There is a proliferation of chain restaurants that we just didn’t have when I was a kid. Applebee’s, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday, O’Charley’s, Olive Garden, Outback, Longhorn Steak. Going out to eat was a treat but it was going to McDonalds. Then a Red Lobster opened and it was a HUGE deal. People lined up around the building. Now it’s no better than the above chains. Then Sizzler came and that was just too expensive for us. It has a salad bar still, I believe. Pizza Hut was a big treat. Recently, Ruby Tuesday added a salad bar back. I remember when Wendy’s had one for a while.
I never had Chinese food until I was in high school; our parents simply never took us to one. Mexican either. We recently took our parents out to eat at a Mexican place actually, and neither of them knew anything that was on the menu. My mother had a taco as part of her plate and she broke it up into pieces and ate it with a fork.
I also remember that when Dominoes first opened they had their own delivery vehicles; you didn’t have to use your own. And when I worked at a Pizza Hut delivery only place, it was a New Thing. And Dominoes can kiss my butt. Pizza Hut has had pan pizzas forever, and made fresh dough every day, even 20 years ago. So apparently Dominoes have been sucking all this time.
In the 1970s, there were several local diner chains in my hometown. Today, there’s none; there’s the usual national chains (Denny’s, Perkins) and a ton of Greek “family restaurants”.
The Gay '90s/ragtime theme used to be quite popular for chains in the 1970s; Farrell’s and the like. Also, excruciatingly long, somewhat Irish names, like “J.T. McGillicuddy’s Good Time Foodery, Drinkery and Fun Factory”.
New restaurants with two names – the owner’s name and something else – are still common in my hometown; for example, something like “Joey Carbone’s Parkway Inn” or “Don Schmitt’s Lamplighter”. In other cities, such naming seems reserved for “institutions” that have been around for years.
Muzak.
European “ethnic” food, excepting Italian, used to be more common - German, Polish, French, Dutch, Swedish, etc. The little town I live in now – 30,000 residents – has seven Thai restaurants. Seven.
There used to be a lot more hot dog stands, many of them open only during the summer.
I remember restaurants with no bathrooms of any kind; mostly diners and fast food chains. McDonald’s in my town didn’t have bathrooms or indoor seating.
I also remembered: there’s some types of restaurants that were common when I was a kid, but which now seem extinct, or at least endangered.
Department store restaurants. Even the J.C. Penny in the mall near me had a full service restaurant.
“Blue collar classy” restaurants, like this and this.
New England/“Ye Olde Coloniale” themed restaurants most with upscale aspirations. They often had names like “Old Post Inn”, “Old Mill Inn”, “Jefferson House”, “Hancock House”, and the like.
That setup has been pretty common for a long time at the lower end of the scale. Diners have been doing their cooking behind the counter in view of the customers since diners were invented. White Castle deliberatly had open kitchens to assuage concerns over poor hygiene.
It’s the same in Pennyslvania.
When’s the last time anyone heard of a restaurant having a seperate “Ladies menu” without prices listed on it?
Flashing back to soda served in paper cones in little metal holder. Doughnut-shaped breaded shrimp at the Chinese restaurant. No televisions - only bars had those, although Shakey’s Pizza showed silent comedy shorts with Laurel & Hardy and Buster Keaton.
Don’t see cafeterias any more - buffets took their place. Same crappy food but now in unlimited quantities.
Something I will never miss - liver and onions seemed to be the blue plate special every Wednesday in every diner until the early '80’s. I waitressed on and off for a while at family chains like Howard Johnsons (all you can eat fried clams!), the Copper Penny, places like that. All the older crowd came in for fried liver and onions on Wednesdays. Good god, I hated that.
Note - I grew up mostly in San Diego in the 60’s and 70’s, then LA for a number of years in the 80’s, so there was always a lot of ethnic food.
I just thought of another - “Don’t Cook Tonight, Call Chicken Delight!”. The first place I knew that had delivery. Chicken and pizza.
Back when I was a kid, you got a McDonalds hamburger, fries and a coke for under a buck. Of course, nowadays, NO ONE eats just a single hamburger, small fries and a coke. The hamburger is bigger, you get more fries and the coke is more than twice the size it was then.
To go over a couple things that have already been mentioned:
There has been a steady increase in the variety of cuisines available. In the 1950’s, pizza was considered exotic in most places in the U.S. There were a lot of people who never tried Chinese food until the 1960’s or 1970’s.
In the past decade, perhaps more like the past two decades, restaurants have become steadily noisier on average. I eat out once a month with a group that likes to be able to talk with everyone else other during the meal, and it has become increasingly difficult to find a quiet enough restaurant. I asked a restaurant critic about this recently in an online chat. I wondered if it’s because restaurants don’t want customers sitting around a long time so they can get more meals sold per night. He thought not. He thought that it was because a lot of people like the nightclubby feel of a noisy restaurant.
Italian restaurants all used to have a candle on each table in a red glass holder wrapped in white netting. Those are all gone, it seems.
Seconding The Devil’s Grandmother’s comment about lower noise levels in the old days. Still today I’m often amazed at the conversational volume people think is appropriate in a nice-ish restaurant. Eating in foreign restaurants now can be like going back in time to the quietness that used to prevail in US restaurants. Paradoxically, however, back in the 1970s more places had a musician or small group playing easy listening music during dinner. Typically a pianist or organist. Also, more places had piped in muzak rather than the intrusive pop music you usually get nowadays.
BOO! I agree that cigarettes are ass, but I really miss smoking my pipes and cigars in bars. Whenever I travel to the South, I take advantage and light up. It’s like stepping back in time ten years. And the out-and-out compliments I get on the pipe smoke…
An owner of a private establishment – especially a 21 and older bar – should have been able to choose.
Through the 80’s, restaurant coffee was shit, even at good restaurants. It was all Maxwell House or Folgers. That’s what coffee was to Americans. One size fits all. Saw what you will about Starbucks, but they changed the coffee culture in the US.
Pizza Hut was one of the few restaurants where we’d go as a family growing up. The red glasses, the checkerboard tablecloth, the smell of red pepper flakes, and the table top Centipede arcade game are all burned into my brain.
Speaking of salad bars, remember Sizzler’s? That place was so 80s.
I think some of it has to do with contemporary restaurant decor. I remember restaurants having a lot more carpeting and cushy seats in the 1980s, and upscale decor meant “fancy” and “classy” - ornate, rococo, and a lot more fabric on tables and walls. Ceilings were usually dropped, too. Today, upscale restaurants tend to have more minimalist modern decor, with almost no surfaces that absorb sound. Spaces are also much loftier. Tablecloths are uncommon, and so are curtains, drapes, and the like
I found ethnic restaurants tend to be quiet, but those that are upscale, with contemporary decor, much less so.
Some older zoning and municipal codes (in the US, at least) prohibited recorded music in bars and restaurants. The reason was mainly political; the rules were something that might have been included at the insistence of a pro-labor city council member, on behalf of the local musician’s union.
The Ramada Inn-type lounge/cover bands that were once common at many restaurants seem to be another endangered species.
I have all of those. My local Walmart has subway. My old hometown Walmart (in MD) still had a McDs on my last visit. Local Target doesn’t have Pizza Hut but sells Pizza Hut food at its food counter, and it also has a Starbucks. Kroger grocery stores all have Starbucks here also.
God, I miss those days. Every store and shopping mall now has rubbish pop music playing at annoying volume. (after an intervening period in the late 80s and 90s when everyone was playing Kenny G/similar “smooth jazz”).
The only place in the last 20-25 years I’ve heard the good old muzak that reminded me of my childhood? Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. 2008.
