American Cafeterias -- Popular Mostly In The South; Why?

Factual Questions
41

In Silicon Valley, Harry’s Hofbrau and various other Hofbrau style restaurants meet the OP’s criteria for “cafeteria” style dining. Think heavy German furniture, dark atmosphere, heavy meats sliced right before your very eyes, tons of mashed potatoes with gallons of mystery gravy and no one under 100 years old except you.

Not surprisingly, there are fewer and fewer of these places - I lived around the corner from Harry’s in Mountain View for years, it waws closed for redevelopment just before the end of the dot-com era IIRC.

There are tons of AYCE places too, Hometown Buffet being the most common American-style one I know of.

There is another style that my gf and I refer to, based on repeated experience, as “full contact Chinese” - you pay your 9.95 or whatever, and prepare to fight the hordes for the endless piles of shrimp and other tasty fare. Make sure your insurance is paid up first because someone might get hurt, don’t underestimate a hungry gaggle of great-grandmas!

42

I learned from 1950s situation comedies never to choose the window marked “Tomato Surprise.”

43

I’ve been to a cafeteria in downtown Chicago, though I can’t remember the name. It had multiple “stations” serving different types of food (Asian, Italian, meatloaf and mashed potato type meals, sandwiches, etc.), and you’d pay at a central cashier area.

44

I think IKEA’s restaurants (if they are all setup like the one I’m familiar with in Hicksville NY, which may not be a safe assumption) follow the ‘traditional’ cafeteria concept - you grab a tray and get in line (which has a railing to move your tray along), pass the serving area where workers ladel out and hand you the food dishes you request, then grab a glass for soda or other drinks, pay the cashier and then find a place to sit and eat. Albiet the menu is somewhat limited, and they replaced the nice roasted potatoes you used to get with the Swedish Meatball combo w/ so-so mashed potatoes, but it’s still fairly reasonable and definitely a ‘public’ cafeteria (as opposed to work-place or school cafeterias)

45

The workplace cafeterias I’ve been to are slowly adding to the steam-table entrees by featuring more pseudo-cook-to-order items like pastas, burgers, stir-fries etc. This does mean that they need more stations to be able to keep throughput high, but they can then add more variety and prevent people from leaving the building to get something different.

In Chicago’s Hyde Park, the lovely Valois Cafeteria still hearkens back to its Southern roots. I loved stopping in for breakfast on the way to the train when I lived there.

46

Damn, you got there before me. Subway, Panda Express, and a ton of other ‘food court’ style places, though they need not be in a food court, are basically cafeterias. Perhaps they’re not considered because the array of food isn’t nearly as varied, but it still is very much a ‘pick and choose as you go’ style of ordering.

47

Yes, but the question that needs to be answered is:
Does Fresno still have Okie Frejoie Mexican Smorgasboard?
There used to be signs advertising it on Highway 99 both North and South of Fresno.

48

[hijack]
Heavens! I have some cousins who grew up in Hicksville, but I’ve never known anyone else from there.
[/hijack]

49

Similar in concept to other “cafeteria style” restaurants, but not offering traditional fare is Pancho’s. They call it a buffet, but it’s not like the ones mentioned here. I grew up eating there (and loved raising the little flag!), plus at the Wyatt’s spoken about above.

And one of my fondest memories growing up was the one occasion we had to go to a Swedish Smorgasbord. I miss that sort of ethnic ambiance, versus the clinical or folksy / homey atmosphere you see more of now.

50

Return Hijack - you still don’t :slight_smile: - I live within ready driving distance of Hicksville, and have been there numerous times (at the Broadway Mall, with the IKEA - I brough several pieces of furniture there, and ate many Swedish Meatballs at the Cafeteria…I mean, the IKEA Restaurant; Antun’s; Cantiague Park; the many Indian Restaurants along Broadway; the much missed Mr. Philly formerly on Woodbury Road, and so on…) but I don’t live there :stuck_out_tongue:

I wouldn’t mind some real public cafeterias around these parts (Long Island) - NOT buffets, we got a number of those - although some of the big Chinese Buffet places have closed in the past few years, and I don’t mean Salad Bars nor those mall food court ‘Cajun BBQ’ places - I mean straightforward cafeterias (we’ve already been shafted with the Fast Food places - we just lost an Arby’s which opened 1 year before :mad: ) - and now that our local pizzeria’s & bagel shops have started turning out inferior products (fools, pizza has cheese - don’t skimp!), soon the Long Island food scene will be truely second rate :frowning:

51

Any left? I don’t think I’ve seen one in the 12 years I’ve been here, though I live a bit North and don’t cruise the usual places.

