When I was a kid in central Florida, there was this place Duff’s Smorgasboard that I thought was so cool! It was a buffet BUT the buffet table revolved, so you would stand in one place and fill your plate with food as the buffet slowly rotated by.
Not a restaurant but one of my kids once remarked while eating a sample at Costco, “This place is fancy. They have sporks!”
In the 1970s there was a place in Anoka, Minnesota (The Halloween Capital of the World - but that's a different story!) called "The Hot Fish Shop." Clever, huh? It was a very small chain; at its peak I think there were five in cities in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin. They served freshwater lake fish of the kind my dad was constantly trying to catch, but rarely succeeding at - largemouth bass, walleye, crappie, etc.
I was a schoolteacher's kid in an era when teachers were paid even more poorly than now, if possible, and it was a special treat to "eat out" even at McDonalds or (woo-hoo!) the A&W Drive-In. Going to The Hot Fish Shop meant either than someone had given my dad some money or that he had completed a summer deck-building job.
In retrospect, it was a halfway decent place, a la Perkins (another treat for special times), but it seemed like the finest of fine dining experiences to us! The Hot Fish Shop chain probably went under right around 1980 or so.
There are six kids in my family so we did not eat out very often. There was an Italian restaurant that we would go to; I only remember going maybe three times. It was your basic red checked tablecloths, candle in a bottle, and I believe they had a special that kids under five (?) ate free. As we didn't eat out much, this was the epitome of fancy for a girl from a tiny town in Upstate New York.
In my youth it was a restaurant called the Double Dip Depot, which was a train car where you could sit and be served PLUS a full-scale ice cream parlor on the other side. So, you ate, and then you could either order ice cream or get it to go. There was also a Ms. Pac-Man machine. So what I'm saying is, I could have lived there.
My kid thinks the diner is fancy, and then there is the Chit-Chat Diner, which is Alice in Wonderland-themed and sits at the top of a mountain with views of the city. The food is about the same as most diners, maybe with a few more frills, but the setting is awesome.
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. As a kid, I thought it was so elegant and beautiful with the red flocked wallpaper and the waiters dressed up in old timey vests. It was the birthday go-to because every kid got a free ice cream sundae on their birthday. I didn't realize they served meals until I was older--we only went for ice cream because I guess money.
The other restaurant memory I have is of my grandmother getting Taco Bell and we thought we were eating actual Mexican food! Hey--it was the 1960's and we didn't know any better. It was before fast food was a huge deal--there were a few McDonalds around but that was about it, and then somebody opened a Taco Bell in Portland. It was takeout only if I recall so she'd go over and get a bunch of tacos and burritos with sides of refried beans, which were my favorite.
Can anything really compete with a Friendly’s Conehead Sundae in a metal tulip dish? I mean the ice cream is wearing a ruff made of whipped cream! (For an image of the CORRECT presentation, click on the Yankee Magazine article that comes up when you Google Conehead Sundae. I, like the author, remember it as having a few Reese’s Pieces in the very bottom of the dish as well.) My beloved childhood Friendly’s became my beloved teenage cast party Friendly’s and then, tragically...became a Denny’s. To this day I have never been to a Denny’s because I hold a grudge.
My other childhood favorite (aka I think the only other restaurant I went to before about age 12) was Ground Round, which was maybe...circus themed? You got free popcorn and there was a clown (I remember the clown because for a while my godmother was the clown at our local Ground Round, when I was at an age where that felt like having a movie star in the family.) I felt very sophisticated because my mom didn’t like seafood but at Ground Round I, a small gourmand, could get a giant pile of fried clams and tartar sauce.
And then around middle school Applebees came to town, coinciding with my mom moving into a better paid job, and until college I genuinely thought that Applebees was what people meant by “a fancy restaurant.”
Cracker Barrel was our big night out. It was such a revelation when I got a car that I could go to Cracker Barrel for a side of mashed potatoes whenever I wanted. The idea that you could eat *and* go to a gift shop *and* imagine your life on a wooden porch with a wooden rocking chair under a wooden awning? I mean did I build my life around my Cracker Barrel experience? I might have.
The Spaghetti Factory in my city closed and that was a sad day for my kids. (Me too, tbh. Especially because my great grandpa helped to build the old downtown building it was in!) Seriously: the trolley! And ice cream that comes WITH your meal! And pasta! One of the only foods I can guarantee my kids will eat! What a treasure.
We don't go out to eat often, but there's a local chain called The Tavern. (My kids call it "The T Restaurant" because there's a big "T" on the side of the building.) They ask to go there all the time. Not sure how fancy they think it is, but I'm pretty sure just having a waiter take your order and cheese curds on the menu basically meets all of their standards.
Oh wow did I ever love going to Souplantation as a kid - I got to choose everything FOR MYSELF! And in what felt like a much fancier space than the Hometown Buffet my grandparents took me to occasionally, near the bay with more lighting and bigger windows.
