Within ten minutes, the red hots were sold, and Mr. Stevens, who went on to become a famous caterer, had a new item for his concession. But the saga of the hot dog was not without its moments of tribulation. T.A. (Tad) Dorgan, the cartoonist, began to characterize the "red hot" in his sketches as a dachshund between an elongated bun, and he called it the "hot dog." This quite naturally started some person wondering what went tinto the manufacture of the tasty product, and the hot dog business suffered a severe recession about 1910. The hot dog had an indomitable spirit, though, and fought its way back to popularity."
---"Topics of the Times: An American Institution," New York Times, August 20, 1953 (p. 26)

"The cry of "play ball" at today's opening game of the world series will find few happier or busier NewYork business men than the four Stevens brothers. The reason? They hold the food and drink concessions at the Yankee Stadium and Ebbetts Field, where all the series games will be played. Although the Yankees did not clinch a series berth until last Friday, Harry M. Stevens, Inc., started ordering and preparing foodstuffs several weeks ago...Some Stevens employees worked through last night, putting the finishing touches to the mountains of peanuts, hot dogs, ice cream, soda pop, beer and sandwiches...More than 500 Stevens employees will report for work today, beginning at 5A.M.. They include chefs, checkers, cashiers, countermen, accoutants, bookeepers and venders. The normal complement of venders is about 100, but more than 300 will be garbed in white uniforms for today's game...An experienced vender can make about $25 on a good day...The Stevens company was founded at the turn of the century by Harry M. Stevens. When he died in 1934, he was acclaimed for having parlayed a bag of peanuts into a million dollars...Harry Stevens is credited with having popularized the frankfurter. It happeed at the Polo Grounds, before World War 1, on a day when cold weather was curtailing sales. In desperation, the late Mr. Stevens hit upon the idea of boiling dachshund sausages and serving the hot on rolls. Thomas A. Dorgan, the cartoonist known as "Tad," heard about this new delight and shortened the name to hot-dog. Today, about six and one-half billion hot dogs are sold annually in the United States. Although most storekeepers grill their franfurters, the Stevens company still boils them...The amount to food to be prepared each day depends upon the weather and event. Race track fans are the biggest spenders, per person, but they do not buy peanuts. They re usually too busy with pencil and program to take time to shell them. The poorest spenders are football fans. They are too bundled with clothing and gloves to reach into their pockets for a coin. Locale is another factor that determines what sports fans will eat. In the Middle West, fans prefer hamburgers to hot dogs. Western crowds will not buy popcorn, but it is a bigger seller than peanuts in the Middle West. Fans in most parts of the nation rent seat cushions, but New Yorkers shun them."
---"Stevens Brothers Heavily Favored in Series," Carl Spielvogel, New York Times, September 28, 1955 (p. 43)

How much did this Mr. Stevens' food cost?
We have no clue. Our search through old newspapers, baseball history books, and food history resources revealed neither prices nor photos. We found several references for number of items consumed (per person/total per game or season). For example, in the mid 1950s the average number of hot dogs consumed by a Yankee fan was 2. We did find some references to the food being overpriced. Some things never change!

"The only beef we've got with [Stevens Brothers] is the outlandish price you have to pay for a two-swallow soft drink, a cold hot dog or a warm beer...But, it's by the hip pocket they've got you and you either go thirsty or shell out...But a lot of fans by the fifth inning are feeling no pain and they pay up without a gripe..."
---Lima News [OH], July 25, 1956 (p. 24) > BOXING CONCESSIONS
This passage describes the foods served at the famous fight between Dempsy and Carpentier [1921]. The fight was catered by Stevens, and many of the foods he served at ball parks were also served here:

"Fight fans who crowd the big arena in Jersey on Satuday for the championship bout between Dempsey and Carpentier may swelter or become drenched,...but there will be no need of their suffering from either hunger or thirst. That part of the program has been carefully arranged by Harry M. Stevens, who is as well acquainated with the appetite of a sport enthusiast as he is with his own son Frank, his partner in the business of satisfying the hungry and thristy at ball parks, race tracks, boxing matches, horse shows, six-day races and sport events of every description. The feeding arrangements are along the same extensive lines as prevail in every angle of the big contest. For the last ten days Stevens's men have been getting things in readiness at the arena, and yesterday the work of stocking up with provisions get under way. Hundreds of cases of beer, sarsparilla, ginger ale and mineral water were taken to Jersey City in big trucks; but the preparation of the food will not be started until midnight Friday or later. Time has no effect on the drinks, but the food must be positively fresh...Furthermore, he says with emphasis that he will have enough for all and expects to bering black a few truckloads after a new record for the consumption of food and drink at one sporting event has been established...One feature of the usual sport event bill of fare will be among the mising. The Board of Fire Commissioners in Jersey City has passed a rule concerning the sale of food and drink which may be called a "No Dogs Allowed" announcement. The succulent all-hot has been banned. fear of fire was behind the order, and and Stevens has bowed gracefully to the edict, but he admits that he will feel lonesome without the little towsers around...As complete last night the bill of fare will include ham, chicken, tongue and cheese sandwiches and every known variety of pie. To wash this down or to quench the parched throat will be ginger ale, "sas," mineral waters and the best that Jake Ruppert could brew after Volstead let him up. Peanuts will be there in profusion...To the average person who yells to the boy and passes out his change for sandwich, drink or smoke there is no thought of the time, energy and preparation it all entails...Trucks will be making their trips to the arena to depsoit something like 80,000 bricks of ice cream...There will be no cones on sale, as it would be difficult to keep cones in proper condition, so brick swill be carried in cooled containers, to be served on small plates. More than 50,000 bags of peanuts will be ready and the sandwiches will run close to the 100,000 mark. Many fans will arrive late, some of the early comers will bring their lunch, but to offset this will be the patrons who arrive early and who will trust to Stevens to see that they are supplied with whatever they eat and drink. Hundreds of cases of beer...will be at Thirty Acres long before the eatables arrive. Getting the drinks to the arena is only one part of the work. The fan insists on his liquids being ice cold and to chill them properly twenty tons of ice will be unloaded at the arena tomorrow morning...On Saturday morning another twenty tons will be received. Again the vastness of the enterprise stands out when forty tons of ice are needed for the ice cream and the soft drinks alone. That there may be no gouging of the public by the vendors Stevens will follow the system in vogue at the ball parks. Every waiter will carry on his hat a card showing the prices of everything he sells. Big posters around the arena will convey the same information. The same prices as prevail at the ball parks and race tracks will be in effect at the fight and the signs protect the public against gouging."
---"Food Consumption To Set New Mark," New York Times, June 30, 1921 (p. 21)

FAIR FARE

Fair food, as we Americans know it today, descends from street foods sold in ancient market stalls. Food vendors were quite popular at Medieval fairs. Folks hawked foods from portable carts the Globe Theatre during Shakespeare's time. On a related note? Military messes throughout time set up mobile feeding stations specializing in portable foods. What is fair food? The answer depends upon the place and period. Some foods are contemporary "staples," (cotton candy, waffle cones, corn dogs, mini-doughnuts, Karmel Korn); others are regional/local specialties (maple fudge at the Eastern States Exposition; open pit whole pig barbecue in Arkansas).