When we got here Todai was a treat. Now there are Chinese buffets on every frickin’ corner. And Indian buffets also.

There are also a bunch of cheap cafeteria style take out places, where they fill containers with stuff from warming pans. The one near us has a nice whole cooked pig hanging at the entrance. There might be one or two tables there, but 99% of the business is takeout.

52

Hijack alert!

Just curious, but not_alice, is there a reasoning behind your username? Because I really like it!

53

Just offering my perceptions, but in my experience (third generation Texan currently living in the PacNW), cafeterias (Luby’s, etc) as opposed to “buffets” (Izzy’s, etc…) are much more common in the south (and Texas) than further north.

Yes, they serve a mostly aging population (it is old folks Mecca, I think both out of habit and because you can pick and choose and the servings tend to be small AND they offer things like squash and okra and fried stuff and other more old-fashioned, home-style southern dishes).

One point I’ve not seen raised yet is that church-going tends to be more common in the south, and these spots are well known as post-church dining spots. The tradition of a big meal at the cafeteria after church is a long-standing one where I’m from. Same for Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving…show up on any of those days and any Sunday past 11 am, and the place has a line of people dressed in their Sunday best out the door. They tend to offer special meals/deals for holidays. Not sure if that has anything to do with the regional aspect, but more people attend church in the south and seems like most of them end up at the cafeteria afterwards, lol.

But in my experience, they aren’t all that cheap anymore. Last few times I was coerced into going, my tab ended up as much or more than it would have been in a decent resteraunt for a piddlin’ little, not so great meal.

54

The one I know of and have been to a year or so ago (family birthday celebration for gf’s elderly aunt) is on Saratoga just off Steven’s Creek. That is on the border of Santa Clara/San Jose, just north of 280.

There was one in Redwood City on El Camino back when I worked up there, but haven’t been by for about 6 years or no, not sure if it is still there.

Todai is primarily Japanese, but otherwise yeah.

For us, the definitive “full contact Chinese”, the one that gave rise to the name itself, is the “Super Buffet” only yards from the Harry’s I just gave directions to on Saratoga. This one is on Stevens Creek.

Better yet, there is one of the last remaining card rooms, “Garden City” (IIRC) situated right between the two restaurants. They all share a common parking lot!

Make a day and a night of it!

When I worked at a startup in Mountain View on Ellis, there was a place on Middlefield like this. Apparently there had been a pizza shop of some sort there before, but by then it had this sort of place with Korean food. Actually, it was pseudo-Chinese, but it came to be known in our office as the “Korean Pizza” place. Which confused our visitors to no end when we offered to take them there, and now 10 years later I use “Korean Pizza” to refer to that sort of place generically, and no one ever can even guess what I mean.

Until now.

Oh I hope I have started my first 2 internet memes :slight_smile:

55

I currently live in the Central Valley of California, in a medium size enclave by our Central Valley standards, and the population here is VERY church oriented.

We have no such restaurants, not even close. Although it represents an interesting marketing concept - could the place make money on one day, essentially one meal, a week if it sought out the church crowds? Maybe, even though this is a very depressed town, even before the current downturn.

56

Actually there is.

First, I am a loong time lurker who finally joined with free posting. I feel like I know many people here via what they have shared, and certainly many have clever, and cleverly obscure names that are delightful. I wondered if I would come up with something at that level when the time came for quite a while.

When it came time to fill in that field in the registration form, the answer came to me in a flash.

When my girlfriend and I moved in together, we each kept our cell phone numbers, but we needed a landline for our DSL connection. We were assigned some number we never intended to use except for the occasional outbound fax.

