Vile restaurants from your youth

Joanns chili bordello . The waitresses dressed like old west whores and their chili tasted like it was made with alpo . My mother was livid at my father for taking us there .

There's also Hearth n" Kettle in MA. I can't believe they're still around.

L&K in Ohio. I loved their burgers but all the adults in my family would blanch when I mentioned getting one.

Pretty much any Morrison's or Picadilly. How did they get the meatloaf to taste like liver pate, I'm not quite sure.

Howard Johnson's

Lums

WTF is Lums? Sounds phlegmy.

R3, in my Ohio hometown, L&K was the second-most elegant restaurant in the city.

Lums was a chain started in Miami in the 50s. It was a skanky place with emphasis on children's birthday parties.

A living HELL.

R8, is it related to the Hot Dog Hacienda on the Golden Girls?

[quote] L&K was the second-most elegant restaurant in the city.

What was the first?

[quote] is it related to the Hot Dog Hacienda on the Golden Girls?

Is that where Haha worked?

R10, the first place would probably have to go to Turoff's, a sort of dimly lighted supper club.

The Rustler--like a third-rate knockoff of Sizzler (as if Sizzler was not bad enough)

From my life, the most vile, filthy Chinese restaurants always had the best food.

Are you from Medina, r3?

God, I'm from Ohio. I've got a million of them. Ryan's buffet, The Ground Round, PONDEROSA. OMG I can't believe I used to eat all this crap!

Omg, the Ground Round! I'm traumatized by the one memory I have of that place!

Ha, I don't even eat meat anymore, but I LOVED Ponderosa when I was a kid. (Specifically, the rolls and the sundae machine.)

We also had a Burger Chef in town, where you could assemble your own burger in salad bar style. I loved that too.

Now the idea of people milling around my food and everyone touching the same tongs is not quite so appetizing to me.

We used to get taken to a place (maybe Lionel's or Leonard's, can't remember) with wagon wheels as light fittings, hammered copper covering EVERYTHING, waitresses in colonial dress, kettles and jugs and various ye olde worlde knick knacks covering anything that didn't move. Red candles on the table and red paper napkins were supposed to give an air of sophistication but nothing could salvage the kitchenware mania decor.

The food was appalling and even as a child I knew it was terrible. Lumpy mashed potatoes with overdone steak and cold gravy, heavy, sickly chocolate cake afterwards. Why it was a regular thing I'll never know.

I've never been to a Ponderosa but my sister and I loved York Steak House and we didn't even eat meat. A big part of it was how dark and cold it was...just like a castle, or so I thought. My mother used to bitch about what garbage it was but she'd give us $20 and drop us off anyway. I guess it was a cheap two hours of peace. Our standing order was baked potatoes with mushroom gravy, salads with neon-red Catalina dressing, two bowls of mushrooms, and rolls that were painted with margarine-flavored grease.

The best visits were when the elderly woman who oversaw the desserts was working because she would bring us a plate of rolls with about 20 pats of butter (that was a big deal because they were 5 cents each) and a soup bowl filled with mushroom gravy. I always tipped her $2 for the free stuff, which made me feel like high-roller.

Then York Steak House died.

Who remembers Sambo's?

There was nothing really wrong with the food per se; it was typical coffee shop/diner fare. But...THE NAME. And the fact that their 'mascot' was a little tiger. They had a whole jungle theme going, with assorted stuffed 'jungle' animals sold at the register for the kids.

I've heard that there's still one left, in Santa Barbara.

The Velvet Turtle and Love's Barbecue in Southern California. Those shitty restaurants were even too fancy for my white trash family..

R20, do you still tip well and act like a gentleman (opening doors for women etc.)? I bet you do. I think our childhood characteristics are more enduring than we think.

Another Ohio kid here. I loved L&K's hot dogs but otherwise it was a sad affair. The salads were vile! They always seemed to be in little farming towns off the beaten path.