World's Fairs (aka exhibitions/expositions) serve as national benchmarks for fair food introductions. Of these, the 1904 fair in St. Louis is perhaps the most famous. The Corporations used these venues to promote new products to the general populace. 1964 New York City World's Fair put Belgian Waffles on our culinary map. Fair years/venues are easy to identify. Some of the more popular fairs have entire books written about them. Beyond the Ice Cream Cone: The Whole Scoop on Food at the 1904 World's Fair/Pamela J. Vaccaro profiles that famous exposition.

Local fairs (state, county, seasonal, product specific) reflect the heritage of the folks living in that area. Most major fairs have Web sites. There you will find current information on food contests and vendor information. Some fairs publish cookbooks containing recipes of contest winners. These do not reflect the vendors, corporate promotions or other fair favorites (free milk at the New York States Fair). Most, though not all, states host annual fairs. Many local fairs exist as well.

General link (current fairs only) here.

Your best bet for comparing/contrasting foods served at local fairs throughout the country is to select target areas and contact the fair managers. Do they have scrapbooks or archives? The local library and/or historical society may hold primary documents (old fair map maps, menus, promotional material &c.) Old newspapers often provide accounts of the foods available at the fair; some aritcles include prices. This information helped visitors plan their trip. Foods offered at local fairs generally featured local bounty. These fairs were held during harvest time, when local produce was at its most bountiful. Pies, cookies, cakes, canned goods (jams, jellies, preserves, pickles, pickled vegetables) were often sold for on-site consumption or bringing home.

General history notes on selected major American fairs

[1876] CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION--PHILADELPHIA
1. One of the best collections of Centennial Exhibition materials is housed at the Free Library of Philadelphia.(Search: food to find the appropriate buildings/companies; menus for restaurant selections)
2. The two most influencial 19th century Philly-area cookbook authors (cooking school teachers, lecturers, etc.) were Miss Eliza Leslie and her student, Sarah Tyson Rorer. 1876 lies in the "cusp" of influence between these two. We have a copy of Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book, 1886.

"The Centennial jarred Philadelphia sensibilities with a crazy-quilt of foreign cookeries--such an ollapodiania!...being the old city dialect for hodgepodge or mixture. The chatter of culinary voices was parodies in the press, and cleverly pictured in characatures, but many things were simply too good to let pass when the Centennial closed. Among these were celery salt, the Viennese breads, hot dogs, Centennial Cake (now called Shoo-fly Pie), the integrtrated diningrooms of Fleischmann's Restaurant-Cafe for ladies and gentlemen (this boing the same Fleishmann who introduced yeast cakes at the fair, ice cream sodas, and the ubiquitous hokey-pokey man."
---The Larder Invaded: Reflections on Three Centuries of Philadelphia Food and Drink, Mary Anne Hines, Gordon Marshall and William Woys Weaver, exhibition catalog published jointly by the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania [1987] P. 38
[NOTE: Hokey-pokey men were ice cream vendors, the name derives from an Italian phrase.]

[1893] COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION--CHICAGO

"The great restaurant concession of the fair is held by A.S. Gage in the name of the Wellington Catering company and covers 137,800 square feet of floor space. It also embraces privileges in all the buldings erected by the World's Columbian Exposition, sixteen in number, as well as a supply depot to be erected by the company. The concession provides for three clases of eating places. The first will include the finest restaurants, with service equal in excellence to that maintianed in any hotel in this city. The second grade will be on an equality wiith the the style of caravansary known as the popular restaurant, while the third takes in lunch-counters and the buffet system, where cold meats sandwiches, hot coffee, pies, and cakes will be served. This class will be operated in the building where the odors of a kitchen cannot be permitted to float around promiscouosly among the exhibits and sightseers. These counters and buffets, whowever, says Mr. gage, will be as fine and sullpied with just as good food as can be found anywhere. The total space involved in this concession will be allotted to the different classes in these proportions: To the first 20 per cent, the second 40 per cent, and the third 40 per cent. Thes eating capacity at tables throughout the different buildings is estimated at 12,000 and the lunch counters aggergating 7,500 feet, or one and one-half miles in length, 4,000 person may dine at one time. On the supposition that this capacity can be changed five-times--and that is a low calculation--the Wellington will feed 80,000 people a day. This number may be increased to 100,000 a day. The company will not only adopt its own standard, such as prevails now in the Wellington Hotel cafes down-town, but proposes to serve the best of wholesome food at each and every one of its places...In the general supply estimate something like fifty head of good-sized bullocks that will dress out 30,000 pounds of beeef a day,w ith two and a hlaf tons of hame for sandwiches, will cover the meat demand. Sixty barrels of flour a day will be consumed in bread, pies, and cakes, with potatoes and other vegetables of all kinds in proportion. The quantity of milk that will be consumed is beyond the limit of advance figures. The very finest restaurant to be conducted by this company will be located in the Administration building, and it is understood it will be the best place on the grounds."
---"Catering Commpany's Plnas: Extent of the Eating Houses and the Supplies Which Will be Needed," Chicago Daily Tribune, February 18, 1893 (p. 9)

