I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

[elmwood]

Little quips like "try the veal" and "remember to tip your servers" often appear after bad one-liners in SDMB posts, and on many other message baords. We know comedians always used likes like this after their performance, but I never saw people using it outside of comedy acts until fairly recently. Is this a reference to some pop culture meme or movie line, like "Vote for Pedro" and the like?

[CandidGamera]

The meme would be 'generic nightclub comedian schtick', I think. I've seen/heard it for years and years.

[chrisk]

I associate it with Xander from 'Buffy'-- he probably only said it once... early third season??

[Wile E]

I associate it with Shrek.

[Bryan Ekers]

It's a generic reference to dinner theatre, the bottom rung of comedy venues, where the usually lame joke that precedes the line would fit right in.

[Exapno Mapcase]

I've heard it untold dozens of times in popular culture. It left the world of comedy ages ago. No specifics about when first heard though.

[Manduck]

Doesn't Jay Leno say it a lot? That could account for it's catching on.

[AncientHumanoid]

Resort and cruise ship gigs, too. Hence the "here all week" part of it.

[Anastasaeon]

Catching on?

Cripes I've been saying it after a lousy joke since I was six years old. I probably heard it from Grover or something.

However, I always just assumed it was lounge-lizard glib.

[flurb]

Many of these sorts of phrases have their origin in the "Borscht Belt" -- the cluster of resorts and clubs in the Catskills that were a popular vacation spot for many (often Jewish) New Yorkers in the 40s, 50s and 60s, and that consequently became a proving ground for a generation of stand up comedians. Think Milton Berle, Shelley Berman, Don Rickles, Shecky Greene, Rodney Dangerfield, etc.