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Hi, everyone. It's Jack Bishop.
This week on our Best of Proof, Travel Edition, we're doing a different kind of travel, time travel.
We asked reporter Doug Mack to dive into the New York Public Library's Restaurant Menu Archives to find out what people were eating, what was popular, and how Americans dined back at the turn of the 20th century.
What he found may surprise you.
Here's our episode from 2023, hosted by Kevin Pang.
Allow me to set the scene.
We're in downtown Brooklyn, New York.
It's the year 1906.
The borough has been part of New York City for less than 10 years.
It's a growing, thriving place with the downtown area, just out the waterfront, as its bustling core.
Now, I want you to imagine a fictional couple from this era.
Let's call them Anna and George.
They're about to embark on one of their first dates.
This couple is based on historical accounts from the time, but they're a work of fiction.
We're going to be following Anna and George throughout this episode as reporter Doug Mack brings them to life.
All right, everyone ready?
Roll tape. Look at this beautiful city around us.
Where are you taking me for dinner tonight?
Perhaps the fountain house.
Aren't you in the mood to take your girl out for a nice dinner?
But I don't know. Perhaps something a bit lighter?
How about Bristol's Dining Rooms on Willoughby Street?
Ah, yes, of course.
Bristol's. Off we go.
Take my arm. Now, I was...
Bristol's Dining Rooms was part of a small chain of restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
We happened across Bristol's Dining Rooms during a search deep into the New York Public Library's online database of scanned menus.
Today on Proof from America's Test Kitchen, we explore the food of the early 20th century through Bristol's dining rooms in Brooklyn.
We trace the life and legacy of the restaurant up to its closure in 1935, checking in on Bristol's each decade along the way, and witnessing its changes through the eyes of our fictitious diners.
Welcome to Bristol.
Good evening. Your finest table for two, please.
Right this way, please.
What were people eating back then?
How did the dishes they served at Bristol's reflect a changing culinary landscape?
And what did it feel like, and taste like, and sound like, and look like to eat in one of these restaurants?
restaurants. I'm Kevin Pang.
Thanks for listening and stick around.
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Reporter Doug Mack brings us today's story.
If you like food or history, the New York Public Library's What's on the Menu database is the perfect place to spend an hour or two, or ten.
It goes back to the 1850s, and includes more than 1 .3 million dishes transcribed from nearly 18 ,000 menus from restaurants around the world.
Because the collector of these menus lived in New York, though, most of the menus are from there.
When Proof asked me to check out the site for their story, I started by just poking around to see how it all worked.
You can search by year to get a feel for a specific cultural moment, or filter by the most popular dishes to see broader trends.
The most common menu items are coffee and tea, followed by celery, olives, and radishes.
No major surprises there.
But it didn't take long to find things that I rarely see on restaurant menus anymore, more, like stewed prunes or mince pies, or dishes that I didn't recognize at all.
The 21st most popular dish in the database is something called Apollinaris, which had me scratching my head.
I'm not even sure if I'm saying it correctly.
Turns out it's a sparkling water from Germany.
It was on more than 1 ,300 different menus.
As I clicked through a sampling pulling of different restaurants, it was clear that every one offered its own intrigue, not just food -wise, but in everything from the fanciful line drawings on some menus, to peculiar turns of phrase, to the low, low prices.
If you had one whole dollar, you could eat like royalty.
Every single menu was an anthology of stories and history lessons.
Even so, some places stood out.
Bristol's was one of them.
them. It piqued my interest with its mix of the familiar and the not -so -familiar.
Bristol's dining room seemed kind of opulent in a modern way, with a bunch of steaks and oysters, but then it also had something called a rum omelette, which was doused in booze and seemed like something Mr. Monopoly would eat for breakfast. But then other parts of the menu you appeared more like snacks, and some of them swirled far beyond anything I'd ever had.
Take, for instance, calf brains on toast. Or I saw one item listed as lamb fries, which I guessed was something like chicken nuggets, but a quick search on Google showed me there was actually shredded, breaded, and fried lamb testicles.
There was a lot to process here.
I just couldn't figure out the template other than a general sense of extravagance, maybe.