"Restaurants and Dining-Rooms. Visitors who elect to stop at hotels and places in this vicinity of Jackson Park will find accomodations provided to feed a multitude. Nearly all, if not all, of these hotels will be equipped with restaurants or dining-rooms. To them must be added the restaurants in the Fair Grounds, those on the Midway Plaisance, and the hundreds which will be opened in the district contiguous to Jackson Park. Visitors may have their choice among thirty-five places to dine in the grounds. The concession held by the Wellington Catering company provides for three classes of restaurants. The first will include restaurants of the highest rank, equal to any in the city. The second grade provides for what may be called popular restaurants, with prices on a lower scale. The third class takes in lunch counters and buffets where cold meats, sandwiches, pies, cakes and coffee will be served. There will be one and one-half miles of lunch ounters. Among the larger restaurant are the Great White Horse Inn and the Columbian Casino. The first occupies a building which is a reproduction of the hostelry made famous by Dickens. It is located south of Machery Hall. The cooking will be striclty English. On the first floor of the inn anything from a ham sandwich to a $2 porterhouse steak will be sold. The second floor will be given up to the finest trade, and will be patterned after the best London clubs. The Columbian Casino will occupy the Casion, a three-story building at the mouth of the lagoon. The first floor will be fitted up with parlors, reception rooms, lavatories, and smoking rooms. On the second floor will be a public dining room, with tables and seats for 1,500 people...The "Clam Bake" will be one of the novelties at the Fair. A three-story building in the northern part of the grounds is occupied for this affair. Old-fashioned New England clam bake dinners, it is stated will be served, as well as all sorts of fish. There will be room for 2,500 people at one sitting. Within the World's Fair ground 59,400 people can dine at one time next summer. Counting six changes of plates for each place at table 356,400 meals may be served every day in the Fair grounds. Dining places on the Midway Plaisance will have accomdations for 16,000 people at one time. A vistor, among other places, may choose to dine in the natorium--or in cafes overlooking the animals in Hageabeek's Zoological Garden, or in the Hungarian Orpheum, or in the Dutch settlemetn, the Polish cafe, or the Turkish village. He may be served with familiar viandes or may taste the food of strange lands and be waited on by natives of these countries. If he is particularly exclusive he will find a lunch-room 1,200 feet above the earth in the captive baloon."
---"Guide for Visitors," Chicago Daily, April 30, 1893 (p. 45)

If you want to recreate an authentic period dinner, we suggest you start by examining the recipes offered in Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book, compiled by Carrie V. Schuman. This book is a collection of recipes of Chicago's "leading ladies" in the early 1890s. The edition recently reprinted by the University Of Illinois Press (2001) contains scholarly essays on both the fair and the book.

If you want to feature some popular foods introduced at the Exposition this book suggests: "Cracker Jack, Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum. Prominent, too, were Aunt Jemima (wth Nancy Green playing the eponymous cook) and the H.J. Heinz Company's Sour Spiced Gherkins. It is said that a million visitors flocked to Heinz's display, where they were given small "pickle pins." Conserves and pickles were serious components of the American diet. Foods like these were industrial products made for mass consumption. While some, such as Heinz pickles, were hand packed, foods were becoming entirely industrialized, raised with farming machinery and artificial fertilizers and cooked and packed in factories." (p. xl)

If you are conducting an extensive research project we suggest you contact the following organizations:

• Chicago Public Library, Special Collections
• Chicago Historical Society, Archives and manuscripts
• Rumford Kitchen, Ellen Swallow Richards

[1901] PAN-AMERICAN EXHIBITION--BUFFALO NY

[1904] LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXHIBITION--ST. LOUIS
Americans are fascinated with fair food, especially the items attributed to the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. The truth? Most of these popular foods existed before the fair, and many have several conflicting stories with regards to "true" origin. This makes the lore even more intriguing. What these foods have in common is that they were mass marketed at the St. Louis fair. That is why this year holds a special place in the American gastronomic chronology.

The best way to cull a comphensive list of foods served (or made popular) during the 1904 St. Louis Fair is to go straight to the source. The St. Louis Public Library has uploaded a fabulous collection of primary fair documents, photographs, and publications. Recommended reading: Beyond the Ice Cream Cone: The Whole Scoop on Food at the 1904 World's Fair/Pamela J. Vaccaro.

[1915] PAN PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION--San Francisco CA

Laura Ingalls Wilder was one of the many famous people attending this fair. Her daughter Rose described their visits in a series of letters published in book form, West From Home. One of the foods Rose told us her mother enjoyed was "Pan-Pak." Surely, if this item was notable enough for Rose to record, print evidence/description exists. To date, we have not discovered any other print reference to Pan-Pak. Perhaps this was a colloquial moniker familiar to all fairgoers? We checked:

• The Panama-Pacific Cook Book (L.L. McLaren) does not contain any company/product ads or other references to Pan-Pak. Nor do any of the ads/articles published in major USA newspapers regarding the 1915 San Francisco-based exposition (we checked ProQuest Historic, America's Historic Newspapers, Newspaper Archive). Queries sent to the San Francisco Public Library and Museum of the City of San Francisco were unanswered.
• ProQuest Historic, American Historical Newspapers
• Museum of the City of San Francisco was unresponsive.
• Offical Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915
• San Francisco Chronicle & San Francisco Examiner, October 1915 issues. (microfilm checked)

MOVIE THEATER CONCESSIONS

What kind of food was offered at movie theater concesssion stands in the 1920s? The answer is: nothing.

We seached dozens of interior shots of early 20th century theaters and found no references to concessions or any other food-selling activities. The Great Depression changed that. Popcorn was grudginly adopted by movie owners. Theater concessions, we know them today, were introduced in the1940s. No doubt, like today, some people snuck food in.

Popcorn goes to the movies

"An extraordinary influence on popcorn's history was its shotgun wedding to movie theaters...During the 1920s the motion picture industry had emerged with large studios and chains of theatres...By 1930 movie attendance reached 90 million patrson per week. This huge audience was potentially a prime target for popcorn sales, but movie owners refused to sell it. To some owners, vending all concessions was an unnecessary nuisance or "beneath their dignity." In the rowdy burlesque days hawkers went through the aisles with baskets selling Cracker Jack and popcorn. Much of the popcorn was tossed in the the air or strewn on the floors. In addition popcorn sellers were often slovenly dressed and did not always follow the most hygienic practices preferred by the middle classes who frequented theaters. These were not the images most owners wanted to cultivate for their upscale theaters. Other owners considered the profits on concession sales to be negligible compared with the trouble and expense of cleaning up spilled popcorn and scattered boxes and sacks. Many move theaters had carpeted their lobbies with valuable rugs to emulate the grand theater lobbies. Operates were not interested in having their expensive carpets destroyed by spilled popped kernels, soda pop, and other confections. Finally, most theaters did not have outside vents. Early popcorn machines filled theaters with an unpleasant, penetrating smoky odor. Owners interested in selling popcorn were required to construct vents, which ran up the expenses and reduced profits. Even when owners were willing to do this, fire laws in some cities prevented the popping of corn without further extensive remodeling. Until the 1930s most theater owners considered popcorn to be a liability rather than an asset. Theater owners shifted their perspectives dramatically during the Depression. At five or ten cents a bag, popcorn was an affordable luxury for most Americans. Unlike most other confections, popcorn sales increased throughout the Depression. A major reason for this increase was the introduction of popcorn into movie theaters. At first independent concessionares leased "lobby privileges" in theaters. Vendors paid about a dollar a day for the right to sell popcron. As many theaters did not have lobby space and most did not want the popcorn or smoke inside, operators leased vendors space outside the theaters. This suited the vendors for they were able to sell both to movie patrons and passersby on the street. This was a lucrative business during the Depression. When an Oklahoma banker went bankrupt during the Depression, he set himself up with a popcorn machine in the little store near a theater. He made enough money in a few years to buy back three farms he had lost in the bank failure...Soon popcorn entered the theater. In part this change was effected in a roundabout way by popcorn machine salesmen. As a matter of tactics, salesmen made special efforts to sell poppers to stores near theaters. When theater owners saw their costomers entering with popcorn bags, they quickly saw the light...Independent movie theaters were the first to capitulate to popcorn's financial allure...As soon as machines were placed in the lobbies, business picked up."
---Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America, Andrew F. Smith [Smithsonian Press:Washington] 2001 (p. 99-102)

