Every now and then a restaurant will try some new thing, and before you know it, every restaurant is doing it. How have things changed in your lifetime?
*It used to be that if you had leftover food, you could request a doggie bag. A lot of places didn’t have them. Now it’s very common for a waitron to ask if you’d like that boxed up. And there’s no picture of a dog on the box.
*Free drink refills. Any restaurant that doesn’t offer them these days risks losing a lot of business.
*Salad bars. Suddenly in the early/mid 70s everyone had to have one. These days no one has them. At least, I can only think of one place that still does.
I think all those things are pretty minor shifts - things like coffee have been free-refill (or “bottomless cup!”) since at least the 1940s. Refills of soda have been standard since at least the 1960s. Milk and juice are much more expensive and tend not to be freefill.
Doggie bags might be more of a facet of increasing portion size than anything else; in prior eras, maybe the 1960s and earlier, it was unusual not to eat the whole serving, either because it was smaller or because people didn’t take diets into restaurants. (Look at all the 1950s humor on the topic - going to a restaurant was parallel with breaking a diet, or fodder for “diet plate” jokes.)
Salad bars were a fad that (IMHO) mercifully faded away with ferns, wood paneling, and avocado and gold refrigerators. I’ll let the kitchen construct my salad and bring it to me, thanks.
I think the big changes in restaurants are more behind the scenes; if more people knew that a large and increasing amount of the offerings are prepackaged and precooked, they’d probably be upset. A smaller restaurant can’t offer a huge menu of varied items at a reasonable cost if they make it all from scratch, so ordinary stuff comes preportioned and at least partially cooked, while the exotic stuff (“We just added jalapeno poppers to our appetizer list, and tonight’s special is stuffed tilapia!”) is probably as premade as anything from your grocery store freezer aisle.
Menus have changed considerably in my lifetime. The usual fodder was plain ordinary “old folks food” as I like to call it: stuff like grilled or broiled chicken, steak, pork served with your choice of potato and vegetable of the day.
Nowadays it’s common to see Schezuan noodle stir fry, and Thai curried shrimp and the like.
Craft beer is showing up on a list just - like wine long has - which is fantastic – though the waitresses won’t know jack shit about it. Anything that’s not Bud/Miller/Coors gets described as “it’s kind of a darker beer?”
This is strictly anecdotal based on my past experiences:
Back in the old days (maybe up until the early 70s), when a family went out to eat, they would go to some kind of diner or cafeteria. There wasn’t the glut of the familiar casual dining chains.
If they were going somewhere other than a diner/cafeteria, it would probably be a “nice” restaurant, where the prices would be a good bit higher, and they’d expect you to be there for a long time.
There wasn’t as much of the middle ground.
Nowadays, people have more disposable income, and the diners and cafeterias have takend a beating because their clientele is basically dying off.
Again, strictly anecdotal, and not intended to be indicative of the industry change in general.
Diners really haven’t changed much at all. Fast food has more variety but works on basic principles that go back to White Castle, they’re just more specialized versions of diners. Many of the fine dining establishments haven’t changed much at all, some steak houses have made only minor changes in the last hundred years. The biggest change is the increase of specializations for restaurants like the various Asian and Middle Eastern forms. There are some new types of cooking equipment, but most of them perform the same function as the older ones, just faster or more economically. Chefs are more creative now, using more ingredients and expanding the menus. That and the proliferation of chains and specialty restaurants seem to be the biggest change.
Better beer is a huge change in my life time. Good observation plus name drastic_quench. Also, proper cocktails, not just some rail booze drowned in pre-made mix.
One trend I like is that more places have shorter menus, but they do everthing on the menu well. You don’t see too many places that still try to be all things to all people like Cheesecake Factory does.
Both the shorter menus and the better cocktails are more of a return to the way things used to be than new innovations.
One small but welcome change is that restaurants used to take your food away to the kitchen and box it up if you were taking it home. Now they do it at the table or let you do it yourself, which I prefer.
I didn’t even know what wasabi was until about 10 years ago. Maybe 13 come to think of it. I first encountered it in Taiwan and was thrilled! It seemed to follow me home to Canada at that point.
You seem to get more food now and I would bet if you adjusted for inflation, on average Restaurants are probably cheaper now than they used to be.
And just like other businesses, chains seem to have dominated the industry and seem much more common than when I was a kid.
On a smaller level, just recently it seems like every restaurant in the world decided they need to put Sliders (mini hamburgers) on their menu.
On the high-end side of restaurants, there’s been a couple big changes in the last few years.
The first and biggest is that Next Restaurant in Chicago introduced buying “tickets” to eat there, rather than taking traditional reservations. From what I read, no-show reservations are a huge problem at restaurants; they reserve a table for someone, you don’t show up, and they risk ending up with an empty table. The ticket system fixes that; you pay in advance, so people are much less likely to blow off a reservation.
It also helps with food costs; a restaurant doesn’t have to guess how many tables will be filled that night and hope they buy enough food to cover them all, but not so much that they end up throwing stuff out.
Since Next started doing it, a few other higher-end restaurants are following suit. I predict that we’ll see a lot of places moving towards this kind of thing going forward. And already, even for places who are not selling tickets, it’s becoming not unusual to be asked for a credit card when making reservations and told that there would be a cancellation fee if you don’t show up. I’m fine with this practice; if you call and cancel, no charge. If you just blow them off, charge.
Other not-so-huge changes: tasting menus/small plates/tapas. Hell, this might already be on the downswing. Still, I like it. I would always rather go into a new restaurant and try several dishes than order one entree and nothing else. Way more fun that way.
Wings used to be one step above offal, and the cheapest cut of chicken in the case. Now they’re pricier than all but boneless breasts. I make my “wings” from drumsticks, which are about 25% cheaper.
But yeah, of all the restaurants that spark a moment of “Mmmm, that sounds good about now” a local brewpub with fantastic beer and the best wings in the northeast is right at the top of my list…
Noise levels. Back in the 1970’s, good restaurants were quiet and often dark. These days everything seems bright and noisy.
I do like the new places that have seats where you can watch the cooks.
