Newsgroups: ba.food
Subject: Linda's Drive In --- The SECRET Sauces --- History
Summary: Here are those recipies!!!!! and a History Lesson
Reply-To: chguest@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov ( Charles J. Guest )
Followup-To: ba.food
Distribution: ba
Organization: Pseudo Linda's Drive In
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are this writer's... -NOT- NASA's 
Keywords: Parisian Burger Sauce, Tartar Sauce, Steak Sauce


Whew!  There has certainly been a lot of interest in the sauces that we
used to make at Linda's Drive In.  As promised, here are the recipies
for the sauces were made at Linda's before it closed down.

I have been asked for a little history of Linda's and why it closed
down, I will start off with that and follow with the recipies.

If any of you actually went to Linda's, or better yet if you ever worked
there, drop me a line and let me know what you remember about the place.


[For those who have not followed the junk-food/ Tony and Albas string,
several persons asked for the recipies for the sauces that I used to
make when I was the evening supervisor at Linda's Drive In on Esquella
and El Camino Real in Mountain View.]


The Place:

If you did not live in Mountain View or frequent El Camino Real in
Mountain View you probably missed an old red and white building on the
corner of El Camino Real and Esquella.   The predominant feature of this
building was a massive red and white metal awning that extended over the
front of the building and toward El Camino.  The place was called Linda's
Drive In, and by the time I began working there in 1978 it had become
something of an institution in Mountain View.

Linda's was a fast food/hamburger joint that was started by Dean and
Becky Riggs when El Monte was still a dirt road.  I don't know the date
but suffice it to say that it was one of Mountain View's earlier
business establishments.  (To put this in perspective El Monte is now a
two to four lane road and the orchards that provided Linda's first
customers are all long since cut down and covered over with asphalt.)

Linda's was never a walk in restauraunt.  There may have been a short
time when there were car-hops but I am not aware of it.  The owners made
you walk up to a window, place your order, and, (until about 1979/80),
go back to your car to eat.  It was a well known spot for really good
hamburgers and was usually frequented by the local police.  (Who, by the
way, NEVER ate free.)

Linda's Drive In closed around 1984 not too long after Dean Riggs passed
away.  For the sake of privacy  I won't go into how it happened, but
lets say that he probably should have lived many more years were it not
for an un-expected medical problem.

The old drive in is now a Photo Drive up, and because of  the inept
re-modeling the building got, it  looks nothing like the original
Linda's Drive In.  Thee look now is that yuppie modern plasticised
garbage that we have all become too familiar with.


The Food:

Linda's experimented over the years with different kinds of food
including pizza, hotdogs, and other fast eats, but durring the time that
I worked there, (1978-1981), they had gotten the menu down to three main
items, the 'Parisian Burger', the Fish Sandwich (called a Norweigen when
it was called back to the cook), and the Steak Sandwich.  In addition they
had 'Super Fries' which was just a grandiose way of saying tater totts
without having to buy them from the Ore-Ida company who held the
trade-mark.  They also had turnovers (like McDonalds apple pie), 3-bean
salad, chilli, cole-slaw, soft-serve frozen yogurt, and about 9 kinds of
milk shakes.

All in all the food was really pretty good.  
Well, on to the recipies:




The 'biggie' was the Parisian burger.  As with all of the food served at
Linda's it was very simple.

A Parisian was:

1) Small round sour dough french roll  (a little bigger in diameter than
                                        a normal hamburger bun.)

2) Two beef Patties  (a little thicker than regular hamburger patties
                      usually made from very high grade Denver Company
                      meat)

3) One piece of cheese  (usually kraft or similar high quality american
                         slices cheese)

4) a glob of sauce   (see below)

The meat was cooked on a gas fired grill/griddle at (I think) 350
degrees.  The hamburger was cooked just long eonugh to see greying come
up through the meat while you were cooking the first side and then it
was turned over.  By the time you  got the buns ready and the  sauce and
cheese on the meat, the patties were usually exactly well done.

The sourdough rolls were heated on a grill that was covered at about 250
degrees, just until the inside was starting to toast a little. (They
were obviously cut in half before being put under the hood and onto the
grill.)

When the meat was done on side one it was turned over, about one and one
half tablespoons of souce was put on one patty and cheese was put on the
other.

The bottom half of the french roll was removed from the grill and put on
a heated counter.  You would then take your spatula, pull up the pattie
that had the sauce on it, place it on the pattie with the cheese on it
and then remove the 'stack' from the grill using the top half of the
french roll to balance/absorb the sauce, and put this 'stack' onto the
bottom part of the french roll.

The sauce was really quite simple as you will see.  Please forgive me
for not giving the ingridients list in more reasonable quantities, but
hey this is a bona_fide recipie.  :-)



Parisian Sauce:

A) Eight (8) number ten cans of S.E. Rykoff ketchup.  (Number ten cans
                                              hold about 1 gallon ea.)

B) Two (2) one gallon plastic jugs of S.E. Rykoff Mustard.

C) Four (4) cups of dried shreded onion.

D) Four (4) industrial spoonfulls of pepper.  (industrial spoons are
             about as big around (in diameter) as a mans closed fist.)

E) Eight (8) industrial spoonfulls of dried celery seed. (maybee it
             would be cleared if I called industrial spoonfulls 
             kitchen spoons??)

To mix the sauce, take the four cupfulls of dried onions and fill the
cups with tepid water and put them asside.  Now pour three of the eight
cans of ketchup into an old looking 15 gallon sized plastic trash can,
pour in the two gallons of mustard, and then follow with the last five
gallons of ketchup.  Now reach into the plastic garbage can and touch
the bottom of it beneath the mustard and ketchup.  Good.  Your arm is now
imersed in the sauce a little bit past the elbow. Stir the ketchup and
mustard together with your hand and arm until they are well mixed. Now
drain off the excess water in the four cups of dried onions and slowly
mix the onions in with the sauce.  (your arm tired yet?)  Lastly slowly
add the pepper and the celery seed. Stirr well.  

Thats it.  This unusual mixing technique was used for years at the
place.  It was instituted by a G.S who may be reading this network.
:-)  :-)   



Tartar Sauce:

The fish sandwiches were also very good at Linda's.  The fish pattie
used was similar to McDonalds except it was about 30 or 40 percent
larger.  These breaded patties were deep fried in vegetable oil and were
served with tartar sauce on a sesame seed bun.

I am not quite as certain about the amounts of ingridients for this
sauce. However it went something like this:

A) One (1) box of mayonaise.  (The boxes contained about two gallons
                               of mayo as I remember.)

B) One (1) number ten can of dill relish.

C) One (1) one-gallon jug of sweet relish.

D) Two (2) cups of dried onions.

To mix the tartar sauce:

Fill the two cups of onions the rest of the way with tepid water and set
asside.  Open the box of mayo and pour into the above mentioned green
trash can.  Pour in the relis, (both kinds), and stirr.  When
thouroughly mixed drain the onions and add them to the sauce and stirr
in well.  (Note: The sauce should only cover your hand to the wrist
while stirring.  :-)  ]



The steak sandwich sauce:

Sorry guys and gals, but I don't remember the ingridients for this one.
I know it had barbeque sauce and apple sauce in it but I dont remember
anything more.


Well I hope this was what all of you were looking for.  If you give any
of the above a try, please let me know how it comes out.  If you want to
b.s. about Linda's feel free to drop me a line here via e-mail.  G.S. if
you hooked up to usenet mail me and let me know what is going on.

                                          Charles Guest



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Newsgroups: ba.food