"Movies had prospered without popcorn until the Great Depression, when theater owners scrambled to make up for reduced ticket prices by turning to "audible edibles." The appetite of moviegoers was so great that from 1934 to 1940, the nation's annual popcorn harvest grew from 5 million to 100 million pounds. Marty Winter...recalled that Mr. Rubin was popcorn being made in Oklahoma City on a visit around 1930 and started selling it a concessions he contrlled when he returned to New York. But Mr. Rubin's duaghter and a other longtime business colleague, Carl Levine, said it was not unitl the early 1950's that Mr. Rubin began to sell popcorn in a major way. At the time, his company...had the refreshments concessions for major movie chains in the New York metropolitan area, including RKO, Brandt and Lowes. Andrew F. Smith, the author of "Popped Culture: The Social History of Popcorn in America," said New York theaters were among the last to embrace popcorn, becuase it had a small profit margin, popping machines were a fire hazard and the snack seemed a bit delcasse...Mr. Smith said that popcorn was being sold in some New York 1940s...At [age] 12, [Mr. Rubin] went to work for Lazar, Stein & Landsman, ABC's predecessor company, filling vending machines in movie theater, which did not yet have concession stands. When a vending machine rolled and broke against the stage, he used it as a counter to sell candy, a precursor of the modern movie concession stand. Over his conccession career, Mr. Rubin...developed movie-size candy bars and boxes, which could be sold for $1.50 instead of 35 cents."
---"Samuel M. Rubin, 85, Vendor: Put Fresh Popcorn in Theaters," New York Times, February 9, 2004 (p. B8)

"Because concession stands didn't exist until the 1940s, all around each theater there was a cluster of lunch counters, ice cream parlors and candy stores a whole thriving ecosystem of urban gathering places, with the theater at its heart," reported the [Boston] Globe." ---Tufts University ENews

The earliest pictures we find of theater concession stands were taken (probably) in the 1940s:

• Fox Theatre, San Diego California (undated)
  ---theatre opened in 1929. From the woman's dress/hair style and inclusion of what looks like M&Ms (introduced 1941) this picture was probably taken in the 1940s. Easter time.
• State Theatre, San Diego California (undated)
  ---Also decorated for Easter; similar items to above.

VENDING MACHINES

It is interesting how we Americans have has viewed these machines as "wave of the future," "better than personal service," "hygenic," to "evil purveyors of junk food to our children." Vending machine manufacturers are truly an inventive group.

"The first American vending machine appeared in 1888, when the Thomas Adams Gum Company (American Chickle, Pfizer) placed a machine selling Tutti-Fruitti chewing gum on a platform of the elevated train in New York City. The following year, a penny vending machine was developed that could dispense handfuls fo candy and peanuts. Round, bubble-topped penny gumball machines were introduced in 1907. Because vending machines were still quite unreliable, most sold only penny items until the 1920s. One exception was the Horn and Hardart Baking Company, which opened the first coin-operated Automat restaurant in Philadelphia in 1902...In 1908 the Public Cup Vendor Corporation (Dixi Cup Company), devised a machine that served cooled water in a paper cup for a penny..."Sodamats," forerunners of the modern soda machine, were installed in amusement parks in 1926...In the 1930s vending machines began to offer a variety of candy bars. Movie theatres, popular sites for candy machines, displayed large, ornately designed versions. In 1935 the first cup-type soft-drink vending machine was made by Vendrink Corporation...and Coca-Cola introduced the first standardized coin-operated bottled soda machines selling nickel Cokes...Refrigerated machines were perfected in the 1950s. The War Production Board stopped the production of vending machines in 1942 because of the need for metal to support the war effort. Still, vending machines sustained the war effort, feeding factory workers during their long shifts, which led to the later acceptance of vending machines in the workplace. By 1960 some companies and schools and colleges abandoned their cafeterias and replaced them with banks of less expensive vending machines. Sandwiches, desserts, hot coffee, and soup created a growing market in factories and plants...The period also saw the introduction of machines that exchanged coins for dollar bills...Hot coffee machines were invented in 1945 and remained unchanged until the 1980s, wehn new innovations allowed coffee beans to be ground within the machine, as needed. This innovation produced the 1990s explosion of gourmet coffee and espresso machines."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford Univeristy Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 586-7)

Vending timeline/National Automatic Merchandizing Association

A selected survey of American vending machine developments:

[1891]
"The now popular on omnipresent "nickel-in-the-slot machine" has only come into practical use within the past four years, although the idea is 2,000 years old. Four years ago this class of apparatus was entirely unckown as far as commercial purposes were concerned. Up to the beginning of 1888 only forty patents had been issued in this country governing such devices. The principal upon which the earlier machines were constructed is at least 2,000 years old. The device was employed by the priests of Alexandria, Egypt, for selling 'lustral' or purifying water to their parishioners. The apparatus was so arranged that upon the dropping of a coin into a slot it would fall on a lever which would raise a valve and thus allow the water to flow out. As soon as the coin fell off the lever the valve would reseat itself and the flow be stopped until another coin was deposited. The device was very simple, and if it worked successfully it was a monument to the honesty and stupidity of the ancient Egyptians, as the average street urchin of to-day would have found a way to "beat" this machine in five minutes. Since 1888 there have been about 4000 patents issued for these machines, which have been classed under the head of "coin-controlled apparatus," and this class has been divided into twenty-four sub-classes. About the same number of patents have been issued in England and a large number in Germany. Almost everything can now be obtained from these automatic clerks or, waiters. A person can drop a coin, either a penny or a nickel, in a slot and procure a cigar, cigarette, or piece of candy, or have his boots blacked, see a horse race, game of baseball, or get a glass of soda, lemonade, mineral water, a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, or have a spray of perfume thrown over his handkerchief, and send a telephonic message, ascertain his striking capacity, test his lungs, get a postal card, a postage stamp, a newspaper, borrow an opera glass, a fan, a book, set a phonograph in motion and "hear the band play," and do a hundred other things "too numerous to mention." The first patent of a machine bearing any similitude to those now in use was granted in England in 1839. This device was intended to prevent the use of seats in public vehicles without paying fare...An English patent was granted in 1870 entitled a "vending machine," which was intended to be used in selling various articles."
---"A nickel in the slot: Ancient idea modernized for practical commercial purposes," Washington Post, April 19, 1891 (p. 15)

