Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1910-03-29
Quick Lunch Room
BY Frederic j. Haskin

aESETs1 HE quick lunch room is a pc
IWGAA culiarly distinctive American
IN A institution. 1t is the creature
M and the symbol of hustle and
~ Ill hurry which has enabled the
American business man to do
ten times as much work in a
decade as can be done by all his for
cign competitors put together 1t is
also the omen and augury of the GER
tain dyspeptic death to which Amer
leans are consigned, individually and
collectively, by vegetarlans, Fletcher
ties, physicians and Englishnen. Fur
thermore, the quick lunch room is gem
orally, sometimes with justice, accused
of being the great mart in which food
aduterators turn into gold the honest
hunger of innocent men, without re-
gard to the future security of those
honest and innocent stomachs.
Unfortunately it has become the
fashion to decry the quick lunch room
as an unmiXed evil when, on the show
ing of facts, Americans should be as
! proud of II as Of any other distinctive
| red. white and blue eagle feather
| grown entirely ON home soil True, 1t
is an institution which could not ex-
| list in any other country. But that is
due rather to the superiority of Amer
lea than to the inferiority of the quick
| lunch room.
|
Despite the high cost of living in
America, despite the food trusts ana
! the cold storage combines, despite high
wages and general prosperity, the
| American quick lunch room offers bet
ter food for the money, quantity ana
quality both considered than can be
obtained anywhere else on earth. The
American restaurant may be inferior
| to those of Europe, and it certainly is
! higher priced, but the quick lunch
room stands uneXcelled In its field.
In Boston the quick lunch purveyor
may succeed only by virtue of his ex-
Cellent beans and pie III New York
I the game of good beef and" will
spread even further than the odor OF
! the cabbage so succinctly indicated by
that word and" In Baltimore and
Washington the successful lunch room
must provide Maryland biscuits fit for
epicures and good milk whereWith 10
wash them down. In Charleston the
lunch room is impossible. for the peo-
pie dine at o'clock in the afternoon
for the good and sufficient reason that
Queen Anne had her principal meal at
that hour. In Atlanta, where the
spirit of hustle is at high tide, tho
| lunch room cooks have combined the
| culinary economy Of Athens and Spar
ia with the kitchen prodigality of the
| II.
but there is hot bread on the side.
Chicago took a German bakery and
| expanded ii into a system of quick
| lunch rooms capable of feeding 5000
people between 1890 and 1885. cater
| ing to all tastes and all nationalities,
Farther west the lunch counter is high
and the customer perches himself on
| q very Eiffel tower of a stool, but the
prices come down. Texas towns know
the taste of real chilli con carne and
the delicious odor of genuine tamales.
| The Pacific coast cities afford all the
kinds of lunch rooms that the whole
| country boasts, for the Pacific coast
cities are each one the whole of the
United States in epitome.
Responsive, therefore, to local ira
ditions of taste and differing in de-
| tails the quick lunch room Is never
! theless much the same in every part
of the country. Every one of them
claims to serve unsurpassed coffee,
every one makes pie the chief article
| of diet and every one furnishes tooth
| picks ad libitum. 1t may be n huge
room in which a thousand people sit
at marble topped tables piled high
with paper napkins, served quickly and
| smartly by uniformed girl walters. 1t
may be an artihcially lighted basement
where each customer gathers plate,
knife and fork and then passes in pro-
cession before the roast to be served,
later computing his own bill and pay
| ing IL as he passes the mountain Of
toothpicks. Or it may be tiled hall
| filled with big chairs, one arm of
which is expanded into an elbow table,
| from which coffee and pie, biscuits and
milk may be taken in comfort and
comparative leisure. But whatever the
system, whatever the menu. whatever
| the service, ten minutes is a long time
| to eat and 25 cents is not at all a small
| check.
Perhaps the factory-made pies are
bad for our digestion, but DR.. Wiley is