Ditto on loving Ponderosa's rolls and ice cream. Unfortunately for me, my parents preferred Bonanza.

I never ate at a Ground Round because my family knew I wouldn't be able to handle the clown.

R21, there is a Sambo's in SB.

We had one in my Florida town and it featured a series of paintings lined up like stations of the cross, telling the story of a little Indian boy and the tiger he helped. He had had a major skin-lightening by the time I was a customer.

I had the coloring book linked below.

We ate at Sambo's. I can't remember the food except that I had the silver dollar pancakes. I thought it was made from tigers made to run in a circle until they melted, as in the Lil' Black Sambo's comic book.

We had a Lum's in San Juan back in my childhood in the late sixties. I remember loving their fried shrimp basket. It was probably shit but I was eight and didn't know better -shrimp was as exotic as things got for me.

We also had a restaurant whose name escapes me where you ordered and food came via these model trains that traveled from the kitchen and around all the tables. The food sucked and the gimmick got old when malfunctions kicked in.

Nowadays, Puerto Rico has a chain of restaurants with a Caribbean theme flair where the waiters are dressed like gentlemen from the Spanish era and women are dressed as ... Mammy slaves!

The staff at Raíces, Puerto Rico

[quote]Who remembers Sambo's?

There was one here in town that was built sometime in the 1970s, lasted until the 1980s, then changed to a Season's briefly before closing. Even my dad, a really enthusiastic racist, thought the name was unfortunate.

I grew up near Springfield MO as a kid, and we would always go to Heritage Cafeteria. The food wasn't vile but the decor sure as hell was.

Howard Johnson's. Disgusting food.

Does anyone remember Carnation restaurants? Can't remember the food but they had good ice cream.

Yes, r31. I ate at one in the Bay Area a few times as a teenager. I don't remember much about it - it was a typical family-type place as I recall. The one I went to was the only one I ever saw in Northern California.

Nasty food didn't exist to me as a kid. I ate everything

[quote]Howard Johnson's. Disgusting food.

Beg to differ. I used to save my money and make my mother take me to our local Howard Johnson's (which was actually a nice expensive hotel by the beach), so I could order my favorite dessert ever. Made with frozen strawberries, reay whip and boxed round cakes.

Pancho's in Dallas, Texas. Raise the flag when you want the wait staff to bring you more food.

OP, is the Pewter Pot you refer to the Pewter Pot Muffin House?

I hope not as I loved going there ages ago as a college student in Boston. Several locations including the best one in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Admittedly, we didn't have dinner there much, it was more for muffins and coffee after struggling through our homework each night. IIRC there were about 2 dozen different varieties of just baked muffins every day/night.

But maybe my tastes were rather working class as I also loved Howard Johnsons, especially the Fried Clams Dinner Special and Open-faced Roast Beef and Turkey Sandwiches with Gravy. And Chocolate Almond, Mocha Chip or Pink Peppermint Ice Cream for dessert!

My mouth is watering now........

R13 Actually the steaks from The Rustler were far superior to those of The Sizzler.

It was a buffet restaurant called the Captain's Table. We went there every Friday night. The lights were low, which was considered "classy" in the 1960s, and it seemed as though the smorgasbord was a mile long (I was about seven years old.) I loved their fried chicken, which was kind of squishy.

I remember visiting Florida for the first time in the early '70s and eating at Morrison's. As a kid living in a Rust Belt city, I was freaked out by the sad sack, submissive, elderly black men hired to carry your tray to the table. They didn't make eye contact and were like no black people I had ever seen. It was an education for me...Old South 101.

Damn, I can still see them in my head, slouching to the tables in their light maroon blazers and bow ties...

Lum's specialty was hot dogs steamed in beer. The whole place smelled exactly like, well, hot dogs steamed in beer.

LOVED The Sizzler (and Bonanza) when I was a kid. In hindsight, the steaks weren't great but the loaded baked potato and salad bar more than made up for it.