[1950]
"New Yorkers learned recently that they had put a total of eight million dollars into subway vending machines during the last year, in exchange for candy, peanuts, chewing gum, cigarettes, carbonated drinks and a variety of other edible, nonedible and inedible commodities. They have also put in a great deal of physical and mental effort aimed at deceiving and punishing the machines, presumable in exhange for certain inner satisfactions...[Vending machines] serve a substantial, though somewhat limited, workingman's lunch or snack in the form of soups, sandwiches, cakes, pastry and hot and cold drinks. It also serves fare accepable to ducks, yaks, antelopes, chickens and such simple forms of animal life; the Bronx Zoo, for example, has machines selling cellophane-wrapped packages of bird-and-beast goodies, and ice-cream and pop corn machines are legion. A coin in a slot buys a tin of snuff, a picket comb, a dosage of sun-tan lotion or a one-shop dental kit, including a disposable toothbrush, a vial of toothpaste and a snack-sized length of dental floss...Recently, the robots have joined ranks and set out to conquer new and broader commercial fields, replacing not only the man behind the shop counter but the counter itself, and even the shop. Rows of monsterous, coin-operated refrigerators, combining the design of a restrained juke-box with the architecture of a bank vault, have been installed in apartment houses to compete with the milkman and the grocery store's dairy department...The late-mode vender is a dazzling thing of artfully chsen colors, sleek outlines, and trimmings of illuminated glass and plastic. It looks neat, efficient, and sanitary enough to meet the requirements of a hospital waiting room--qualities which have a decided attraction to almost anyone who has ever had to sort out his morning cup of coffee from the elbow-deep litter of a midtown luncheonette counter. Consciously or not, the public also has been influenced by the machine's ability to produce, at a price sometimes lower than that of a simlar item sold over the conventional store counter, a product of uniform quality, not subject to the haste, whimsy, fallibility or malice of a clerk or counterman."
---"Coin-in-the-Slot: New Vending Machines are Harvesting Millions--and the end is not yet.," John Sharnik, New York Times, December 3, 1950 (p. SM 30)

[1951]
"When Winnie the Welder on the "graveyard shift," or Tillie The Typist, late in the afternoon, gets that gone feeling, she hastens to the nearest canteen, puts in her coin, and promptly becoems one of thousand of coast-to-coast customers."
---"White Collar Girl," Chicago Daily Tribune, December 3, 1951 (p. D2)

[1952]
"Retail selling without sales clerks is ringing up new gains. This year Americans will drop an expected $1.2 billion into vending machines, double the amount of 1946...The coin-droppers are plunging more money into such mechanical salesmen standbys as cigarettes, peanut and chewing gum machines. And they're also buying from machines such varied merchandise as lighter fluid, postcards, hosiery, and magazines. Among the latest mechanical salesmen is a machine that offers four kinds of refrigerated fresh fruit and can serve four customers at once. Then there's the miniature version of the Automat, dubbed the Lunch-o-Mat. It sells the eater-on-the-run hot and cold sandwiches, pie, pastry, milk, fruit juice and coffee...Besides the usual stress on things for on-the-spot consumption, vending mahcines are making abigger play for the take-home market...Behind the rise of vending machines, of course, is the rise in the cost of retail sales help. The average wage of the human salesperson climbed, by Government calculation, from about $1 an hour, on the average in 1947, to $1.32 last July...The opening-up of new markets in factories and on military posts has contributed heavily to the advance of the mechanical salseman."
---"Mechanical Selling: Vending Machines Win a Rising Flood of Coin With New Merchandise," Thomas S. Watts, Wall Street Journal, October 16, 1952 (p. 1)

[1953]
"This, we say, is going too far. How would you feel if a vending machine which has just pocketed your coin and--with whirrings and bangs--delivered into your hand a candy bar, some peanuts, or a beverage in a paper cup should conclude the deal by booming as you turn away, "Thank you!"? A "polite" vending machine which will do exactly that has been announced by the National Automatic Merchandizing Association."
---"'Dispens-able' Voice," Christian Science Monitor, September 8, 1853 (p. 16)

[1956]
"Robot salesmen are winning in ever-increasing covey of customers among factory workers, travelers and housewives-but not without a few creaks and groans. Vending machines throughout the country are swallowing a record $1.9 billion in small change this year. The people who make these automatic merchandisers and the operators who keep them filled with food, drink, smokes, nail clippers, perfume, pills and other products share a firm belief that this rain of coin is just the beginning. By 1960, they predict, another billion dollars...will be flowing into the devices every year...The high cost and scarcity of labor, as well as the growth of public confidence in vending machines, is helping swell the population of these robot sales clerks."
---"Robot Salesmen: Vending Machines Offer Soup to Nuts Array, Even Cook the Stew," Jerry M. Flint, Wall Street Journal, December 14, 1956 (p. 1)

[1957]
"In the rapid expansion of automatic merchandising, the dispensing of hot foods in plants, schools, and many other areas of activity has been one of the major developments...The American fondness for snacks is responsible for the largest segment of the automatic merchandising industry. Greatest growth has been in the hot food end of this phase of merchandising. Much of the growth for the immediate future also hinges on further developments in machines to dispense complete hot meals. First introduced in 1955, many have already been expanded into complete automatic cafeterias...The impact has been felt throughout the food field. Candy manufacturers turn out a good share of their production in special sizes, shapes, and packs for machines. Confectionery and pastry houses have developed special nickel and dime pies, cakes, cookie and cracker packs, and other pastries. The packaging industry has been called on for special wraps, boxes, and sacks that can be adapated to machines. There are hot meal vendors for foods such as Swiss steak, chicken a la king, beef stew, spaghetti and meat balls, macaroni and cheese, meat and chicken pies, and baked beans. One firm now has 27 hot foods which are sold from an automatic cafeteria that takes up little more space than the average soft drink machine. There's the endless choice of soups from a soup bar. There are also special vendors for fresh, crisp salads, multiselection machines for hot and cold beverages and hot soups, and for a wide choice of sandwiches. There are special machines for parties and other desserts. It is possible to buy a freshly roasted hot dog, served in a roll, complete with sealed portion of mustard...One of the newest and most complex machines serves a complete meal from appetizer to dessert in a matter of seconds...Most of these hot food machines are installed in factories, schools, and military establishments. Eight out of 10 manufacturing plants use vending machines to help solve the problem of factory feeding...Such installations save capital investments, as well as the cost of operating regular cafeterias...They also provide round-the-clock feeding to take care of night shifts. In many plants, profits form the machiens are used for employee welfare and recreational funds. This encourages use of the machines and discourages abuse and pilfering. One plant uses commissions to buy uniforms and equipemnt for athletic teams...The RCA Victor TV division plant in Bloomington, Ind., uses automatic machines to feed 4,000 chips, pretzels, and other foods. Cooky sales have beenfound to increase reapidly when installed beside beverage machines...The Pennsylvania Railroad has an automatic snack bar to supplement dining-car service in some trains..."
---"Flick Button: Hot or Cold Bite. Vending Robots Serve Snacks," Bernice Stevens Decker, Christian Science Monitor, February 16, 1957 (p. 12)