The more I looked at Bristol's menu, the more I wanted to learn about this place.
And the more I learned, the more my expectations turned upside down.
Bristol's dining rooms opened in 1898 on the ground floor of a three -story brick building.
One of the adjacent buildings had a produce store and a billiard hall, the other had a doctor's office.
The immediate neighborhood was known as a shopping district that attracted a wide range of customers and passersby.
That's according to Dominique Jules -Louis, chief historian at the Center for Brooklyn History.
This is kind of similar to the neighborhood now where it's so much of a crossing place where you have a lot of different kinds of people because there's no one kind of person that hangs out in downtown Brooklyn.
It's really everyone's going from home to work, going from work to home, because Brooklyn's really America's first suburb.
A lot of people are also coming into Brooklyn after a day of work in Manhattan, and maybe they're stopping off to get a bite of meat or shopping before they head to wherever else they're actually living.
Bristol's advertised oysters in large letters on the exterior windows.
It was open around the clock.
Rumor had it that owner James Bristol had simply thrown away the key because there was no need to lock the door.
The restaurant's spacious interior had an atmosphere that one newspaper account said was pervaded by informality and intimacy.
Emblazoned on the front page of the menu was text that said, Bristol's Dining Rooms, for Ladies and Gentlemen.
Huh? I wasn't sure at all what was going on here, but it sure seemed to be telling a story of old -fashioned sexism and rigid gender roles, especially in the high society atmosphere that Bristol seemed to embody.
body welcome welcome here are some menus for you thank you thank you if you've never dined with us before may i recommend the oysters a house specialty oh we've been here once or twice i believe you've only brought me here once right very well i'll give you a moment to get reacquainted with our offerings thank you we'll just be a moment what's on your mind my dear you keep keep looking around the room?
Well, it's just so lively in here.
So many women out for lunch and dinner.
I do appreciate that restaurants are finally making an effort to make things nicer these days and giving women a space to themselves.
Or to come on a quiet date with a man, of course.
Always delighted to be with you.
Apparently, women ate in one room and men ate in the other, although men were allowed as guests on the women's side if they had a date.
It's also worth noting that, although it appears that most customers were white, Bristol's often had Black patrons and did not practice racial segregation.
That certainly wasn't always the case at other New York restaurants of the era.
Segregation wasn't just a Southern thing, and studies by civil rights groups found that discrimination was most common in high -end restaurants.
restaurants. As I did more research and got more acquainted with Bristol's, there was a real shift in my understanding of the separate dining rooms and the whole general vibe.
Bristol's wanted the overall atmosphere to be hospitable to women, whose admission to restaurants at the time was often restricted, as was the case in so many public spaces, of course.
Setting up two separate dining rooms was a signal that this restaurant was a welcoming coming environment.
When I started talking to historians, they told me, actually, this was fairly common at the time.
One of those historians was Andrew Haley.
He wrote the book Turning the Tables, American Restaurant Culture and the Rise of the Middle Class, 1880 to 1920.
He said that throughout much of the 19th century, it was considered suspect for women to dine out for reasons.
It was something that prostitutes would do.
And so to go out and be in these spaces was to put yourself at some risk, by 1900, women are such a part of the city that there are tea houses and other establishments that are catering specifically to women.
And there are some restaurants, like Bristol's, that are setting aside spaces where women can dine that are separate from where men can dine.
Bristol's was trying to set a different course for most restaurants of of the era, which tended to operate at one of two extremes.
At one end were New York icons like Delmonico's or the Waldorf Hotel.
Those were restaurants that embodied the excesses of the Gilded Age, from the decor, to the entertainment, to the cuisine.
In The 10 Restaurants That Changed America, historian Paul Freedman details a 14 -course meal at Delmonico's, featuring elaborate dishes like terrapin, that's turtle, cooked in butter and madeira, a type of wine, and sculpted sugar desserts.
It was conspicuous consumption through and through.
That was not the vibe at Bristol's.
The floor was covered in sawdust, and there was not a tablecloth to be found.
This was an intentional act of mood -setting on James Bristol's part.