Jack-in-the-Box. The food was awful, but we drove our parents nuts to eat there because we loved the huge Jack-in-the-Box on the top of the restaurant.

I LOVED Howard Johnsons. It was my pick every year for my birthday meal at which I would delight in the fried clam dinner with cole slaw and french fries. Mint chip ice cream for dessert. And mind you, the Greenbrier Hotel was the same distance from my home as the HoJo in Roanoke, but I still picked HJ. I guess I was not brorn a food snob.

The VILEST restaurant ever to exist was in Smyrna, Ga(home of miss Julie Roberts) called Aunt Fanny's Cabin. It was literally the slave house on a Georgia plantation where you were greeted at the front door by the "pickaninnies" (very young black males who were barefoot in straw hats and sack cloth) who would gleefully lead you to the dining room. After that the "Rastus" would come to your table with a menu board hanging around his neck, and he would say stuff like " Eyez can' read but eyez can speak good. Tonights weez hab Vaginny baked ham n grits, weez hab catfish n hushpuppies etc etc etc. Then the star of the show, Manny would come to your table dressed JUST like Aunt Jemima and regale you of tales of her love of the Master and his family. And naturally there was a lot of buck dancing and other field hand entertainment.

I was taken there in 1986 when I first moved to Atlanta. I have no idea how long it remained in business after that, but it had been operating since the 50s. It boggles the mind that in a world where "Song of the South" is not readily available and "Amos n Andy" are frowned on if not forgotten, such fuckery was still taking place so relatively recently. Even more mind boggling is the fact that there were so may black people who were willing to dress up and coon for tips and a meager paycheck. So when BLM folks talk about how little shit has changed and how bad it is for black people, just remember that was a mere 30 years ago in the capital of the biggest city in the south. FWIW, I went home and cried.

Jack in the Box speaker at the drive thru. Always scared me a little.

Furr's Cafeteria - and I loved cafeteria food.

Shoney's made me vomit. Literally.

OP, Pewter Pot's I used to love blueberry muffins on the grill with butter!

A 2 year old boy died eating a tainted hamburger from Jack in the Box in the 1990s.

R43 "wins"! For best post on this thread, similar threads, and ANY fucking thread I've read since finding this board in 2005! Wow, wow, WOW...the mind REELS.

(Some enterprising entertainment reporter ought to be on this board, this thread; see R43's post, and ask Miss Julie Roberts if she (or Eric?) remember this place - INfuckingcredible!

[quote]in a world where "Song of the South" is not readily available and "Amos n Andy" are frowned on if not forgotten

Yet [italic]The Birth of a Nation[/italic], a film that depicts the KKK as heroes, is available easily and legally.

My local Pizza Hut should have been boarded many years sooner. As a kid, I went with some friends and noticed the soda tasted flat and odd. As if it was a bunch of different kinds mixed together. A bit later I swore that I saw a waitress pour leftover soda (from previous patrons) back into her pitcher - the same pitcher she used to pour Coke for new customers. Just out in the open.

When you bit into a slice, grease would pour down your arm. It was like digesting cement. Everyone had a gross story about it and sane people stopped going to that place altogether. We wondered how it was still opened and making a profit.

Well it turns out the manager and employees were running drugs out of it for years. A higher-up finally visited town, posed as a customer and was so appalled by the food and witnessing a blatant drug deal at the register that he shut the place down then and there. The place sat empty for a while, then reopened as an Italian restaurant.

R50 that is nasty. These stories are a good reason to eat at home.

It's actually cheaper in the long run to cook your own food.

R51 I couldn't believe my eyes, so I said nothing when I saw the waitress pour the backwash into her top-off pitcher all cavalier. Plus, I didn't want to make us all sick thinking about it. But it happened.

Someone from another thread was called a liar for saying that he watched a waiter at (maybe Red Lobster) pour excess butter and grease from a diner's dish onto the carpet, to fix it for him lol. After my trashy busted hillbilly Pizza Hut experience, that story is believable. A lot of people weren't raised right.