[1960]
"Southern Californians clinked $40 million in nickels, dimes and quarters into gaudy machines to buy cigarettes, pop, candy, coffee and 25 other lines of merchandise last hear. One out of every five candy bars and packs of cigarettes is peddled through vending machines. There are 150 companies installing and servicing the automatic merchandising equipment, but close to half of the business is in the hands of three giants, all with national operations...It is an industry in revolution. There is the technological revolution, touched off a decade ago with perfection of automtatic coffee-peddling machines. There is the financial revolution, as big firms get bigger and small ones struggle for survival...And there is the revolution of service, as vending machines offer more and better general food service to the point that automatic cafeterias are not far in the future."
---"Vending Machines Become Big Business in Southland," Louis Fleming, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1960 (p. h1)

[1960]
""We belive that there is a big future in the field of automatic merchandising and that this concern is in a position to benefit form such developments," At a time when vending machine securities have become top speculative favorites, this quotation from an investment advisory service sounds as contemporary as a Kennedy headline. And yet it was written in 1920. The concern reviewed, Autosales Co., went out of business in the mid-1930s. It seves to point up the classic differentiation betwen invention and innovation by Joseph Schumpeter, the late Harvard economist, and the frequently great time lag between the two. Vending machines...are hardly new although the stock market currently acts as though they were. The automatic merchandising industry is now celebrating its 75th anniversary. The first patents were granted in 1886 and two years later machines were already installed in New York's elebated train stations. Machines dispensing gum, candy, cigarettes--and more recently, soft drinks and coffee--have become commonplace. And yet the automatic merchandising industry feels it has hardly begun to tap its potential. Why has such a promising industry take to long to grow up?..For one thing, the early vending machines were relatively simple devices, But only until recently has technology been able to broaden their applications to take them out of the subway gum and candy rut....[the] vending equipemnt is essentialy labor-saving machinery. Scarcely had an automatic merchandising boom gotten underway in the 1920s when the Great Depression turned a labor shortage into a surplus, and "wage rates turned down, lessening the pressure to replace retail clerks with machines." Thre wasn't much point in putting a nickel into a slot for an apple when one could be bought on any street corner. Today, the trend has again been reversed. The labor supply has tightened and retail labor costs have mounted...Hence the present drive to replace the retail clerk with a machine. Vending equipment has been developed to recognize and change currency up to $20 bills, to handle race track bets, to dispence movie tickets, phonograph records, ice cubes, hot meals and what have you. Since June...Macy's New York store has been testing a machine which sells 36 different items of men's underwear ad shirts. The lease charge averages 20 cents an hour on a round-the-clock basis against an average of well over $1 an hour for a sales clerk. Automation has already invaded in-plant feeding, a $4 billion industry in itself. In Kansas City, a recently opened vending drive-in bult like a carport offers prepared foods, beverages and staple grocery items 24 hours a day from 24 machines."
---"75-Year-Old Prodigy Gorws Up," Frank C. Porter, Washington Post, December 2, 1960 (p. B8)

[1967]
"...children, if left to their their own devices, will buy what is at hand and is appealing. Vending machines, drugstores and variety stores are at every corner. If you give your child 25 cents to buy his breakfast on the way to school, it is likely that breakfast will be candy bars and pop--not a glass of milk and a bowl of cereal."
---"Food and Your Health," F.J. Stare, Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1967 (p. G5)

[1968]
"Each day Americans drop and estimated 111 million coins into vending machines to buy such items as cigarettes, candy, chewing gum, milk, soft drinks, nuts, ice cream and sandwiches. Last year the clinking of nickles, dimes and quarters added up to a sales volume of more than $4.5 billion. This year the projected sales value is $4.9 billion, an increase of 8 per cent. The American vending industry is expanding in what has been called its "third evolution" since World War II by establishing itself as a significant retailing channel and providing service to such new outlets as factories, offices and colletes. The "second evolution," in the priod between 1959 and 1961, led consolidations of vending mahcine manufacturers and service companies. This resulted in the establishment of national service concerns and public ownership of the largest service companies. The "third evolution" is palcing a majority of vending machines into new avenues of operation...the extent of this change was disclosed in two surveys of the industury, sponsored by the N.A.M.A...."An increasing variety of convenience foods will be available and purchased by smaller service firms who can thus cut down on production costs,"...The application of computers will have an important impact on the future of the vending business..."
---"'Third Evolution' Seen In Vending Machines, New York Times, September 22, 1968 (p. 155)

[1972]
"Do you want your child lunching at school everyday on potato chips, soda pop, and candy instead of meat, milk, and fruit? That might happen if a bill now in the final stages of congressional passage is approved without change. And it probably will be--due to heavy lobbying pressure which has brought it almost unnoticed this far. This pressure comes primarily from makers of snack foods with little or no nutritive value, show see school lunchrooms as a marvelous place to increase sales and profit."
---"Vending-machine school lunches?," Rober P. Hey, Christian Science Monitor, September 11, 1972 (p. 12)

[1974]
"When students at Cornell University want a quick snack, they buy an apple--from a vending machine! The robot food dispensers are placed at strategic spots on campus and stocked with fresh, cool fruit. Despite competition from candy and soft drink machines, the apple vendors "do a really big business," says Prof. Robert Smock, of Cornells' Pomology Department...Of coruse the fruit business is just a drop in the bucket for an industry with total annual sales of more than $4 billion. Sugar-laden snacks like candy bars, cookies, crackers, soda, and ice cream are where the money is in automatic food vending. That's why Mrs. Jean Farmer of Bloomington, Ind. became so alarmed when vending machines appeared at local schools....Vending machines are not evils, she says, nor are the people who operate them. But especially in schools, they need to be stocked with wholesome foods..."The only profit we should consider...is the lasting profit of good health and good habits." Concerned parents elsewhere are also resisting the vending machine invasion."...Lets remember that automatic vendors are only machines. If we want them to provide people with better nutrition, we'll just have to program them that way."
---"Vending machines that dispense health," Robert Rodale, Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1974 (p. N5)