At the other extreme were the hole -in -the -wall spots.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described these in 1906 as real tough joints, frequented by people the newspaper called hobos, tramps, and tourists.
There may be no napkins, the newspaper noted, and, quote, the dishes may be of heavy earthenware instead of china, and the silverware may be so worn that the brass underneath is plainly visible.
But the seafood dishes are done to a turn, and although the place may have no saloon license, one can always get a bottle of cold beer.
Bristols was aiming for the middle ground, and those efforts played out in virtually every aspect of the restaurant, not just the layout or the lack of tablecloths, but also the menu itself.
Pardon the interruption.
May I take your drink order?
Still no alcohol, I presume?
No, I'm afraid not.
Ah, very well. I had to ask.
I'll have the, uh, unfermented grape juice then.
The Welch's? An excellent choice.
Very pure product. And for you, madame?
The vichy with buttermilk, if you please.
Okay. Vichy with buttermilk.
This was another thing that caught my eye when I first saw the menu at Bristol's.
Basically, it's fancy mineral water imported from France mixed with buttermilk.
In my mind, this felt like the kombucha of its day.
I assumed it was part of a broader trend in wellness during this period, like the proliferation of spas and the Kellogg brothers advocating nutrition in the form of cornflakes, among the other more offbeat and problematic ideas they promoted.
And there is a bit of truth to that connection.
Buttermilk was touted as a health food beverage full of bacteria that were good for the gut.
It was sold on tap at soda fountains, and it was supposedly great for anyone recovering from the flu or other illnesses that might cause, quote, a thorough intestinal purge.
But when I spoke to historian Paul Friedman, he told me that buttermilk and vichy actually served a different role.
People not only accepted the fact that it was an ideal food for health, but had it as something when they might not really want to eat in a very hearty fashion.
So it's a little bit the equivalent of being with someone, a group of people in which several people order, you know, meat or fish or a serious dish, and another just sticks with a salad.
This drink probably wasn't on the menu at Bristol's because people thought it would be a curative of some kind.
Rather, it was just some lighter fare for customers who wanted an alternative to the heavier things like the steaks.
So it wasn't quite the kombucha of the period.
The modern equivalent might be something like a basic smoothie without any add -ins.
I got an even bigger surprise when I spoke to Andrew Haley, who told me that, actually, there was another item on the drink menu that was far more notable.
Welch's grape juice?
I had skimmed right past this listing on the menu.
It didn't seem noteworthy to me.
But as Haley pointed out, 1906 was the same year that the Pure Food and Drug Act passed.
It was the same year that Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle was published.
Everyone was talking about food cleanliness and purity, and Bristol's emphasized the quality of its food in these terms in their ads.
This is the moment when people are concerned that their food is being poisoned, adulterated, That coffee is being stretched with chicory and that milk is being watered down before it's sold.
And this is a restaurant that would have staked its reputation on providing what they called home cooking, food that wasn't adulterated, that was prepared to a kind of higher quality standard. To a consumer today, homemade juice might be a selling point.
But in 1906, it was a red flag.
The naming of companies that were respected was a way of saying, we are serving you a quality product, right?
We don't get our grape juice off the back of some truck somewhere.
We are actually purchasing a brand name that you already trust as pure food.
Both Haley and Friedman told me that, ultimately, what's really going on here is that the restaurant wasn't simply trying to forge a new path between opulence and austerity.
it was trying to appeal directly to the rising middle class.
And this turns out to be the key to understanding Bristol's dining rooms and the stories told on its menu.
It's now the 1910s and Bristol's is thriving, resuming ahead in time to the next decade in the life of the restaurant and our fictitious couple.
Bristol's has turned into a mini chain with seven restaurants around New York City, including one that had opened in Coney Island in 1911.
Doug picks up the story from here.
Andrew Haley speculates that this expansion was an acknowledgement that dining had become an experience unto itself, a place to go on a date or gather with friends.
And it's interesting that Bristol's opens up a location at Coney Island, claiming that as for businesspeople, but largely trying to attract, I'm guessing, some of the kind of entertainment business of the middle class.
During this period, Bristol's had also built a reputation for hosting events, including fundraisers for politicians and impromptu celebrations for minor local celebrities.