I don't eat out much. Helpful tip: pop a capsule of activated charcoal when dining out or traveling. It prevents gas, indigestion, diarrhea and food poisoning. Just don't take it with medication.

Guess what is still in business, now as an event venue.

Owned by Smyrna itself.

He ain't lying.

THey had Aunt Fanny dolls

There was a Tom's in Calumet City that served over-fried food. In back was the "grotto" - walls painted to look like stone with rags dipped in plaster hanging from the ceiling to look like stalagmites.

The Purple Steer was a cocaine freak's heaven - my oldest brother bought from the dishwasher. The staff was surly, the steak was tough, and the carpet was moss green. They had many fake ferns that were dusty. Oh, and the entire restaurant was a smoking section.

Yeah, but is the food any good?

I ate a few Lum's hot dogs in my youth.

It seemed most family restaurants 30-50 years ago had a kiddie menu that only consisted of hot dogs and fried chicken. The whole concept of children being allowed to regularly dine out was new.

Holy Smokes! They had postcards which said, "Save your Confederate money Folks. The South will rise again."

Front

R43, It closed in '94, which is shockingly late, but, then, it was in the South. Further keeping me, save LA, firmly above the Mason-Dixon line.

I was not born in the US, but I am a citizen, and I have a complicated relationship with US slavery. I am part black, so am assumed to be AA, but I'm not. My birth country trafficked slaves, and there hasn't been any kind of nostalgia movement, let alone from the former slaves. That boggles my mind.

Wow. You guys are great at digging stuff up and posting it. I know, I know Google is my friend.

I am shocked that it was open until 1994. Why in the heck didn't activists in ATL make it their business to shut the damn thing down?

[quote]Why in the heck didn't activists in ATL make it their business to shut the damn thing down?

Because they would be putting black people out of work.

The Kahuku Burger Mill on Oahu is the yardstick by which truly terrible hamburgers were measured in the 1970s. We ate them because there was no other burger place within walking distance. The burgers were so rubbery that your teeth would actually bounce off them if you didn't bite down hard enough. We knew they were awful when our German shepherd wouldn't eat them. Bad times!

Wow, R66. That's how bad bad food has to be so dogs won't eat it. How long was it before they opened another burger stand?

My god, I didn't even think of that, duh. And I have to tell ya, there had to be 50 people of all ages on the floor at any given time, so I suppose it was keeping a few families fed and housed. This is repugnant to say, but the "entertainers" who sang and danced for the whitey tourists were tipped quite well for all the singing and dancing--the hammier the better.

R67 -- R66 here. Mercifully, there never was a Kahuku Burger Mill II. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was because it was kind of the last stop before the more upscale North Shore, and there was never a shortage of tourists, who of course didn't know any better. Other customers included visitors to the Hawaii Nudist Park, which was just up the road. I haven't been back in years, but friends tell me there's now a really first-rate burger place in Kahuku. Other than that, Kahuku was a great place to be a kid back in the last century.

This is why I always read ahead before dining. Too many restaurants put out slop and are just a scheme to get your dollars.

place that i loved as a kids, but would vomit now: Wienerschnitzel (fast food hot dogs) Bob's Big Boy Sizzler And all those weird fish aquarium restaurant

I grew up in NYC and feel like I missed out on all of this small town stuff. I'm not trying to be elitist, I'm actually serious.

My parents went to dinner with a friend and he was served soup with someone else's soggy crackers in it. A family story for years.

If anyone is interested, here's a history of Aunt Fanny's Cabin.

[quote]The life of the restaurant’s namesake, Fanny Williams, has been generally obscured by the myth of “Aunt Fanny.” Although she worked most of her life for the Campbells, Williams also had significant accomplishments of her own, many of them through her association with Wheat Street Baptist Church, one of the more activist of Atlanta’s several African-American churches. In Cobb County, too, she made her mark and endured the displeasure of the Ku Klux Klan over her activities, which included being one of the major fundraisers for Marietta’s “Negro Hospital” that broke ground in 1947.

