Is it known when the first ethnic restaurants were opened in the U.S.?

[alphaboi867]

@Peter_Morris

What were they called before that?

Taverns?

[NDP]

@Peter_Morris

What were they called before that?

Inns?

[samclem]

@AuntiePam

Long time! When we came back to Iowa from Seattle in 1990, we looked for Chinese restaurants. We found a good one in Iowa City, but it wasn’t until several years later that one opened up within a reasonable driving distance. Now there are four within 8 miles, and several more within 30.

Yeah, but you live in the sticks. There were Chinese restaurants in Iowa City in the 1960s.

[samclem]

@Peter_Morris

What were they called before that?

@alphaboi867

Taverns?

@NDP

Inns?

What they said.

[Spoke]

@Shagnasty

I believe you are correct. The point still stands though. I find it interesting that you could get Chinese food in some of those types of towns back in the 1950’s and 60’s but you couldn’t get pizza. My parents were born around 1950 and they never had pizza until they were teenagers. It barely existed in large parts of the country until the 1970’s.

A bit earlier than that. Pizza Inn was franchising widely in the South by the 60s, and Pizza Hut followed close behind. One of my early childhood memories (mid-1960s) is of going to a Pizza Inn. I do remember it being a novel experience for everyone (which is probably why the memory stuck with me).

As for Chinese, my family used to go to a Chinese restaurant in Rome, Georgia in the early 70s, and the restaurant seemed like it had been there for years.

[Sitnam]

@bordelond

You all know what I was going for.

No. Your OP is silly, it’ll turn into a ‘no true Scotsman’ argument.

[samclem]

@bordelond

• it seems that the Chinese restaurant scene is likely to be pretty old on the West Coast (and perhaps in Boston & N.Y., too). But how long did people in places like Saginaw, Little Rock, Topeka, or Syracuse have to wait before Chinese restaurants were commonplace locally?

What do you mean by “commonplace?” There was probably only one Chinese restaurant in Syracuse in 1951.
INteresting side note: on The Andy Griffith Show, in a 1967 episode, Aunt Bee was opening a Chinese restaurant. It was new to the people in Mayberry. But it shows, to me, just how popular Chinese restaurants must have been, as a topic, in the U. S. at the time.

[Peter_Morris]

@samclem

What they said.

I don’t know, a tavern implies a place that primarily serves drinks, and an inn has overnight accommodation for travellers. A *restaurant *implies that it is primarily in the business of selling food. It may serve drinks with food, but probably not without food, and probably won’t rent you a room either. What did they call one of those before the word restaurant came into use?

[blondebear]

Michie Tavern, located near Monticello, was established in 1784. It served food (non-ethnic, most likely) and drink, and provided lodging.

[samclem]

@Peter_Morris

I don’t know, a tavern implies a place that primarily serves drinks, and an inn has overnight accommodation for travellers. A *restaurant *implies that it is primarily in the business of selling food. It may serve drinks with food, but probably not without food, and probably won’t rent you a room either. What did they call one of those before the word restaurant came into use?

. Peter. I hope I didn’t mislead you by my first response to the thread. I don’t think there was anything quite like a restaurant that we know today in pre-1850 US. If there were, it would most likely have been in NY. People just didn’t have enough time to go out and hit up a place that served meals exclusively. Life was too complicated for that. By the 1850s or so, in New York, you might have found an establishment that existed solely to provide meals to people.

[tim-n-va]

@Shagnasty

I believe you are correct. The point still stands though. I find it interesting that you could get Chinese food in some of those types of towns back in the 1950’s and 60’s but you couldn’t get pizza. My parents were born around 1950 and they never had pizza until they were teenagers. It barely existed in large parts of the country until the 1970’s.

Supporting evidence: As a teenager in the 70’s I heard a joke about eating pizza. (The food portions were so small they ate the plate). Not a great joke of course but it was a novel enough thing that a joke could be made about someone thinking the sauce/toppings were the part you were supposed to eat.

[bordelond]

@Sitnam

No. Your OP is silly, it’ll turn into a ‘no true Scotsman’ argument.

:shrug:

OK – to be clearer, I was aware that European cuisines in the U.S. have been around forever. What I was most interested in was:

• The three cuisines mentioned in the OP (Indian, Japanese, Chinese), especially their availability away from the coasts.

• Mexican or Tex-Mex food far from the American Southwest (e.g. North Dakota, Maine)

• Ethiopian restaurants (had to be like three in the U.S. before 1980, right? )

…

The list Reality Chuck posted above from 1939 (!) was pretty impressive. I know it was New York, but still.

Thanks for the contributions, all.

[bordelond]

@samclem

What do you mean by “commonplace?” There was probably only one Chinese restaurant in Syracuse in 1951.

Right … I assume there are several dozen in the Syracuse metro area today. So today, Chinese cuisine is commonplace in Syracuse … but if there were only one in town 58 years ago, it wouldn’t quite have been commonplace.

ISTM Chinese cuisine had a head start in America, anyway – hasn’t the American and Canadian west coasts had a significant Chinese population since at least the 1850s? Or even earlier?

[bordelond]

@samclem

. Peter. I hope I didn’t mislead you by my first response to the thread. I don’t think there was anything quite like a restaurant that we know today in pre-1850 US. If there were, it would most likely have been in NY. People just didn’t have enough time to go out and hit up a place that served meals exclusively. Life was too complicated for that. By the 1850s or so, in New York, you might have found an establishment that existed solely to provide meals to people.

You’re generally correct, I’d wager … but note that Antoine’s opened in New Orleans in 1840. At the time, there was much wealth in an around New Orleans, and there was a sizeable leisure class.

[jackdavinci]

I would imagine all ‘ethnic’ restaurants started out as restaurants for the locals in ethnic areas and only became frequented by people outside the loop. So I would imagine the first ethnic restaurant came about at the same time as the first concentration of that ethnicity in a neighborhood.

[obfusciatrist]

You can find accounts of of visiting Chinese restaurants in San Francisco from the 1860s. But I’m sure they were almost entirely intended for Chinese immigrants.

As has been said I imagine the line is going to be too fuzzy for a concrete answer since food service businesses offering the cuisine of a specific culture are probably about as old as that culture being in the United States. But it is going to be a fuzzy line between that and when the restaurants began to have appeal beyond those local cultural enclaves as a form of exotic entertainment.