The Savannah morning news., 1902-08-21
SLANG OF THE LUNCHROOM.
JarHOn of the Walters Is IncOmpre
hensibIe TO Many Patrons.
From the Neu York Tribune

henBIDlc 10 many
From the New York Tribune.
When the great majority of the
quick-lunch room proprietors of New
York agreed last week to raise the
price of beef an" also of ham an"
from 10 to Is cents, and their momen-
tous decision was duly, If somewhat
jocularly, recorded in the papers, the
surprising fact developed that there
are actually to be found men and wo-
men in this city who do not know what
beef an" is
Beef and what?" asked a downtown
business man as he read his paper go
ing home on the IL"
well, you don't know beans for a
fact" his companion laughed
That's it, eh?" said the first. But
how should 1 know whether it Is beans
or cabbage? 1 never go to that sort
of place to eat"
And there are thousands more like
this man who never went to that sort
of a place" to eat or have carefully
forgotten that they ever had to. How
1.-The other half eats is unknown to
them. They enter a cafe where the
linen is liberal and snowy and by and
by their food comes to them under a
cover. There is something private
even intimate, about the whole pro-
cess, however crowded the cafe. They
do not know of the strange sensation
strange at first-of having ones or
der beloved through the hail." of
drinking coffee out of handleless cups
so thick that they stretch the mouth to
rim them, and, greatest loss of all, they
do not know the curious system of
abbreviation that prevails in such
ces-abbreviations that are often
metaphors in the rough and of which
ham an" is only faint suggestion.
If you are new to this style of
lunch room you enter, sit down at
bare and not too clean table and wait
quietly to be served. You are likely to
wait some time, but while you wait
you hear a bare armed waiter roar
down a passage, Sind tp the goat"
That's easy You know he wants more
butter. Then he cries. Beef an and
you know that. plate o BostGls,"
isn't hard, either. But Make it two,
sunny side up" is staggerer. How
fried on one side only.
Finally you get tired of waiting, and
by pounding a glass with a spoon and
sundry gesticulations you get a wait
err to come to you. Give me some
poached eggs on toast" you say, land
a cup of coffee"
The waiter turns toward the kitch-
en- and shouts, Noah on a raft" Then
he wheels toward the steaming, pol
ished coffee tanks and cries, Draw
one!"
Say" you call, with an after
thought, II guess I'll make that
scrambled eggs on toast"
Wreck Noah," calls the waiter
solemnly.
The strange thing may we'll seem to
be that you get what you ordered.
There are many such phrases, some
of them common to all the "grub-on-
the-run" places, some of them local.
"a little on the COW" is milk Draw
one-black" is coffee without milk.
"One up" is not golf. but a symbol
meaning that the waiter who calls has
another cup of coffee coming to him.
"Off the griddle" means butter cakes
those deadly bullets, or, rather, small
cannon balls of dough, which are COM
monty known to the hardy eaters
thereof as "sinkers,'' but which 1t is
high treason to call by that name
within the lunchroom.
Put up the flag" means macaroni.
Just why, no one seems able to ex-
plain, though there is vaguely felt to
be some subtle reference to Yankee
Doodle and the Stars and Stripes
Brown the wheats.' means simply an
order of buckwheat pansakes while
two in three" signifies that somebody
wants two eggs boiled three minutes
Red, white and blue" is a plate of
mixed ice cream.
The crown of the collection, how
ever is to be found on the Bowery
where there is much poetry in the
block, anyway. There if you should
happen to have the sort of a taste
that demands mince pie with powder
ed sugar on top you will hear shouted
to the rear: "One indigestion in a
snOwStorni"