La Casa Frijole (The Bean House) here in suburban St. Louis. It has been around for decades, not sure how the place stays open. They must bribe the health inspectors. You could slide into your seat from the greasy floor. The food is "Mexican" in the worst sense; yet it has a loyal following.

Another vote for Lum's. It was disgusting. When it first came to my small Northeastern city when I was in grade school, the whole birthday party thing there was a big deal, so I unfortunately had to eat there several times. I always found it vile. My parents, who never had any taste when it came to food, both would eat breakfast there. Gag. When it closed, they were both disappointed. I was elated.

Also another vote for Ponderosa. We had one near our mall. Cafeteria-style disgustingness. Shoney's is another horror. I remember a woman I worked with in the 1990s used to brag every year how she and her family would eat Thanksgiving dinner at Shoney's. Yes, she was white trash.

Another disgusting Northeastern restaurant is Friendly's. My friend worked there in high school. The food was vile and the ice cream sucked, although everyone in town gazzed over it. Subpar all the way. Surprisingly, that restaurant is still open. Who the fuck eats at these dumps?

Der Wienerschnitzel!

NEIN! NEIN!! NEIN!!!

[R72] I suppose you never ate at a Nathan's. a White Castle, Ray's Original Pizza, or Gray's Papaya? What about Arthur Treacher? How about those dreadful ChineseCuban restaurants all over Manhattan?

[quote]Who the fuck eats at these dumps?

Fat people who will eat anything not marked "poison."

[quote]Because they would be putting black people out of work.

There's work at the Post Office

We had a weird and gross Scandinavian smorgasbord restaurant called, no lie, The Jolly Troll. It was decorated with mechanical troll figures. Apparently, it was part of a small Upper Midwestern chain. Fortunately, my dad was opposed to dining at restaurants that lacked a bar area for cocktails before dinner, so I only ever ate there once or twice, with friends' families.

LUMS - "Hot Dogs Steamed In Beer"

LUMS Menu

LUMS decor

We were lucky, I guess -- growing up where we did, our local diner was a Norm's just down the street, we had a fantastic burger shack down the other street, we had a Woolworth's with a nice counter just up the road, we had a delicious donut shop at the end of our street and an Italian bakery on the way to school. Between the Norm's and our house we had a hot dog place in the shape of a hot dog with stools like at the burger shack...

The only things we didn't have were Chinese and Pizza. Our Chinatown was near my dad's work, though, and we would have Shakey's pizza whenever we visited out aunt tin the suburbs.

Oh man, R82-R84, you're bringing back terrible memories! I remember my friends and I used to call it Slums. We were so on target!

Are these places cheap? Do you get a lot of food? This may answer that other thread (How do the people on My 600 Pound Life afford all that food?).

Remembering their jingles...

When it's time to eat it's time for Lums!

Just what the family ordered, Sambo's.

At the orange roof -the flavor of America- Howard Johnson's

The guy with the foot-long dick ordering a foot-long dog

The name has been lost to history, but on a road trip in 1981, we stopped in Amarillo, TX for lunch. As I recall, there weren't many roadside options, but one place looked clean enough so we went in. We ordered a pizza. How bad can pizza get? We found the answer. The crust was made of saltine crackers, covered with canned tomato sauce, covered with faux cheese, covered with some kind of mystery meat. It tasted exactly like it sounds. At least we got a story out of it, and to this day, whenever something tastes bad, we say, "Well, it's not as bad as the pizza in Amarillo, Texas!"

Before reading this thread, I'd never even heard of Lums. Where exactly did they import their ham steak from?

Nobu.

You mean the "Holland Ham" r91?

