10 Restaurants that Changed How We Eat

[Shel_B]

CLICK HERE to watch a PBS video on these ten groundbreaking restaurants from an earlier era.  Have you been to any of them?  I've been to about half, but then I'm also from an earlier era.

[gfweb]

It won't play.

 

What are the ten, Shel?

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Nope, won't stream for me either, although it looks like it will, but then just sits at the opening screen after I click the arrow to start the 8:56 minute video.

 

Mmmkay, reclicked the link, and now it's playing within seconds of the first try? Gotta love non-command line interfaces where it's impossible to diagnose problems. At least sometimes they are self-healing.

 

0? Sylvia's in Harlem - soul food

1. Delmonico's NY financial district - food that was French with new world twists

2. Shrafft's again NY - catering to middle class folks, and notably, for it's time females, for the first time.

3. Howard Johnson's upstate NY - fried clams  and franfurts around the car culture. I miss the sweet clam strips so.

4. La Pavillon - catered to the upper class

5. The Four Seasons - advent of seasonal menus and the modern power lunch. 

6. Mama Leone's NY - Introduced a lot of people to Italian food, marking the true globalization of the American economy.

7. The Mandarin in San Francisco - in 1961 chef-owner Cecilia Chang introduced food north and west of Cantonese.

7-b/8. Freidman's Restaurant?????????? I swear they mentioned this here, but no details ??????? Weird??????

8. Chez Panisse, Berkeley CA - fresh, safe and wholesome food from chef Alice Waters.

9. Antoines, New Oreleans, LA - since 1840 cajun and sparkling fresh seafood.

10. Sylvia's in Harlem - they cover the to-go Thanksgiving meals this restaurant sells beaucoup of. 

 

Hope you folks can load the video. It worked for me on second try. I enjoyed transcribing it, though, because right now, bringing a little order into the world of something I can control is inordinately comforting.

 

 

[Shalmanese]

14 minutes ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

8. Chez Panisse, Berkeley CA - fresh, safe and wholesome food from chef Alice Waters.

 

Wow, to think my parents were resigned to eating unfresh, unsafe and unwholesome food for their entire childhood! Thank goddess Alice Waters was the first one to combine all three! Surely McDonalds and Chipotle deserve to be on that list way more than a lot of these entrants.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

My complaint with Howard Johnson's is the melted ice cream served in hot metal cups.

 

[Darienne]

Interesting.  From the days when Canada was so far behind the USA.  So far behind...

[liuzhou]

Only America has restaurants? The headline is very misleading. The book on which the video is based is more sensible, being titled "10 restaurants that changed American food". But it's still nonsense.

"They even invented brunch". What drivel. People have been eating brunch since prehistoric times.

 

And no-one did seasonal foods until the "Four Seasons" hit on the concept? See pre-history above.

American Chinese oddly passed over in one uninformative sentence?

 

Just another load of clickbait.

(Not sure why people can't see it. The link is just to a YouTube video. Even I can access it in China where YouTube is officially censored.)

Edited November 28, 2016 by liuzhou (log)

[Martin Fisher]

It's NPR for goodness sake! 

 

"PAUL FREEDMAN: They (Delmonico`s) invented Lobster Newburg.  They invented Baked Alaska."

 

No!

 

They may have created their version of each, but they didn't 'invent' them.

 

[Tri2Cook]

12 hours ago, Shalmanese said:

Surely McDonalds and Chipotle deserve to be on that list way more than a lot of these entrants.

I'm semi-ashamed to admit that my entire purpose for opening this thread was to comment "McDonalds". The fact that somebody already beat me to it is possibly even better than if I'd done it myself.

[Naftal]

I am sooo glad we have such a long oceanic coastline! Imagine what we would be eating if the USA was a land-locked nation!!!

[rotuts]

these changed Restaurant Eating  ( in the USA )  and mostly NYC.

 

if the We means all of us  or most of us , again USA , then as mentioned , it would have to be McDonalds  and one of those

 

national chains with the large 'Captan' chairs round a large table serving potato skins  ( deep fried ) with tons of melted cheese ( processed ) and sour cream and chives.

 

3,000 calories a serving at least  

 

these chains created   Fat Land .

Edited November 27, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[Norm Matthews]

My impression of the piece is that it is a New Yorker picking restaurants he knows as examples of how food was received throughout the history of America.  Here in Kansas City, my 72 years of growing up left different ideas of restaurants which educated  how we thought of food.  There was the lunch counter at local department stores. Katz was the one I remember the most. Dad worked for the railroad and some of the fanciest food I experienced was on board the train dining cars and Harvey's at the Union Station. Campus Hideaway in Lawrence was the pre-curser to Pizza Hut.  Winesteads on the Plaza was  where I had my first cheesecake though it was a hamburger joint before McD's was ever imagined, the Tamale stand guy that  came around the block once in a while in the evening and the couple who served the first tacos I had out of their upstairs apartment in the Argentine district. I had my first loose meat hamburger at a drive-in restaurant. Mom grew up in Arkansas during the Depression and her food was pretty close to what people call soul food today.  Oh yeah, there was the tavern across the street that on Meatless Fridays served New Orleans style peel your own shrimp.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Norm Matthews (log)

[MetsFan5]

Is it wrong that all I want after reading this is McDonalds? I mean id be happy to eat at Delmonico's and even happier to eat at Mama Leone's outpost at Citifield, Mama's of Corona's but I'm not in the mood to deal with driving and parking and all that. Plus now that Mickey D's serves breakfast all day...

Edited November 30, 2016 by MetsFan5
Spelling while posting in bed is hard. (log)