The restaurant drew the crowds by playing the hits at reasonable prices.
Bristol's dining rooms was akin to a modern -day IHOP or Applebee's or, more precisely, one of the regional chains of family restaurants with a giant menu like Friendly's or Perkins or Bob Evans.
When I paid closer attention to the menu and the ads, I noticed that many items I'd originally considered kind of weird or unfamiliar entrees were actually just snacks like the appetizers of a modern family restaurant.
This included those lamb fries on toast, or something called frizzled ham and eggs, which was fried slices of thinly cut ham.
with eggs. Even the seemingly fancy dishes turned out to be relatively simple and affordable versions of the things you might find at a more upscale restaurant, in the same way that middle -class restaurants of today might have a seafood special or a budget -friendly steak.
Hello, Anna. Hello, George.
Lovely to see you, as always.
How's the wife? She's well.
Still working Working at the factory, of course.
And... oh, do forgive the noise.
There's a boxer in the other room and...
well, he won his belt today and he brought some supporters here to celebrate.
Aw, good for him. I've been teaching our son how to land a right hook.
He'll be in the ring soon, little Bobby the Bull.
Oh dear, must we go over this again?
He's six. Almost seven.
Anyway, we'd like some oysters to start.
Very good. What kind?
Saddle rock, please.
We'll live it up on this night away from our little pugilist. Speaking of fights, what's this I read in the papers about a knife fight in the kitchen last week?
Well, this busboy, Harry, he was having some words with Leo, one of the cooks.
Things got heated, and then Leo grabs an oyster knife off the counter, and then he stabs Harry in the head and shoulder.
Oh, my! And he runs off with Harry's blood all over him.
Horrible stuff. See, fighting gets you nowhere.
Indeed. Is Harry all right?
Oh, uh, sure. He'll get there.
He's in the hospital now.
Leo's in jail. The whole thing really shook up all the fellas back in the kitchen.
Just yelling in every language.
Do you still want the oysters, by the way?
As long as you don't give us the knife from the fight.
night. Two things here.
First, that fight really happened with the oyster knife stabbing and everything.
The police tracked down the assailant on the subway, a guy named Leonardo Piro.
He stood up from the other passengers because he was covered in blood.
Thing number two, oysters.
The whole seafood section of the Bristol's menu was long.
It listed cod, eels, halibut, salmon, soft -shell crabs, fried sea bass, lobsters, sardines, scallops, mackerel, shad, and 11 different preparations of clam.
But in the 1910s, oysters were the restaurant's star, as they had been since Bristol's opened.
Again, the word oysters was written in huge letters on two of the exterior windows along Willoughby Street.
The menu had two different sections, standard oysters in season, which ranged from 20 cents to 40 cents per serving and included nearly 20 different options, from cocktails to stews to fritters.
And then there was another section for Saddle Rock oysters.
This was the part of the menu that initially had me going, oh, this must be a fancy place, because that's what oysters indicate to me now.
But once again, the historian set me straight.
Andrew Haley noted that the the oyster section here was pretty long, but not especially high -end.
If you were in a truly fancy restaurant at this time, you'd see blue -point oysters.
That was the primo stuff.
Saddle rocks were fancy by Bristol standards, but they had a little secret.
If I understand correctly, they don't really exist anymore.
They had been so overfished that real saddle rocks don't exist, but it just basically meant large oysters.
What Andrew Haley is getting at here is that that real Saddle Rock oysters were all gone by the time Bristol's opened.
They had been hugely popular starting in the 1820s because of their sweetness and large size.
But that popularity led to over -harvesting and their stocks were depleted within a couple of decades.
But they still had name recognition.
So restaurants like Bristol's would use Saddle Rock to sell pretty much any oyster that was large and sweet.
By the 1910s, over -harvesting and pollution were major problems for all kinds of oysters, which meant that even the varieties that managed to stick around still weren't as plentiful.
As a result, prices went up during this period, and what had once been common became more of a luxury item.
In Paul Friedman's book, he makes the point that compared to the food in many other countries, American cuisine today is defined much less by a strong sense of regional and national ingredients and recipes, and more by abundance and variety.