I had my 4th birthday party at Lums. I remember a small birthday cake split between like 10 of us.

Before us kids left from preschool, for the lunchtime party, all the kids had to sit in a circle with their eyes closed while I walked outside the circle and tapped the invited kids in the head to let them know they were invited.

I felt really bad walking out the door, because one kid I didn't tap started crying hysterically. I had told him on a previous day that he was invited to the party, but I didn't tap him on the head, intentionally, because I didn't like him. He had even brought me a present that day.

That must have sucked for him. Lums never would have tasted so good to him if I had just tapped him on the head and invited him officially.

I can remember stuff from when I was two years old, so turning 4 I can remember clearly.

[quote]Before us kids left from preschool, for the lunchtime party, all the kids had to sit in a circle with their eyes closed while I walked outside the circle and tapped the invited kids in the head to let them know they were invited.

WTF? Was this a common means of inviting friends to a birthday party where you grew up, r94?

Russell's Steak Pit, which we used to call Russell's Snake Pit.

Burger Chef (and Jeff)

I believe it turned into Hardee's. Just awful crap served with a cute plastic toy for Tuddles and Bubbles.

Old San Francisco Steak House. Closed down here but there may be others left. Famous for the girl on the red velvet swing, which would be distracting, and scary, while eating. It was THE place to go in the 70's when I was a kid.

Have any of you tried Chicken Delight? I never have and I know almost nothing about it but it seemed to be the punchline for many jokes about bad food when I was growing up.

Duff's smorgasbord. It was for people so lazy they couldn't walk down the buffet line. The food was all on a turntable and you'd pick what you wanted from a stationary position as it spun past you. All you can eat . My grandfather was forbidden to go there by my grandmother because he would always eat so much he got sick.

I remember a fast food chain when I was little in the late 70s called Burger Chef. Does anyone else remember that one? I think they had a fixin's bar.

R90, that sounds a lot like an inexplicably popular pizza chain in St. Louis called Imo’s. I had it once on a road trip about 25 years ago and unfortunately have never forgotten it. Maybe the worst meal out I’ve ever had. The other bad road food that stands out was a drive-in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Their gross hubcap sized burgers came back to haunt me in the most awful ways.

I miss the lunch counters many stores had when I was growing up in the 70s. I doubt that Woolworth or Federal had great food, but it was fun to swing around on those stools as a kid. There was a gross cafeteria-style chain called Sign of the Beefcarver in the Detroit area, the kind of place old people used to drag their grandkids. Those cafeterias were always vile, with gelatinous TV dinner crap like Salisbury steak – to this day I cringe at the sight of jello cubes.

Friendly’s is indeed gross, but I loved the Reese’s Pieces sundaes.

There’s a bunch of former Arthur Treacher’s around Detroit – many of them eventually became Thai restaurants. The small buildings are pretty distinctive so you can always pick them out. Same with the long-dead Red Barn fried chicken chain. The buildings were just that – big red barns. A friend and I used to joke about doing a photo essay on what happened to all those buildings, many of which are still around.

Nickels in Montreal. Drug addicted wait staff and soggy food-if that wasn't bad enough my friend my sexually harassed by a man wearing a mask and a cape in that place and when she complained to the staff one of them had the gall to say 'That's never happened to me before!'

I think I heard Celine Dion owns the Nickels chain.

The Howard Johnson's in our town was actually very good for breakfast and decent for lunch, but not so great for dinner. After the bars closed, they served the best breakfast in town and were always mobbed.

It had a good manager who stayed there for years, and he always was able to get good breakfast and lunch cooks. When that manager left, the quality dropped and it closed about 3-4 years later. The manager went to another restaurant downtown and you guessed it, that place then had the best breakfast and lunch in town.

I'M the kid you didn't tap, r94. And I'm a fucking girl.

When I was starting my career outside of DC in the 80s there were few lunch options at the nearby downmarket mall. I had not eaten much fast food and was startled at how God-awful Taco Bell was.

