Diners, Dives, and the Woolworth's Lunch Counter

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Woolworths my God I haven't thought about that in years... We use to call it the "five and dime", I remember having their ham sandwiches (thanks for the link to the recipe Kathleen), and their burgers... I also remember a place called Jahns in Jackson Heights N.Y., it was known for the ice cream, but they had food also... My parents rented the apt. above them and every year on our birthdays my siblings and I would go down and get our free banana split... They were the best... I also remember A&W rootbeer floats in the frosty mugs, and there was a place in Manhatten that was like a cafeteria, where you would put your money in the slot and open the little glass door to retrieve your food... I can't for the life off me remember the name of the place, but as kids we thought that was great fun... :):):)

Horn and Hardart's?
 
I used to get it at a local corner store. You could get it anywhere in the area. It cwould come in clear cellophane whith no label or writing on it at all. It would cost about a nickle for a fairly large square. Sponge toffee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christine's Sponge Toffee - Recipes - Food Network Canada

Checked out the wiki and see it was sometimes covered in chocolate. I'm sure PF will agree that could present a dilemma for the sponge toffee purist and so, as our resident sponge toffee expert, you should make it and send it: Half WITH chocolate and half without.

Oh, Kathleen, I worked at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Regina when I was in University. making the ham salad was one of my jobs and I was a vegetarian. But it smelled so good that I snuck a spoonful and was surprised that I liked it! Thanks for bringing that memory back.

I mostly worked the sandwich station, but sometimes filled in on grill making burgers, etc. It was a great job. The only down part was our uniforms were orange and brown and I lived in the dorm. I had to dress at "home" as there were no lockers. I had to cut through the TV room and the guys would wait for me and then follow me out swaggering and whistling the A&W Root Bear music!

As for food, the Kmart cafe had the best grilled cheese sandwiches and crinkle cut fries.

I'll bet it was fun work. Please settle the ham cube size discussion for my mother and me: How big were the ham cubes diced?

The uniform that I remember was pink and white. I love pink though it did not suit Edna's personality at all. That being said, she seemed to point me in the direction of the 1 penny balloons for my banana split!

I loved Kmart's submarine sandwiches. It was the first place that I had an Italian cold cut sandwich and I thought it was simply the best thing on earth for impromptu picnics. Sometimes, I would suggest a picnic just to get the sandwich. I never had Kmart's grilled cheese. What made them special?
 
Checked out the wiki and see it was sometimes covered in chocolate. I'm sure PF will agree that could present a dilemma for the sponge toffee purist and so, as our resident sponge toffee expert, you should make it and send it: Half WITH chocolate and half without.

Absolutely, make sure they get sent to Kathleen and ME! :pig:
 
I was getting through the thread to post about Automats. Yes, that is a fond memory. They were still around when I was a child, but quickly losing ground to fast food restaurants. Good, fresh, real food fast. Now that was something.

I make the Horn and Hardt's baked beans which are always a hit.

I also miss real soda fountains where your soda pop was mixed right there. They'd always give me an extra shot of syrup in my root beers that made them so sweet I could barely stand it. Good memories. I don't even drink soda anymore, but still, good memories.

Oh, and the old soda pop machines where you put in your coin and slid the bottle of soda along the rails out to the little lever and pulled it through. The coke bottles would hang by their caps on these rails in the cooler. Miss those, too.
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Our A&W/Long John Silver's (why did they combine those??) will give you a frosted glass mug to use to fill your root beer if you want it, but it isn't the same as driving up and getting it served on a tray hanging from your rolled down car window. Oh, and it also doesn't have the little plastic giraffe hanging on the rim of the mug, either. Remember those little plastic animals??
 
Our A&W/Long John Silver's (why did they combine those??) will give you a frosted glass mug to use to fill your root beer if you want it, but it isn't the same as driving up and getting it served on a tray hanging from your rolled down car window. Oh, and it also doesn't have the little plastic giraffe hanging on the rim of the mug, either. Remember those little plastic animals??

Ours is an A&W/KFC...

Yes, I remember the plastic animals, I had quite a collection of them.
 
I forgot about Royal Castle. Birchbeer, Orange Julius and the little, .05 hamburgers you could buy in a box, by the dozen. Of course gas was .25 a gallon then.

Craig
 
I can remember going to "the dime store" in Kindergarten after school with my mom for chili. I remember it as Woolworth's, but it might not have been because I didn't see chili on the menu. In less Battle Creek Michigan had something different on their menu? I also would have a chili dog sometimes. I just loved sitting up at the soda fountain counter to eat!:)
 
@ MollyAnne - It was only 39 cents if you popped that balloon unwisely! I once got banana split for one single penny! That meant I still had 49 cents from my half-dollar to spend on other cool stuff. Like...Tiger Beat Magazine! :)

I loved the HoJo's lunch counters. Heck, I just liked lunch counters. I feel sorry or my nieces and nephews who did not have this experience. Lunch counters are so far and few between. There is still ONE left in my hometown as part of an old candy store. Now, it is rather like a museum in to itself and is quite trendy. Not the same. A Ginny doll is just adorable. How cool that you kept it.

@ CraigC - I adored Lums hot dogs that were steamed in BEER. It made me feel quite grown up. *preens*

I love Birch Beer, but I had to have the RC with a moon pie. We have White Castles back toward home. When I was a child, they were the forbidden food....heck, with my mother, they still are. :LOL:

@ Mimi - My aunt worked at the Five and Dime. It was actually called that on their sign. Woolworths was across the street from it. I also remember Kresges in the town to where my parents moved. It's lunch counter was nice enough but, not being in a tiny town, it did not have the same feel. That being said, I would love to go back even to Kresges!