As I work at home, it was not long before that phone started ringing. More often then not it was for someone named “Alice”. Uh, no one named Alice here, click.

But soon the callers were frequent and persistent. It turns out that Alice had once had that number, and worse, had fallen prey to some scamsters selling crap. In this case, they pitched repeatedly, despite my being on the do-not-call list, and requesting to them to not call anymore. They would give few if any clues where they were.

Normally this sort of thing annoys me to no end, but one day for some reason when the phone rang I decided to try another tack, one that had failed spectacularly back when I was a college radio DJ with a stalker, I might add. I would simply say whatever came to mind, and go with it no matter how implausible, as long as they acted like they were listening.

“Hello, May I speak to Alice” the call began predictably.

“She’s not living here anymore”. Which is close to the truth…

Then the spiel started…what this group claimed to be selling was plastic bags made (or at least sold for the benefit of) some handicapped or developmentally delayed folks in the Phoenix area. Never could get all the details…

Anyway, I had managed to confirm on earlier calls that Alice had bought some of these bags (maybe 5 cents each at Smart and Final or free at every cash register in the country…) for the princely sum of one dollar each!

No wonder they kept calling back!

I asked them about the bags and found out they had a variety of types, all equally obscenely priced. While listening, it occurred to me how to have fun with them and maybe offend them so badly they would actually have no more reason to call back. A steady stream of invective had no effect in the past, this was going to be more subtle.

As the pitcher went on, seemingly enchanted by my interest, I started to adopt a yearning, nostalgic tone in my voice.

When they could describe no more and came to the part where they had to ask for the order, I told them how much I missed Alice and how much she loved the products. The excitement at having found a big mark was palpable over the phone.

Then I started bawling my eyes out.

I blubbered as best I could that Alice was my wife, and she had gone to her grave with only one wish - to be buried in the larger plastic bags, and I was sorry but the caller was just upsetting me so.

Trained to “always be closing” for sure, the sales guy still wouldn’t let up but in my grief I just hung up.

I thought that would be the end.

<John Belushi>
But nooooo!!!
</JB>
The calls continued regularly until we moved far away to another time zone.

Each time I tried to come up with an ever more fantastical story about Alice and her death, always involving her love of those damn plastic bags and how it led to her doom. Suicide, murder, rescues, failed parachutes, always resulting in my being overcome by grief right before I finalized a huge sale. Anything was fair game if I was in the mood.

Now here I am among the great ignorance-fighters, and maybe the ignorant scamsters, if they are not in jail yet, are bound to be reading.

So it was immediately clear, I had to fight the ignorance by loudly proclaiming once and for all, I AM NOT ALICE!

I never dreamed I would be asked about it after only 5 posts though! I think I will keep her in my heart and in my screen name!

57

Is the swedish buffet still there (near the airport), on Imperial?
I think the reason why cafeterias are popular: low price, low quality, huge quantity.
That is what the elderly look for.

58

That’s been my experience everywhere. I think I’ve figured it out.

It “feels” like it’s an AYCE buffet. I (usually) hate those for all the standard reasons. The cafeteria brings some of the worse elements of the buffet - foods that don’t go well together, are prepared en masse, and all seem a little old, bland and unappetizing; and then you wind up paying more than you would’ve at an AYCE place.

I rarely can escape a cafeteria for under $10, and I always leave wishing I had just gotten a sandwich for less or a nicer (relatively speaking) meal at a sit-down restaurant for a couple dollars more.

Seriously, McDonald’s or Taco Bell always seems like a better idea after I eat at a cafeteria. Needless to say, I never go to a cafeteria by my own choice.

59

That’s funny*, because I was in Boston a bit over a week ago and ate at Milk St Cafe, which was definitely a cafeteria (stand in line with tray and silverware, tell the people behind the counter what you want (salad area, soup area, entree area) and they give it to you. You slide your tray on down and pay at the end. Sit down to eat).

  • Not saying you’re wrong or anything, but it’s funny that perhaps I randomly walked into one of the few cafeteria-style places in Boston!