This was a great thread.

In the early eighties my friends & I all worked in gay bars. We'd go to Buzzy's Roast Beef in the shadow of The Charles Street Jail.

Roast beef sandwiches, knishes & fried potatoe hunks. It was SO good at three or four in the morning. But in the fifteen years I lived in Boston I nor anyone I'd ever known had ever eaten there in the daytime.

At a filthy restaurant in Boston's Chinatown called Moon Villa if you ordered "cold tea" after 2am they'd bring a large metal teapot full of Heiniken draft beer. They were open 'til 4.

Awww, I loved York Steak House! My parents used to take us to the one at Southern Park Mall in Boardman Ohio all the time. For it being mainly a "buffet" style restaurant, it was worlds better than the garbage they serve at places like Golden Corral these days. You would order your meats and pay up front from what I recall and they would throw them on the grill, and by the time you got to the end of the buffet, they were ready. You could see them cooking your stuff on the grill and there would be flames shooting up from it. The place also smelled incredible from all the steaks cooking over the open fire like that. The decor was cool too, it was really dark inside the restaurant and they had a lot of medieval decor, including knight armor (the knights used to creep me out because I always thought there was someone in them, and they were going to come after us with their axes and swords, lol).

In the late 70's most of the flagship stores in our local mall had restaurants in them - I'm talking JC Penney, Strouss's, and Sears, to name a few. They were mainly Perkin's style "family" restaurants, with basic shit like turkey and gravy, hamburgers, and such. I used think it was so weird getting something to eat at a JC Penney's, lol. K-Mart also had restaurants in them, along with a deli and an ice cream counter - again, nothing spectacular, but for some reason I loved the cheeseburgers at the K-Mart restaurant, and always thought it was fun grabbing something to eat in there while shopping.

Aunt Fanny's namesake was actually a civil rights activist who had run-ins with the KKK.

In its day, Aunt Fanny's had a competitor called Mammy's Shanty.

Don't cook tomight, call Chicken Delight!

They delivered hot chicken dinners to your door, like pizza is delivered now. Someone I know had a bad experience, though, with them; while at a dorm at UCLA in the 60s the delivery guy tried to put the make on her.

We've got to know where r94 grew up! So barbaric, the head tapping invite. My guess is someplace like North Dakota or Wisconsin, filled with dead-eyed rural Finns, Germans and Swedes.

Get out of here, R109! I'm from Boardman. Too funny.

One of my college freshman roommates was from Boardman.

Lum's for the win. As a kid, my brother and I got so sick after eating there that we had to go to the hospital. My poor brother had a fever of 108 and nearly died. He survived, but with severe autism as a result. And my parents were too young to understand lawsuits and legal issues. They tried, but never got anywhere. Horrible place, and I rarely say this, but I hope the scumbag that served us that rotten food died in a grease fire.

[quote]Awww, I loved York Steak House! My parents used to take us to the one at Southern Park Mall in Boardman Ohio all the time. [quote]Get out of here, [R109]! I'm from Boardman. Too funny.

Hey, former citizens of boardman: do either of you remember the Dairy Queen in town?

Wow r116 - no lawsuit whatsoever? ...or was it hard to establish/prove a connection?

Sorry about your brother.

Lum's sound pretty nasty, but I'm thinking it's quite a stretch to say it gave somebody autism, r116. Also, I doubt it was the server's fault that you and your brother got sick.

It was the mid seventies, and we were dirt poor, R118. I was too young to understand all the legalese, I just know nothing ever came of it, and no one talks about it anymore. Just bad memories that my family would rather forget. Thanks for the concern for my brother, he's alive, well, and very sweet. And he would win approval from the purists here, because he does say "fank you". But he's like a kid and everyone loves him.

Whoa.

Lum's bought Caesar's Palace?!

Reading this thread makes me appreciate the fact that my parents had good enough taste in food and made enough money so we never had to settle for shit like "pizza" made of saltines and mystery meat.

