Yes, but I can't remember the name of it anymore, it was probably 50+ years ago. They made a charcoal grilled cube steak that was so tender and delicious and you know how difficult it is to get cube steak tender when grilled, and served it with au gratin potatoes. They changed locations and it was never the same.

Mo memories here, we never went out to eat, too poor I guess.

Sue

Pimento cheese sandwich with fountain coke, in the fifties at our local drug store.

Dottie, I used to love the Magic Pan. I'd have the Spinach crepes and the Spinach Mandarin salad (I have the recipe!).

I grew up near Norris, Tennessee and there was this little restuarant in the center of town that made the absolute best pies that you have ever tasted in your life! The coconut cream pie was to die for! The pie was so tall and each serving was huge. All of their food was great and eating there was a real treat.

When I was a teenager in the late 70's, a friend and I used to play racquetball and then go to a certain pizza place. Today her and I still go out for lunch about once a month and sometimes we go for pizza at that restaurant which is still owned by the same family, but has moved to a new location. The pizza still tastes the same. It is our favorite.

As I first start reading this, I couldn't think of any special place. Then I remembered the restaurant in the pottery I worked in right out of high school. Some guy ran a restaurant right in the factory. It was put there for the workers benefit but the food was so fantastic (especially Sunday's chicken and other specials) that the workers often had a hard time getting through the cafeteria style line on their half hour lunch break due to 'outsiders'. Everything was homemade.

Shirley, who is now hungry for the mashed potatoes served with homemade noodles over them.

In west central MN is a little town called Sunburg with a population at the time of around 145 (now 110 or less) but there's two restaurant memories there. One was the cafe in town. Myrtle was usually the waitress and probably the owner AFAIK. We'd usually be there at lunchtime and their menu consisted usually of hamburger, grilled cheese, peanut butter and/or jelly sandwiches and the lunch "special", a hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. It was an old place, I still remember the red linoleum cover on the counter, the high back wooden booths and the lack of light in there. Better to not see what you're eating perhaps? Until the early 90s they still used a cigar box and muffin tin as the cash drawer. My dad normally would insist on a booth at restaurants but not in there - always at the counter. I think it was so he could talk to more people. Yelling across the room was the norm.

Then some people wanted to build a "supper club" in town and bring revenue to the small area. However Kandiyohi County was a dry county until shortly before the plan and when they decided to dampen things up a bit, they allowed only a few municiple liquors in the county seat, 25 miles away. So the builders bought property a couple miles down the road, in the next county where they got the liquor license and became the "hot spot" in this small farm community. It was interesting to go in there and see the old farmers come in wearing their Sunday, go-to-meetin' duds and also truck drivers would stop there, and in the winter it was a popular spot for snowmobilers. Being in the middle of a lake area, there'd usually people stopping in after a day on the lake, even when covered with ice. So there was quite a diversity in the attire of the patrons.

Both places are still there, but very different. The "club" has closed and reopened several times and business is much less than in its prime. Whether the old restaurant is still open or not, I'm not sure. I think it is and I know there is a cafe in town, but whether it's the same building or not, I'm not sure. Haven't been out there for a long time.

When we lived in upstate NY, there was a small Italian restaurant, Ciao, that we loved. Their pizza Margarita was absolute heaven. Then there was The Doll House in Webster, NY. Sammy ran it, and his daddy was in the kitchen. They used to place bets on how much of his rigatoni with sauce I could eat. I don't know who won the bet, but I sure won with all that delicious rigatoni.
Here in Texas there is a restaurant in Gruene (pronounced "Green" for you Yankees) that overlooks the Guadaloupe River. Their pasta salad is wonderful, as is most of their food. We go there on our way to San Antonio, and I live on the memory for weeks!

Loved the Magic Pan, but sadly it didn't last very long here.

My favorite was the Mexican Parlour!

Served the bestest chili burgers EVER! We would sit at the counter and eat those burgers with a knife and fork cause they were too messy to eat with your fingers.

When I was a kid my mom and dad would take us to a little family owned Mexican food place.It was a once a month "payday" treat.LOL I remember eating the enchaladas made with chili.They were served stacked.MMMM good!

Horn & Hardart Automat. The BEST Mac& cheese and their creamed spinach was something else! Their hot chocolate came out of a spigot shaped like a dragon. All of these for a few nickels in the slot.

I had many lunches at The Magic Pan in the Old Orchard shopping Center in Skokie, IL -- back when Marshall Field's was the anchor store there. I'm a sucker for shrimp and cream sauce on just about anything. I too loved the combination of mandarin oranges with the greens and onions.

