# How have restaurants changed over the decades? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 5, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934 "2013-04-05T17:24:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/121 "2013-04-09T03:30:15Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I’ve never seen one, but apparently it wasn’t uncommon at upscale restaurants, at least through the 1970s (and may still exist occasionally today, according to this [New York times article from 2006](http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/disappearing-ink/)). The idea was that the “guest” (women, but also business associates or family members) wouldn’t know what the cost of their meal was. In the case of men taking women out to dinner, it was apparently considered to be a chivalrous sort of thing. The old school Chicago joints still had these in the 90s. When I took my high school girlfriend to the Pump Room for our one year anniversary in '93, she got the price-less menu, and I got one with prices. I’m also fairly certain that I’ve seen these menus in a couple Italian joints like the Como Inn (now defunct) around the same time (my family was treated to lunch there by my father’s bosses when I won a National Merit Corporate Scholarship and I’m pretty sure none of our menus had prices.) I do know that when I encountered it, I wasn’t surprised and knew it to be something to expect at the “classy” places. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2013, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/122 "2013-04-09T23:28:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Part of the difference is that food trucks are now hip places to go: > > [Food truck - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_truck) Probably condescending hipster workerism. But there are a couple in NYC that I like. > [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > A lot of restaurant owners now are simply people who were successful in some other field and decided to invest in their own restaurant. The ones who are smart will recognize their own lack of restaurant experience, and will hire _and listen to_ experienced people who know how to operate a restaurant. The ones who aren’t smart are the ones who have gotten all their restaurant information from TV cooking shows and think that all they need to succeed is a fancy menu and decor and a smiling server. As with other things that superficially resemble hobbies, I suspect there are a lot of people who don’t understand that a business doesn’t stop being first and foremost a business just because it happens to be a restaurant. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2013, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/123 "2013-04-10T02:20:18Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Outside of fast food places and school hot lunches, I honestly can’t think of a single restaurant I’ve been to in the last 20 years that has had anything but real mashed potatoes. To me, instant mashed potatoes is the stuff of frozen dinners, school lunches, and KFC (and if they’re not instant, they’re indistinguishable from instant.) I’ve gone to a couple of independent places, and the mashed potatoes they served certainly tasted like instant. They weren’t fast food places by any means, they were the kind of places that advertise “home cooking” and that have daily specials (meatloaf on Monday, chicken’n’dumplings on Tuesday, spaghetti on Wednesday, that sort of thing, with a couple of veggies and a roll, except with the spaghetti). Sometimes these places are very good, and sometimes they’re really bad, especially if Mom and Pop started the place, and the kids now run it, but have brought in an accountant who has pointed out that instant potatoes are cheaper and quicker. My experience is very, very local, though. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2013, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/124 "2013-04-10T02:20:47Z")
Hershele Ostropoler writes: \> . . . hipster workerism . . . Well, sort of, and sort of not. These are not, in general, hipsters who like to go to food trucks where everyone else is a blue collar worker getting their lunch quickly and cheaply because they want to hang out with the proletarians and show their solidarity with their economic situations. They are hipsters going to food trucks where the other customers are mostly other hipsters. The food served by the trucks is a wide variety of cuisines, including some things that many blue collar types would be baffled by and certainly wouldn’t think of as standard lunch fare. The customers of these new food trucks like the romance of food trucks without having to experience the original thing. It’s like the new diners that became popular about fifteen years ago. These were new buildings built to resemble (although usually larger than) the diners which were popular fifty or so years before that. The people who frequented them usually have never experienced the original thing. The food served in them is often more like modern restaurant menus rather than like the food in the older ones. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/125 "2013-04-10T02:30:26Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The customers of these new food trucks like the romance of food trucks without having to experience the original thing. > . The World Financial Center has a spot for food trucks. I visit in the summer, and I assure you, the main thing the customers are enjoying is the romance of getting lunch without a hike across Manhattan. You can get pretty bored of the options that are near work, food trucks mix it up considerably. It’s also not about hipserism, since most tenants in and around the WFC are financial sector, side order of government. It’s about lunch. That’s all. The Taco trucks, the Halal carts, the smoothie guys and the hot dog stands all do well too. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/126 "2013-04-10T02:34:31Z")
**Hello Kitty** , I think that is the case for NYC, and it works well in that setting. I can tell you that some of the Atlanta ones, and the ones in my city (Athens) are more like those described previously. It’s the fancy food, slightly cheaper than what you would get at the fancy restaurant because you don’t tip or sit down. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/127 "2013-04-10T15:32:28Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > As with other things that superficially resemble hobbies, I suspect there are a lot of people who don’t understand that a business doesn’t stop being first and foremost a business just because it happens to be a restaurant. I was actually going more for the fact that there are things unique to restaurants that don’t work the same way as other types of business. It’s not retail, and it’s not a 9-5 office job. Some examples from places I’ve worked: • If you want to serve breakfast, you need to open much earlier than 8:00AM. Most people who want to go out for breakfast before work will have already eaten someplace else before that. • You need to give a menu more than two weeks to catch on before you decide it’s not working and start changing it. It just confuses the customers when the menu is different every time they come in. • You have to understand that there is a good reason we cooks do some things the way we do: _health codes_. • Nobody likes to be stupidly nickel-and-dimed. One place I worked, the new owner discovered that the sugar-free pancake syrup cost her more than the regular pancake syrup (this was because our supplier had the regular stuff in gallon jugs, but the sugar-free only came in 16oz squeeze bottles). So she started charging 10 cents extra for sugar-free syrup :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/128 "2013-04-11T03:32:43Z")
> [@](#): > > You need to give a menu more than two weeks to catch on before you decide it’s not working and start changing it. It just confuses the customers when the menu is different every time they come in. Same thing with hours, too, please. If a restaurant’s hours are 11-3 on Sundays and Mondays, and then 7 AM to 10 PM on the other days for a couple of weeks, and then open 7 AM to 10 Pm from Tuesday to Sunday another week, and then they quit offering breakfast the next week…I’m not sure when or even whether the place is going to be open today. So I’ll go someplace that I know will be open. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934/129 "2013-04-11T13:43:45Z")
One trend I don’t like-the increasingly huge size of plates-many restaurants now use 18" diameter plates-which means your entree is lost in it. They usually squirt some sauce around it to compensate. In older days, restaurant plates were small (like 9"), and thick (to reduce breakage during hand washing). Consequently, your food filled the plate. I also don’t like the weird cocktails that bartenders are inventing-one new martini has beet juice (gaacck!) in it. I like traditional drinks (manhattans, old fashioneds, gin collins, etc.) As for th piling up of stuff (your steak on top of mashed potatoes, wild greens on top-I don’t care for that-I want my food items physically separate.:mad: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-have-restaurants-changed-over-the-decades/654934.md?page=6)