He says that the USA's culinary hallmark is, quote, an eclectic collection of options, particularly with the availability of dozens of different restaurant types.
Around the turn of the 20th century, when Bristol's dining rooms was still brand new, distinct regional food was readily available in restaurants around the USA.
You can see some elements of that in Bristol's menu, like the stewed honeycomb tripe.
During the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, many of these dishes began to fade as middle -class restaurant dining started to take on a more streamlined form.
It was evolving to lean on convenience and widespread flavors rather than local specialties.
The oysters, especially the so -called saddle rocks, are a connection between these two eras.
They're a throwback to a time when they were a regional favorite, but also a sort of discount version of a luxury food.
food. Bristol's dining rooms had tapped the cultural moment, and its expansion to Coney Island in 1911 signaled the restaurant's success.
It also benefited from Brooklyn's own growth.
By 1910, the borough's population reached a total of 1 .6 million residents.
By 1920, it was over 2 million and still growing quickly, even while the population of Manhattan had fallen in the previous decade.
The subway lines connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn were completed in the early 1910s.
first all these new hotels and theaters and everything it's all getting to be a bit much for me all this change all these buildings and people and cars but I suppose that's how it goes the oysters were excellent by the way sweet and plump I do love a good saddle rock our compliments to the chef as always it's so hard to find a good servant these days even if we wanted one we'll just Just have to keep coming back here instead." Brooklyn was booming at this time, and a big part of that was a rising middle class.
People who had a bit of extra money to spend and didn't want to cook for themselves, or didn't have the facilities to cook at home.
It was also a time when fewer and fewer families—even those with means—were hiring servants.
This was mostly because not as many people wanted to work as servants.
So the middle class started dining out more, which Andrew Haley says helped lead to changes in the restaurant industry Just through their sheer number and their patronage, they've helped to create the space where we can have middle class restaurants like Bristol That offer large menus, relatively quality food, good quick service, but not rushed and not overly intrusive service And that's exactly what the middle class needed.
After the break, the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression bring about changes at Bristol's Dining Rooms. And now, back to Bristol's Dining Rooms in Brooklyn.
We've come to the year 1927, and times are good.
Mostly. Do you remember the rum ombit they used to serve here?
I wish they still had it.
Oh, I remember the first time you ordered it, trying to impress me.
They carried it to the table on fire.
Quite the scene. You know, even as an old man, I think I would enjoy seeing that spectacle again.
Perhaps someday when prohibition goes back to the dustbin where it belongs.
alms. I do wish we could have a glass of champagne for our anniversary.
And my promotion. And Bobby finally deciding to stop boxing and get a proper job.
Oh, yes. And perhaps I'll have the shrimp omelet, since rum is out of the question.
When we think of the roaring 20s, we think of booming stock markets, hot jazz, flappers, and general exuberance.
This is the scene sold to us by Hollywood, and personally, it's one I find so alluring that it can be hard to remember any alternate versions of what was going on during this decade.
I had assumed that this meant wildly elaborate foods, all that gilded age stuff come back to life, like the rum omelette I'd seen on the Bristol's dining room menu from 1906.
To make it, you prepare an omelette, then dust it with powdered sugar and pour on one and a half ounces of rum.
And you light the whole thing on fire.
You serve it while it's still on fire, of course.
That's part of the show.
But please don't try the fire part at home.
And that's the vibe I was expecting.
But once again, reality was something else.
Most of the big swanky restaurants actually failed during the 1920s because of prohibition.
Paul Friedman explained to me that They had made a lot of their profits on wine and liquor, as restaurants do today.
And you couldn't really plausibly offer fancy food, particularly fancy French food, without wine.
So places like Delmonico's closed.
To be specific, as Friedman discusses in his book, Delmonico's closed shortly after it was raided by federal agents because the restaurant was trying to be sneaky and kept serving alcohol.
That was in April 1921.
In late May, Delmonico served its very last meal, which was paired with mineral water.
Friedman says that some types of restaurants weathered the storm a bit better.
Some fancy places like steakhouses did okay.
You have a turning away from French cuisine to the survival of an expensive, but not actually very complicated, cuisine featuring things like steak and lobster.