[1992]
"It is not hard to see the flaws in vending machines. They swallow money and never return it. They promise to drop a package of candy but freeze in mid-moment, cruelly dangling something that cannot be reached. They offer food that is appealing only to the desperate. But there are visions of what a vending machine can be: a quick, easy way to get fresh, nutritious food, valued not as a last-ditch choice but as an appealing alternative. There is a growing belief in the food industry that the next few years will witness the transformation of vending from a static, change-resistant business into one that will provide food anywhere people happen to be...Some of ther first tentative signs of change are already being spotted: vending machines that grind coffee from beans and brew a fresh cup...and systems that use debit cards rather than coins that do not function or coins that mysteriously disappear...This fall E.C.C. International Corporation...will begin selling vending machines that offer frozen foods that can be bought and then heated in a microwave oven. And Ore-Ida Foods...plans to begin production soon of a manchine that cooks french fries with hot air..."There are a lot of interesting machines coming,"...Although radical changes could take years to establish, there are several reason to believe that they are likely to occur. Vending has long been a dormant area of the food business which is constantly seeking new areas to exploit. Now, executives at large companies say vending has become a priority...Changes in the economy are also creating a demand for better vending in more places. The shrinking of large companies has led to the closing of many company cafeterias. They are being replaced with vending areas...Vending has been slow to change partly because the business for years could depend on what it called the four C's: cold drinks, candy, confections and cigarettes. Most of the items were small and and easy to buy with a coin or two. Now, the smallest candy bar seems to take a pocketful of change, which discourages purchases...It is not clear to all operators of vending machines...that their future lies in dispensing meals, rather than snacks or candy...The perceptions affect what people are willing to pay and buy. "We are still looked at strictly as a convenience and not as a food source,"..."People don't expect to go to a vending machine and buy steak and a baked potato."...They expect to pay less than they would for the same item bought in a grocery store...Meeting the needs of vending customers...is not easy. People are extremely impatient even in stores...They are at least as demanding when it comes to being served by a machine...Mollie Little...is the kind of customer the vending industry is trying to lure. She often takes her lunch to work, but said that she would buy from a machine if she could get good sandwiches, salads or entrees from companies like Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine. Now, though, she sticks to buing soda or trail mix because she does not like the sandwiches from the machines...."the bread was soggy.""
---"Vending Machines, the Next Generation in Dining," Trish Hall, New York Times, September 9., 1992 (p. C1)

RECOMMENDED READING: Vending Machines: An American Social History/Kerry Segrave

See also: Automats.

The three primary modern Western restaurant menu options are "A la Carte," "Prix fixe," and "Table d'hote." The Culinary Institute of America defines them this way: "A la carte: A menu in which the patron makes individual selections from various menu categories; each item is priced separately."
---The Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America, 8th edition [John Wiley & Sons:New York] 2006 (p. 1170)

"When traiteur in the 1780s added "restauranteur" to his sign, he probably began to serve some sort of bouillon, but he also, if it all possible, made provisions for more particularized repasts, for service a la carte. The restaurant made it possible, for the first time, to partake of a meal in the company of others without actually sharing provisions. In 1794, one would-be restauranteur identified serving single portions as a rare new talent, and thus advertised specifically for a cook who know how to "carve dishes for a-la-carte service" and price single servings. Yet if restauranteurs and their kitchen staffs knew that restaurant service was intended for individuals, their novice customers might not, and so menus throughout the 1790s carried reminders in large and boldface type informing eaters that prices listed were for single servings only. Restauranteurs had printed menus because the offered their customers a choice of unseen dishes...the restauranteur's printed menu made standardized transactions possible in a time when printed prices or fixed charges were still far from the norm in most shops or markets...While a restaurant's fare might not be uniform...its monetary transactions were...the printed menu allowed restaurant patrons to calculate costs 'before spending a penny... There in print, set and fixed before his or her very eyes, the [a la carte] restaurant customer saw prices and dish names, concoctions and costs. No longer required to share each of the dishes brought to a table d'hote, but permitted to concentrate on the ones he or she explicitly requested, the restaurant patron could make a preference as much as a matter of finance as of taste......The rejection of the table-d'hote tradition indicated far more than a move toward flexible mealtimes and away from shared provisions; the restaurant also altered the relation between provider and customer...The table d'hote had literally been "the host's table'...The restauranteur offered a different sort of hospitality: he promised to provide each customer, with his or her or their...own table..."Restaurant" service--as unlike the cafe as it was distinct form the table d'hote--characterized not commonwealth but compartmentalization, a world of dividing partitions and individual isolation..." ---The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 77-78)

Prix-fixe

"Prix fixe: Literally, "fixed price." A type of menu in which a complete meal is offered for a pre-set price. The menu may offer several choices for each course." ---The Professional Chef (p. 1184)