Lots of 'Restaurant Memories' here. One place I probably only visited six times over the years was The Krebs in the Finger Lake region of NY. We'd stop there for lunch when we drove between Illinois and my mother's home state of Rhode Island in the summertime. The food was served 'family style', home-made, an all-you-can-eat place. (They sure made money on me; I've never been a big eater and I was a child at the time. My Scots grandmother nearly had a stroke when my mother would insist on stopping there.)

Not a real restaurant, but an early memory: Having an ice cream soda at the soda fountain on my hometown's main street. They also made their own candies. The whole place smelled DELICIOUS! You could gain weight just by inhaling the moment you walked in. My father used to take me for a soda at the Drake Hotel after I'd visited his office on a Sunday (and played with the adding machine). There was often an organ grinder with a mokey on the street. Michigan was a street of human-scale buildings then.

DH and I dined at Fouquet's in Paris on our honeymoon. What I remember most was such a plain thing: the frais du bois I ordered for dessert. Every berry perfect -- I can smell them now! Kind, considerate service for these two American Babies.

The Edgewater Beach Hotel had a ballroom-size restaurant with entertainment. I remember Xavier Cugat's orchestra with his doll of the moment as featured 'vocalist'. My favorite though was their seafood restaurant, which you entered via a passageway with a rocking 'gangplank' with water flowing beneath it.

Ah, I do remember the Magic Pan with fondness. We found our first MP while weekending in Chicago at the Hampshire House with our first born child over 30 years ago. We toured the Michigan Avenue area and shops, and came upon the Magic Pan to have lunch. How delicious!

Years later in southern California we discovered another Magic Pan at South Coast Plaza. My sister and I used to meet there for lunch and then shop together.

Everything they served was delicious, and the kids enjoyed watching the way they cooked the crepes.

Two from my Chicago-area childhood: Howard Johnson's (huge ice cream sundaes) and Shakey's Pizza.

I was just telling dh the other day how much I missed the MP. When I was little we had several diners in town loved all of them. When dh and I were first married we lived close to an Itailan rest. that was in a converted older home, it was like going to family Sunday dinner, when oldest son was a baby they would whisk him off to the kitchen during our entire meal! Loved that place.

People's Drug store in Washington, DC. After shopping, my Mom, my sisters and I would go there for lunch. Above the main floor was a balcony where the lunch counter/restaurant was. I think it was called the Tea Room. We would always get a hot roast beef sandwich. It was two slices of bread, filled with the most tender, tasty beef you could imagine, and served with mashed potatoes and gravy. It was a real treat to "eat out" and such fun to sit up there and watch the people below.

This would have been in the mid-thirtys. I wish I could remember what the price was, but I can't. Maybe a quarter?

Peoples Drug eventually became CVS.

Sue

OH! Howard Johnson's--yes! Ice cream there was delish (remember they served scoops in the metal dishes, with a cookie on the side?), as were the hotdogs.

I grew up just outside Hartford, Conn. Every once in a while, on a Friday afternoon, I'd meet my mother downtown at the Sage-Allen department store's cafeteria. Best darn tuna sandwich ever (of course, being mother-daughter day is the memory that makes it taste better).

As a kid we seldom ate at restaurants with the exception of a little greasy spoon every Friday called Mel's. It wasn't great but it was affordable. Just before we left for Mel's, my step-dad would sing "Hells bells, Mel's smells, but let's go there anyway." 45 years later, I can still hear him making his proclamation.

Jodi-

The little town where I grew up in Indiana had the most incredible restaurant in the Durbin Hotel. People would come from other states on Sundays just to eat there--which was really something back then. We hever could afford to eat out, but my grandfather was the county auditor and worked Saturdays so he'd call and invite one of us grandkids to come downtown and have lunch with him. What a treat that was! I usually ordered the chicken salad sandwich. It had peas and carrots in it and was really, really good.

The Durbin became a gathering place when the first four of us were married and came home for weekends. By that time the folks were better off and would take us for dinner. Everything was good, but what stands out is their blue cheese dressing. It was thick and creamy with both roquefort and blue cheese chunks in it. They used to sell it by the pint or quart and we always got it for our get-togethers.

It also had a piano bar that was a lot of fun. My whole family liked to sing. They had large books and each song was numbered, so if you wanted the piano player to play a certain song, you just yelled out the number. Never did figure out how that guy knew what the song was immediately after you called out the number.