Auto-mats were just the most awesome thing on earth. I remember getting a piece of pie on a glass plate with a metal fork! I mainly remember it at a train-station. I was pretty young and absolutely starving. The pie was from heaven as memory recalls. :)

@ LAJ - You do plan to share a recipe with us, don't you? I miss the Mom and Pop Bakeries too. One still exists where my parents live, but the owners and recipes changed. They would make these small iced cakes - larger than petit fours. The icing was very thin, perfect, and decorated daintily. It almost cracked and melted when bitten into and the cake was pure magic. I have never seen anything like it since. Big Boy restaurants....I had not thought of them in ages.

@ LindaZ - I had you pegged as the flavored lipstick kind of girl. ;) My first tube of flavored liptint was strawberry glaze. It smelled like strawberry and tasted like strawberry. Who cares if it made my lips gooey? A small price to pay for beauty. :LOL:

That Jackie just sounds like a bad influence. :rolleyes: Chocolate malts were awesome.

@ chopper - They had specials for lunch and dinner all of the time. I seem to recall chili too and remember getting it with two packs of saltine crackers. It was meaty with beans. Loved it. Perhaps it was another lunch counter, but I picture it at Woolworths. I'm jealous, b/c Grandma made me sit in a booth instead of the twirlie stools. :glare:

There is an A&W drive-in still operating in the town where my parents live called Dogs-N-Suds. They have a coney sauce. A recipe that tastes pretty close to it was given to me by a friend. It differs from Pops (which is my heart's favorite.) That being said, I'll not turn down a coney dog from Dogs-N-Suds ever. I got the footlong. The onions were minced and the dog was steamed as was the bun. How does one get the mug frosty?

Here is the coney sauce recipe as it was given to me.

Dogs-N-Suds Coney Sauce
1 pound ground beef
2 tablespoons prepared mustard
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon of tabasco sauce
1 small onion, minced
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon water
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
Catsup as needed.

Brown ground beef with onion over a medium heat. Break up the meat into fine crumbles. Drain off the fat. Add everything else except for catsup. Mix well and then add enough catsup to keep mixture loose. Simmer partially covered, 1 hour. Add catsup as needed. Serve on steamed hot dogs with a side of A&W root beer. Don't forget to tip the carhop.
 
We (the kids) weren't brought to restaurants during our childhood, I think I missed the Woolworth's balloon popping fun. :mad:
The first restaurant I went to that I remember was when I went on a first date at age 18. :LOL:

Here for your viewing pleasure, I scanned it from the original menu, I've saved since my 'almost' first job.
Do you recognize it?
ancienthistoryrestaurant1 001smallersize.JPG
 
@ Mimi - My aunt worked at the Five and Dime. It was actually called that on their sign. Woolworths was across the street from it. I also remember Kresges in the town to where my parents moved. It's lunch counter was nice enough but, not being in a tiny town, it did not have the same feel. That being said, I would love to go back even to Kresges!

I completely forgot about Kresges! We had on in my home town too. The main street had a Woolworth's, Kresges, Grant's, and Sears and we had 3 movie theaters too.
 
We (the kids) weren't brought to restaurants during our childhood, I think I missed the Woolworth's balloon popping fun. :mad:
The first restaurant I went to that I remember was when I went on a first date at age 18. :LOL:

Here for your viewing pleasure, I scanned it from the original menu, I've saved since my 'almost' first job.
Do you recognize it?
View attachment 9994

Is it Friendlys? It looks familiar. Do you remember what you had?

I completely forgot about Kresges! We had on in my home town too. The main street had a Woolworth's, Kresges, Grant's, and Sears and we had 3 movie theaters too.

Sears had a fabulous candy kiosk that had fresh roasted chestnuts during the Christmas holiday. My little sister was a toddler and crawled to the center of a ring rack and fell asleep. The clerk plied me with chestnuts while the panicked parents, police, and sales managers searched for her. Entertainment at its best....because it did not involve me! :LOL:
 
Blissful,
We really didn't get to go out much at my house. I can only remember one Italian place we would go to once every six months or so, and every once in a while Dad would take us to the truck stop for breakfast (again maybe once in six months). The dime store thing with Mom was different. I was the last of four children born within four and one half years. I guess my mom just needed to have fun with the last one home half a day before the next year when she was set to go off to work. It feels like it happened a lot (the lunch counter thing), but the last time I talked to Mom about it, she said that it probably only happened maybe three or four times. It was just such a special time for me that it just seemed like we did it all of the time. I just love childhood memories. I just know that we went there lots for chili, and sometimes icecream. I also know that I was her favorite. I think I will just keep the memories the way they are, and not believe that I was only at that lunch counter three or four times.:angel:
 
Kathleen, I do believe ours was called Woolworths five and dime... It was in Long Beach N.Y. about 40 years ago, not there anymore... I remember it having a lunch counter to one side of the store... I wonder if it's the same Woolworths everyone else is talking about... I do remember ham salad, burgers, and grilled cheese sandwiches...

YES PF that's it, Horn and Hardarts... Loved to go there and put my money in the machine... We would go after seeing a broadway show, or seeing the Rockettes Christmas show... Oh the memories... :mellow::mellow::mellow:
 
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