As far as I can tell, and as far as Paul Friedman and Andrew Haley know, Bristol's dining rooms did not serve alcohol, rum soaked, omelets aside.
And while that would have decreased profits before Prohibition went into effect, it meant that Bristol's felt little harm from that particular change in laws.
laws. Before Prohibition, some businesses specifically advertised themselves as being temperance restaurants.
And while Bristol didn't go so far as to run ads with this message, Haley said there's still a sense of what's going on here.
They're saying that we're not a restaurant for entertainment.
We're a restaurant where businessmen can meet to have discussions about their day's work and where couples can come in order to spend a pleasant evening and have a good meal.
Bristol's dining rooms got through the 1920s specifically because it wasn't a roaring swing in place.
It may have hosted plenty of celebratory gatherings and, okay, there was that one knife fight in the kitchen, but the overall atmosphere was fairly subdued.
In 1927, ads for Bristol's dining rooms were still touting the quality and impurity of the food.
But they had also started talking up other selling points.
This included affordability, like the price of a cup of coffee, just five cents, and also greater emphasis on hospitality.
The ads boasted, for a tasty luncheon or a good substantial meal, there is no place quite like Bristol's for yourself or your family.
Here is so much purer than whatever that dreck is that he likes to eat on his way to work.
Leave him alone. He'll be fine.
I know, I know. But he could just sit here for a minute and have a cup of coffee with us.
They're really trying to make the place welcoming to families.
Look, there are other children here.
Bob is 19. He's not a child anymore, Anna.
Besides, this is our place.
If he wants to come here, he has the rest of his life to do it on his own.
Bristol's isn't going anywhere.
By the 1920s, kids were much more welcome in public dining spaces.
Restaurant owners and patrons had previously seen kids as a nuisance and disruption.
But that shifted in parallel with the rise of middle -class dining.
It's unclear if Bristol's had a separate kids' menu at this point, but Andrew Haley speculated that it probably did.
At other restaurants during this period, the kids' menu often featured things like pancakes and chicken croquettes, which were the 1920s equivalent of chicken fingers.
As I was discussing all this with Andrew Haley, he paused and said something that should have been clear to me earlier.
I kind of have to ask you to trust me on this one.
This menu is, in many ways, not that unusual.
Certainly, as we've said, it's a little nicer than many menus.
There's turtle soup on it.
It has the full range of roasts available.
There's lobster on it.
But this is not an extraordinarily unique menu.
you. And the fact that the restaurant chain is doing well speaks more to the way they're preparing this food than the specific foods that they're offering, I think.
Bristol's wasn't unusual.
It wasn't special, at least not in the broad cultural sense.
It was just one of many restaurants around the borough and the city and the country serving the rising middle class.
And I have to say, it kind of stung to hear that.
after all that research i'd done and everything i learned about bristols how it was a middle ground between gilded age landmarks that were dying off and the greasy spoons that dotted every other street corner i had become attached to this place and the people who ate there and worked there it had loyal customers who came back over and over and many of the servers worked there for 20 years or more it may not have been special in the grand scheme but it had a sense of community in the same way that any one of today's seemingly interchangeable family restaurants has its own distinct identity and regular customers.
There's a reason Bristol's dining rooms hosted everyone from dating couples to families to gatherings of 200.
It was special to them.
In the 1930s, things went sideways.
ways. The Great Depression hit Brooklyn just as it did everywhere.
Manufacturing was down, which in turn put warehouse workers and longshoremen out of work.
It clearly affected Bristol's dining rooms. By the beginning of the decade, the once -thriving chain was down to just two locations, including the one in downtown Brooklyn.
Looking at their newspaper ads, there's a sense of, I don't want to say desperation, but it's definitely a more melancholy mood.
Bristol's is still Bristol's, read one ad that ran in 1931, and we still serve the best food at the lowest consistent prices.
The ad also noted that customers could get one free refill on their cup of coffee.
There were also some complicating factors removed from the broader societal issues.
The restaurant's founder, James E.
Bristol, had died in 1928, leaving behind an estate that was valued at nearly $350 ,000.
Most of that was the Willoughby Street location.