I desperately wish I could go to a Brambly Hedge-themed restaurant today.
Coming from landlocked “city” in Idaho where restaurant choices we limited we too thought Sizzlers was amazing, but Skippers was what was the most affordable seafood, and my parents loved seafood. So it felt pretty fancy even though it was fast-food seafood. The real treat was when we visited a Red Lobster in Utah. It was like “Oh a trip to Utah, we’ve got to stop at Red Lobster!” Even now there isn’t a Red Lobster in Idaho Falls, but there is one in Pocatello so my parents will make a day trip to go to Red Lobster when they want to treat themselves. They could probably spend less overall if they went to a five star restaurant in Idaho Falls and save the money on the gas to get to and from Pocatello, but even now their mindset is that Red Lobster is special.
Ogden’s Tony’s Pizza was THE go to place to celebrate the end of a (losing but we did our best) little league baseball season. We’d often see our competitors there at the same time. The garlic bread and salad appetizers then elevated regular old pizza to a refined main course.
Ong YES to this day, salad bars say “luxury” to me. I get absurdly excited about them! I totally squealed when I went to Fogo de Chao here in Denver with friends and saw their salad bar!
The Ground Round, Olive Garden, and Pizza Hut! Remember when Pizza Hut had a huge buffet, hanging Tiffany lamps, and those pebbled red glasses? I’d get my monthly Book It reward, and I was ready for a night of elegant fine dining!
I would go to a Brambly Hedge themed restaurant whenever possible, that sounds delightful.
We live in Brooklyn, and our five year old thinks going into Manhattan to eat as a deli, like Katz Deli, is the ultimate dining experience. First, we take a train that goes over a bridge instead on under a tunnel to get there, and that always means we’re going somewhere special. Then when we get there they bring his chocolate milk in a glass, not a plastic cup with a lid, and there’s an entire dish of pickles! Does he even like pickles? No. But there’s AN ENTIRE DISH of them. The matzah ball soup has ONE GIANT BALL instead of a bunch of little ones like when we make it at home. The wonders never end!
When I was in middle school, an Olive Garden opened up in the nearby town. It was the first restaurant I could recall going to where we paid at the table. Very fancy.
My kids went through a long phase of The Spaghetti Factory being their fancy chain - lots of birthdays there and finding other Spaghetti Factory's on vacation.
Casa Bonita in Denver was a special treat when we were kids! The divers!!
In my family, Outback was the “celebration” restaurant. It was by far the fanciest I ever went to until very recently.
When I was a kid in central Florida, there was this place Duff’s Smorgasboard that I thought was so cool! It was a buffet BUT the buffet table revolved, so you would stand in one place and fill your plate with food as the buffet slowly rotated by.
Not a restaurant but one of my kids once remarked while eating a sample at Costco, “This place is fancy. They have sporks!”
In the 1970s there was a place in Anoka, Minnesota (The Halloween Capital of the World - but that's a different story!) called "The Hot Fish Shop." Clever, huh? It was a very small chain; at its peak I think there were five in cities in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin. They served freshwater lake fish of the kind my dad was constantly trying to catch, but rarely succeeding at - largemouth bass, walleye, crappie, etc.
I was a schoolteacher's kid in an era when teachers were paid even more poorly than now, if possible, and it was a special treat to "eat out" even at McDonalds or (woo-hoo!) the A&W Drive-In. Going to The Hot Fish Shop meant either than someone had given my dad some money or that he had completed a summer deck-building job.
In retrospect, it was a halfway decent place, a la Perkins (another treat for special times), but it seemed like the finest of fine dining experiences to us! The Hot Fish Shop chain probably went under right around 1980 or so.
There are six kids in my family so we did not eat out very often. There was an Italian restaurant that we would go to; I only remember going maybe three times. It was your basic red checked tablecloths, candle in a bottle, and I believe they had a special that kids under five (?) ate free. As we didn't eat out much, this was the epitome of fancy for a girl from a tiny town in Upstate New York.
In my youth it was a restaurant called the Double Dip Depot, which was a train car where you could sit and be served PLUS a full-scale ice cream parlor on the other side. So, you ate, and then you could either order ice cream or get it to go. There was also a Ms. Pac-Man machine. So what I'm saying is, I could have lived there.
My kid thinks the diner is fancy, and then there is the Chit-Chat Diner, which is Alice in Wonderland-themed and sits at the top of a mountain with views of the city. The food is about the same as most diners, maybe with a few more frills, but the setting is awesome.
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. As a kid, I thought it was so elegant and beautiful with the red flocked wallpaper and the waiters dressed up in old timey vests. It was the birthday go-to because every kid got a free ice cream sundae on their birthday. I didn't realize they served meals until I was older--we only went for ice cream because I guess money.