Another interesting (maybe ;0) thing about that hotel is that Wendell Wilkie ran his presidental campaign from there way back when. The lobby had pictures of all the famous people who came at that time. I used to babysit his grandkids.

Now when I go home I just want a breaded tenderloin and a chocolat malt! LOL!!

Sipping a cherry coke at favorite restaurant over 50 yrs ago...
{{!gwi}}

The Elite Cafe in downtown Jackson, Mississippi was a favorite of my best friend and myself back in the 1950's. The veal cutlet dinner was the best I've ever eaten and the desserts were huge and delicious. (We'd split the dessert). My friend told me that her daughters took her there to celebrate her 70th birthday and the veal cutlets are still on the menu. She said it's still delicious and only the prices have changed! Bettye/AZ

I loved the Magic Pan, and there was another restaurant in my city that had the best spinach crepes. Oh what I wouldn't give for that right now!

Growing up in Iowa, I loved having chicken salad at Younkers Tea Room, and loved Bishop's cafeteria. Johnny's Vet's Club in West Des Moines had the best steaks and onion rings I've ever had. I cried when it went out of business after the flood in 93 or 94. I loved Shakey's pizza, too, Marita!

A wonderful 4-star Italian restaurant called Mario's in Nashville closed awhile back and I still miss it. Some wonderful places in Chicago that are no longer there, either. The Pump Room, I think?

How cool Patti43, Elwood has Wendell's birthplace home and his boyhood home! He made a big campaign speech from Elwood too and it was a great thing. Lots of Wilkie collectibles around, we have some.

Sue

The first restaurant I thought of while reading this thread was The Krebs, as Chisue mentioned. My brother and his family stopped there last year, and he couldn't wait to tell me. The restaurant is still there, food is still good....remember the trays of desserts to choose from? And western NY has lots of great regional food; roast beef on kimmelwick rolls, Friday night fishfry, the originalchicken wings. Yum. Now I'm hungry!

When I was about ten years old, back in the fifties, in the San Francisco Mission district, my friends and I use to go to a little hamburger place and buy pee wee burgers - virtually one bite and they were gone. So good.

Not exactly a restaurant, but does anyone else get nostalgic about the lunch counters in Woolworth's and Kresge's dime store? My sister and I would take a bus to our piano lessons, then stop at one of those for lunch if we had a quarter or so.
Veta

Growing up in Chicago I'd go downtown or 63rd Street with Mom and we'd go to one of the
Woolworth dime stores for lunch they had great counter meals and in one of
them a downstairs resturant. They wer great. I loved their mashed potatoes and gravy
At Chritmas time we'd go to the Museum of Scienc and Industry for their Christmas trees
from around the world celebration and have lunch in their dining room

In Miami I loved the McCrory's and Woolworth stores they had graat counter meals and fried chicken
to die for

I remember the old Woolworth's lunch counters.They had great ice cream. A banana split was 35 cents. I used to buy a 10 cent Coke after I went to the public library. My Mom would give me a dime for the bus. I'd go to Woolworths and get a Coke,then walk home. It was about 2 miles. Not hard when you're 10 or 11. I also remember a smallish chain called "Your Host" where my family would go about once a month. The menu had about a dozen items, all with photographs. Everything from meatloaf to turkey.

I well remember the Kresge's counter in my hometown. We kids were there constantly for cokes. It always smelled vaguely like rotten eggs. The pet section with parakeets and turtles was right next to it, so it was always loud with parakeet chirping.

I remember so many of these. The Magic Pan was a disappointment to me when DH took me there. I grew up in a household where crepes were flipped over and cooked on both sides.MP's always seemed underdone to me.

Mom and I loved going to Woolworth's for a Club Sandwich and a Float.

I remember going to Foster's Cafeteria for those wonderful English Muffin done under the broiler after concerts at the Filmore.

Can't forget the Doggie Diner. Not really a restaurant just a drive-in but OMG the best burgers,dogs and milkshakes.

We also and a couple of Pring's in the East Bay. They had a bakery in the front of their diner style restaurants and were open 24 hours.

DH and I used to take the kids to Howard Johnsons. Bob's Big Boy was another favorite of theirs.

Then there was the Dog House later named the Corner House. Family owned places and the best chili burgers I've ever had. The cook used to blot my patty melts for me so they wouldn't be greasy. One of their restaurants was more "dining room" and served fresh caught local fish.