PRIX FIXE "Have you noticed how many restaurants now offer prix-fixe menus? Although prix-fixe is being heralded as a new approach to menu pricing, it is actually not new at all. In fact, its origin lies in the hotels of the early 1900s. Prix-fixe is really nothing more than table d'hote, which means "table of the host." Table d'hote, or a complete meal at a fixed price, was the only way people could order food in the early inn and tavern dining rooms 90 years ago. The early inns and taverns did not give patrons a choice of menu items. The patrons ate whatever the innkeeper prepared that day. The menus in the hotels in the early 1900s were just the opposite. Then the typical menu could contain more than 400 different items. Even the smallest hotels offered guests a choice of two to three items over as many as seven courses, including appetizers, soups, entrees, vegetables, salads, desserts and nonalcoholic beverages. Back in those days, hoteliers never bothered to track food costs because meals were considered a loss leader. Money was not made on rooms, as it is today, but from alcoholic-beverage sales in the saloons. That was the origin of the belief that you had to sell liquor to make money in a restaurant. In time, some operators sought to plan and price items separately, or A la carte. Still, they continued to offer table d'hote menus because some guests did not see the value in paying more for separate courses. But when Prohibition killed the cash cow of alcohol sales, hotels converted their bars to coffee shops and soda fountains. A la carte pricing became the preferred menu format. A la carte portions were more substantial than the portions served on the table d'hote courses, which cost more when purchased separately. Bundling the items and selling them for a lower price gave customers the incentive to buy a full meal. Although the term table d'hote is not used much today, the bundling of courses at a set price is used in most table-service restaurants and even fast-food operations. Fast food purveyors call them "value meals." Perhaps the most enduring example of table d'hote is the club breakfast served in every coffee shop. Pancakes, eggs, grits, bacon and toast are included in "hungry farmer breakfasts." Customers probably pay 10 percent to 20 percent less for prix-fixe breakfasts than they would for each item a la carte. The term prix-fixe is more often associated with white-tablecloth restaurants, however. And those restaurants are more readily adopting fixed-price menus. Back in the early 1900s, menu prices were entirely driven by food cost. With the pricing restrictions brought about by World War I and the Depression, prices reflected only a slight markup of cost. Food-cost percentages during those times averaged about 50 percent. Labor costs were very low, so food costs could be high and still result in a profit. No one thought of adding a premium charge for service, amenities or demand. Except for elaborate private functions put on by very wealthy industrialists, prices for food were marked up only two times cost. The old table d'hote menus, which required advance preparation, had resulted in food sitting for long periods, resulting in poor food quality and much waste. Cooking to order was seen as a way to offer adequate choices to guests during nontraditional meal periods and to keep waste to a minimum. Because sugar, meats, coffee, butter and other ingredients were rationed during World War I and World War II, anything that conserved supplies was lauded by operators and the public. The elaborate table d'hote offerings were not appropriate during those times, and the media quickly pointed out such extravagances when elaborate parties were thrown. A la carte pricing has several advantages over prix -ixe. It allows the customer to spend only what he wants for a meal, and it allows the operator to price each course so that it pays its proportion of overhead and returns a profit. Prix-fixe, on the other hand, requires the customer to eat what is listed. Back in the early 1960s one of the better-known restaurants on Chicago's south side was Club El Bianco. It was an Italian restaurant famous for its signature "fiesta dinners," which were really a novel way of presenting a prix-fixe menu...The prix-fixe menu is not universally beneficial. The higher the prices, the smaller the customer base. If your target markets are those customers who desire a unique dining experience, then it might work. However, this is a very narrow customer niche that demands the very highest level of food, service and ambience.One of the touted benefits of prix-fixe menus is the no-surprises pricing. Both the customer and the operator know what the final bill will be. Another advantage of prix-fixe menus is that fewer ingredients are needed, and bulk purchasing can lower costs.Yet prix-fixe may not be appropriate for every operator. On most menus the lowest- and highest-priced items in a category are divisible by two and half. For example, if the lowest-priced entree is $10.95, the highest priced will be $27.50. If you want an average check of $18 per person, most of your menu items should be priced between $17.50 and $19.95. In addition, the menu should be designed so that items priced near the desired check average are placed where they are most likely to be selected. Servers also should be trained in the suggestive selling of these items. A regular analysis of your menu-sales mix will reveal the items that are helping or hindering your cost, sales and profit objectives. While prix-fixe has its place in the high-end markets, the majority of markets are more conservative and price-sensitive. More courses mean that customers take longer to eat, reducing table turnover. Only certain markets can support that kind of service during the week. In addition, the prix-fixe menu is restrictive, and some customers may be unhappy if they are limited in what they can order when they are asked to pay between $38 and $80 per person."
---"History repeats itself as prix-fixe menus make a comeback in many restaurants," David V Pavesic, Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 22, 1999. (p. 22)

Related topics? A la carte & Table d'hote.

Table d'hote

"Table d'hote: A fixed-price menu with a single price for an entire meal based on entree selection."
---The Professional Chef (p. 1188)

"Whereas traditional table-d'hote service placed all comers at a single large table, restaurants were innovative in the use of small tables and private rooms...The restaurant, unlike the table d'hote, presented its patrons with at least the appearance of choice. Even when it served on 88 entrees, but bouillon's, vermicelli, capons, waters, and rice pudding, the restaurant seemed--in comparison to the table d'hote's dependably "overcooked beef, so-called stew, veal cutlets, and a few vegetables" --to offer an enormous range of options. The restaurant allowed for variety...Furthermore, the [restaurant] eater could choose exactly what to eat...A table d'hote had no menu; the eaters...and the food...arrived at the same moment.. a table d'hote offered little individual choice."
---The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 75-76)

Related topics? A la carte & Prixe-fixe.

Tasting menus

Our survey of articles published in the New York Times reveals Tasting Menus surfaced in the United States during the early 1980s. They were a practical byproduct of Nouvelle Cuisine. On some level, the concept is related to the classic table h'ote and the modern chef's table. This article sums it up nicely:

"One byproduct of the nouvelle cuisine is the menu de degustation, or tasting menu, that is offered in many restaurants here--including the Quilted Giraffe, Chanterelle, Claude's and Lutece--and in France and that is perhaps being overworked. As this new cuisine became highly publicized, diners were eager to sample all of the dishes they had read about, and so each person in a group ordered a different appetizer, main course and dessert. Then all would taste everything. Although that custom existed before the nouvelle cuisine, its practice was not nearly as widespread; indeed, it was considered declasse in more formal quarters. As the practice became more frequent, kitchens began to feel the burden of preparing, for example, 12 different dishes correctly timed for one table. Partly for that reason, and also because it gives diners the opportunity to experience many dishes without the mess of back-and-forth tasting, the menu de degustation was born. Usually consisting of a set menu with anywhere from six to eight course determined by the chef, it must be taken by everyone within a party. Rules prohibit two people ordering that menu while two others choose from the a la carte selections; that would not making things any easier for the kitchen and probably would complicate the timing because usually those ordering a la carte would not have more than three or four courses....But as with so many other good ideas, this one seems to be going bad, primarily because too many restauranteurs push it for their own convenience but also because so many diners are insecure. Experienced eaters value suggestions from chefs or captains...I have never had a menu de degustation when I have not wished a few dishes had been dropped in favor of others, and, more important, I cannot remember a single knockout dish eaten from such a menu--so small, it is hard to get a really solid impression of the dish. The effect is somewhat like eating a variety of canapes at a cocktail party, with much the same overly complex mixture of seasonings and sauces, and much the same running together of dishes, resulting in a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and unease...The other negative effect of the overused menu is that the regular menu falls out of use and one cannot develop longstanding favorites...In the final analysis, ordering the menu de degustation becomes much like ordering a complete model room from a department store. You may not go very wrong, but your own crotchets and preferences will not be there to give it character, and ultimately the room--or the meal--will not really be yours at all."
---"De Gustibus: 'Tasting' Menu: A Good Idea Sours," Mimi Sheraton, New York Times, October 10, 1981 (p. 18)

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About these notes: Food history can be a complicated topic. These notes are not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject, but a summary of salient points supported with culinary evidence. If you need more information we suggest you start by asking your librarian to help you find the books and articles cited in these notes. Article databases are good for locating current recipes, consumer trends, and new products.
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