The other restaurant memory I have is of my grandmother getting Taco Bell and we thought we were eating actual Mexican food! Hey--it was the 1960's and we didn't know any better. It was before fast food was a huge deal--there were a few McDonalds around but that was about it, and then somebody opened a Taco Bell in Portland. It was takeout only if I recall so she'd go over and get a bunch of tacos and burritos with sides of refried beans, which were my favorite.
Can anything really compete with a Friendly’s Conehead Sundae in a metal tulip dish? I mean the ice cream is wearing a ruff made of whipped cream! (For an image of the CORRECT presentation, click on the Yankee Magazine article that comes up when you Google Conehead Sundae. I, like the author, remember it as having a few Reese’s Pieces in the very bottom of the dish as well.) My beloved childhood Friendly’s became my beloved teenage cast party Friendly’s and then, tragically...became a Denny’s. To this day I have never been to a Denny’s because I hold a grudge.
My other childhood favorite (aka I think the only other restaurant I went to before about age 12) was Ground Round, which was maybe...circus themed? You got free popcorn and there was a clown (I remember the clown because for a while my godmother was the clown at our local Ground Round, when I was at an age where that felt like having a movie star in the family.) I felt very sophisticated because my mom didn’t like seafood but at Ground Round I, a small gourmand, could get a giant pile of fried clams and tartar sauce.
And then around middle school Applebees came to town, coinciding with my mom moving into a better paid job, and until college I genuinely thought that Applebees was what people meant by “a fancy restaurant.”
Cracker Barrel was our big night out. It was such a revelation when I got a car that I could go to Cracker Barrel for a side of mashed potatoes whenever I wanted. The idea that you could eat *and* go to a gift shop *and* imagine your life on a wooden porch with a wooden rocking chair under a wooden awning? I mean did I build my life around my Cracker Barrel experience? I might have.
The Spaghetti Factory in my city closed and that was a sad day for my kids. (Me too, tbh. Especially because my great grandpa helped to build the old downtown building it was in!) Seriously: the trolley! And ice cream that comes WITH your meal! And pasta! One of the only foods I can guarantee my kids will eat! What a treasure.
We don't go out to eat often, but there's a local chain called The Tavern. (My kids call it "The T Restaurant" because there's a big "T" on the side of the building.) They ask to go there all the time. Not sure how fancy they think it is, but I'm pretty sure just having a waiter take your order and cheese curds on the menu basically meets all of their standards.
Oh wow did I ever love going to Souplantation as a kid - I got to choose everything FOR MYSELF! And in what felt like a much fancier space than the Hometown Buffet my grandparents took me to occasionally, near the bay with more lighting and bigger windows.
I desperately wish I could go to a Brambly Hedge-themed restaurant today.
Coming from landlocked “city” in Idaho where restaurant choices we limited we too thought Sizzlers was amazing, but Skippers was what was the most affordable seafood, and my parents loved seafood. So it felt pretty fancy even though it was fast-food seafood. The real treat was when we visited a Red Lobster in Utah. It was like “Oh a trip to Utah, we’ve got to stop at Red Lobster!” Even now there isn’t a Red Lobster in Idaho Falls, but there is one in Pocatello so my parents will make a day trip to go to Red Lobster when they want to treat themselves. They could probably spend less overall if they went to a five star restaurant in Idaho Falls and save the money on the gas to get to and from Pocatello, but even now their mindset is that Red Lobster is special.
Ogden’s Tony’s Pizza was THE go to place to celebrate the end of a (losing but we did our best) little league baseball season. We’d often see our competitors there at the same time. The garlic bread and salad appetizers then elevated regular old pizza to a refined main course.
Ong YES to this day, salad bars say “luxury” to me. I get absurdly excited about them! I totally squealed when I went to Fogo de Chao here in Denver with friends and saw their salad bar!
The Ground Round, Olive Garden, and Pizza Hut! Remember when Pizza Hut had a huge buffet, hanging Tiffany lamps, and those pebbled red glasses? I’d get my monthly Book It reward, and I was ready for a night of elegant fine dining!
I would go to a Brambly Hedge themed restaurant whenever possible, that sounds delightful.
We live in Brooklyn, and our five year old thinks going into Manhattan to eat as a deli, like Katz Deli, is the ultimate dining experience. First, we take a train that goes over a bridge instead on under a tunnel to get there, and that always means we’re going somewhere special. Then when we get there they bring his chocolate milk in a glass, not a plastic cup with a lid, and there’s an entire dish of pickles! Does he even like pickles? No. But there’s AN ENTIRE DISH of them. The matzah ball soup has ONE GIANT BALL instead of a bunch of little ones like when we make it at home. The wonders never end!
When I was in middle school, an Olive Garden opened up in the nearby town. It was the first restaurant I could recall going to where we paid at the table. Very fancy.
My kids went through a long phase of The Spaghetti Factory being their fancy chain - lots of birthdays there and finding other Spaghetti Factory's on vacation.