His children took over the restaurants, with his son James H.
Bristol as president.
But in March 1932, he died.
The ripple effects of those losses, combined with the downturn in customers, appears to have been the final straw for Bristol's dining rooms. In December 1932, an announcement appeared in the Brooklyn Times -Union.
It said that Bristol's dining rooms had declared bankruptcy, and its assets would be sold at public auction.
The restaurant got a reprieve.
It's unclear exactly what happened and what the circumstances were, but the Willoughby branch managed to stay open a few more years.
But as Bristol's dining rooms kept puttering along, the city around it was also changing.
A new mayor was elected in 1933, Fiorello LaGuardia, the guy most famous today as the namesake of the airport.
He quickly got to work making ambitious plans.
Dominique Girouli describes it as a time of urban renewal.
There's a lot more just city planning that takes place.
So it's a little bit less of a hodgepodge of department stores, warehouse storage, hotels, restaurants, and a little bit more, okay, let's like, you know, let's build some school or universities.
universities, let's build parks, let's rethink where the government buildings are going to be and how they're going to operate.
This neighborhood has changed so much since we first started coming here.
Like Bristol's? It's a reliable place.
Good evening, Anna, George.
It's good to see you on this somber occasion.
Of course, Tom, my friend.
We wouldn't miss it.
There are 11 of us waiters here right now, and we've all been here for 25 years or more.
Not much has changed.
Some food here and there, and we finally put tablecloths on the tables after Mr. Bristol died.
Of course, he was so set against them.
But I do think it adds a bit of class.
Well, I appreciate that you never made it too highfalutin' around here.
It's just the right balance.
Say, what did you tell us last time was the chef's favorite dish?
Ah, the blue fish. I'll have that, please.
A last meal. On the front page of the Brooklyn Citizen on November 22, 1935, below a handful of stories about wars around the world, a large headline spanned two columns.
columns. It read, Another landmark falls, and hearts are heavy.
Raising of bristles begun.
The atmosphere was funereal, the reporter wrote, as patrons flooded in to eat a final dinner and pay their respects to the staff.
The manager, a man named Bob Redpath, sat at the front of the house, inconsolable.
The cooks wondered where else they would find work.
The property would soon be turned over to its new owners, who had plans to begin demolition right away.
There it is. Horn and Heart Automat Cafeteria.
It's so... modern. Are those walls marble panels?
Sure looks like it.
I saw an ad that said they have more than 120 different lunch and dinner dishes, and 90 just for breakfast. It's air -conditioned.
It looks nice. Too nice.
let's never tell anyone we even came this close to going in not even Bobby oh he won't care they'll probably like it or his kids would let's go to the chop suey house instead lead the way my dear bristles had built its reputation on good clean wholesome food at a reasonable price meals that were familiar and convenient.
Since the restaurant's earliest days, they'd even offered some of their food to go in a box.
This was a rarity among restaurants, in a signal of what clientele they were serving, busy middle -class consumers.
And now, bristles was being replaced by the ultimate streamlined version of all that, an automat.
If you've never seen one, imagine a restaurant where the food is freshly made in the kitchen but then sold out of a long row of vending machines.
No servers, no interactions between staff and customers.
They're literally separated by a wall.
It's all about efficiency.
Of course, restaurants like Bristol's dining rooms didn't disappear entirely.
In fact, they would come to dominate the USA's culinary landscape later, especially after World War II, and even as automats themselves became a thing of the past. Look around the USA now and you'll find countless local and regional chain restaurants that draw middle class diners with good food, a long menu, and reasonable prices.
They may not be temples of gastronomy, but they are cornerstones of communities.
You can trace their lineage back to restaurants like Howard Johnson's, which both Andrew Haley and Paul Freedman highlighted to me as quintessential post -war restaurants for the middle class.
Trace the routes back a bit farther and you get to places like Bristol's.
Andrew Haley even noticed a direct link between the two menus.
You still see the little neck clams on the menu of a Howard Johnson's.
Well, that's a leftover from Bristol's.
Those sorts of places came from a template.
The spirit of Bristol's lives on all around us.
Thanks to Doug Mack for bringing us that story.