My family didn't go out to eat much when I was a kid either. When we did go we often went to a place called Italian Village. it was a steak and seafood place that served several courses "family style" before you individual entree was served. Minestrone,salad, antipasto,a ravioli and spaghetti course and finally your meat order with potato and swiss chard.

I have been to a lot of fabulous restaurants but the most memorable meal I ever had was at an outdoor cafe in a town called Antibe in the south of France. It was a simple tomato, mozarella salad with a glass of white wine, but it just was the perfect meal at the perfect time and place. I recall some French families sitting nearby and feasting on sardines.

sicsusan -- Great to know The Krebs is still dishing it up!

Going to Woolworth's for lunch was an early treat for our DS. Our next door neighbors had a 'Summer Girl' two summers. They had one boy and boy and girl twins four years younger who were my DS's age. The girl and four kids would cut through our back yard, go out the gate, cross the churchyard, cross the street, and go into a small shopping plaza to Woolworth's. It was an *adventure*! It was tiring enough so that they all napped afterwards too!

jannie -- When you mentioned the menu with photos of all the entrees that reminded me of going to NYC with my mother and eating at the Automat. (Horn & Hardart's?) One side of the dining area was a wall with small brass doors. It looked a lot like a post office but the brass doors had windows. Plates with different choices of food were on the other side of the doors. You'd put a tokan in a slot to unlock a door, then put what you'd chosen on a tray. When you had everything you wanted, you'd take your tray to a table to eat. If you looked through the glass you could see into the kitchen where the food was prepared to constantly replenish the selections. We went to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes on that trip. I also vaguely remember meeting my mother's Aunt Mae, who still lived in a frame house on East 43rd St. -- where she had been since arriving from Scotland in the late 1800's. (I think the UN has buildings there now.)

being raised in so ca (la) we had several we went to on a regular basis...robaire's french, but moderately priced...scandia's more expensive so only went once or twice on the sunset strip...

finally, nickodel's (sp) right in hollywood. got clint eastwood's autograph written on a menu...lol..it's was another great place to eat and not much...on the bit of the menu i have left were appitizers, chopped chicken livers for .50 cents, lol...

other memories was a steak house in az it must have been on the old rte 66, where they served milk in ceramic cow? or my uncle's dairy queen in mo...had my first sloppy joe. my grandma worked for him and can rememeber her pouring huge containers of hot soapy water through the ice cream machines every morning cleaning...don't know how she did it...they had an ice house on the property and she'd leave watermelons in ther to chill..coz and i were there when she dropped one and the 3 of us sat on the steps eating this cold melon..omg...

I used to waitress at a woolworth's lunch counter as a high school student; white starched cotton unifoms and a white bow on our head, with the hairnet; that was around 1970.
All the food was made on the premises, I remember the .99 cents turkey dinner, it went up to 1.49 a few years later.
A dime was the standard tip, a quarter was a big tipper.

mitchdesj -- The inflation calculator I found only goes to 2008, but your ten cent tip would be about fifty cents in 2008, and the one-dollar dinner would be about $5.50. The people tipping you a quarter were more correct than the 10% tippers. (Maybe they tipped counter waitresses less than 20% because you weren't serving them at a table?)

I have lived in Culver City (So.California) my entire life. There used to be a coffee shop called "Ships" and they served a sandwich to die for. It was called the "Shipshape burger" and it was ground sirloin on grilled sourdough bread, covered with sauteed onions. They put a smear of homemade thousand island dressing on the bread with sweet pickels on the side. We would always get an order of onion rings to share. My mother used to take my brother and I to dinner (after she got off work at 10pm no less) at least a couple times a month. What great memories.

There's another place called "The Apple Pan" (located in West LA) that is a horseshoe shaped counter and they serve hickory burgers, homemade pies...and real cream in little glass milk bottles! Everything is homemade and really good. It still is going strong but I haven't been there in awhile.

Susan

In my hometown (Buffalo NY) we had all three-Kresges, G.C. Murphys and a Woolworths, all within walking distance, and all had lunch counters. As a kid, I'd go in and get myself something, usually just a ten cent coke. I felt so grown-up.

When my mother and I went 'downtown' (Chicago's loop) to shop at Field's we'd often eat at Stouffers, which was across Randolph Street from the store. Could I be remembering correctly that all the waitresses were middle-aged Irish ladies?

At Christmas it was tradition to eat in the Walnut Room under the great tree and to walk along State Street looking at the Christmas stories playing out in the store windows.