Burger Chef

R119, all I can say is that we both got deathly ill from their food, he had a dangerously high fever(they had to put him in ice cold water to revive him and bring the fever down), and he was never the same after that. We both had hamburgers, apparently the meat was spoiled. No one else in the family had hamburgers and they didn't get sick. This all happened on our way home from Busch Gardens in Va., where we went for vacation. I'm thinking 76, as I was around 6 years old, and my brother was 3.

Tastee Freez was one of my more vivid childhood memories, perhaps because of the flashy architecture of their stands ... and the giant ice cream cones featured in neon on top of the structure.

Say what you will about the food in a lot of those places, the mid-century architecture sure was fun, R125.

When I was little my dad worked at a Sambo's in TX. My parents took me to Luby'a a lot. My favorite place was Pancho's.

When I lived in CT, I loved the USS Chowder Pot. In high school, my friends and I would go to a place called Beefsteak Charlie's for all you can eat shrimp. You had to peel them yourself, but it was so good.

When I went to college in Rochester, NY my favorite sandwich place was Amiel's. If you were drunk, you probably ended up at Nick Tahoe's. No way I'd eat a garbage plate sober!

Our family lived in Somalia for a few years when I was a child. We were friends with an old Chinese geezer who wore Mao-style jumpsuits and ran a restaurant called Ming Sing. Awful bland food, but he was kind to us kids, we liked the kitschy dragon decor, and it's not as if there were a lot of choice in Mogadishu. My parents would roll their eyes when the children would beg to go there but give in. Googled it, it is still there although the old man is long, long dead for sure.

The city had Italian restaurants run by ex-colonials that were actually rather good. Mom and Dad liked the fresh seafood.

[quote]Hey, former citizens of boardman: do either of you remember the Dairy Queen in town?

Sure. Up on Market St. I used to get grape Mr. Mistys there all the time when they were open in the summer.

Yeah yeah yeah. Aunt Fanny's was racist.

Burger Chef fun meals when your hungry for fun , fun food ! They had the best chocolate shakes ! I had totally forgotten about Tastee Freeze !

A family member was a child in Salt Lake City in the '50s and remembers a place called Coon Chicken Inn. The entrance was thru the mouth of a big picture of an AA man. They don't remember eating there but had to wait outside the restaurant with their mom at a bus stop and said they would avoid looking at it because it was scary. Amazingly racist even for the time period.

I actually ate at Sign of the Beefcarver in Royal Oak not too long ago -- it's still around. The sides are meh but the actual beef is actually very good. I was the youngest person in the place by 15-20 years and I am not young.

It was no Somali Chinese, mind you.

R72, I live in New Orleans which is the square root of creole and cajun culture of the south with absolutely superb food.

A friend of mine came down to my place the French Quarter for a few days. When I asked him where he wanted to go out to eat, he said, "Applebees."

Livinging in Manhattan, he had seen those Applebee commercials on TV for years and he thought going there would be the height of elegance.

I took him to Galatoire's instead.

Okie Frijole a Mexican smorgy chain in northern California. My parents very rarely went out to eat. A once or twice a year treat was this or a Chinese buffet. Plastic Mexican, but it was like crack to me back then and they had a sundae machine! The fried chicken was good, I recall the adults saying

duffs

R135 -- "Smorgy"--now THERE'S a word I haven't heard in years. I grew up in Santa Barbara, and in neighboring Goleta was an all-you-can-eat place called Perry Boys Smorgy. Even as a child I hated that word, and I wouldn't have gone there for that reason, even if they tried to drag me. Fortunately, my parents had other reasons for avoiding it (which probably had to do with it being too proletariat), so I never had to worry about it. We had a first-rate, authentic Swedish smorgasbord restaurant on De la Vina Street called the Skandi Buffet, and I still have wet dreams involving their ribs and meatballs. God, I miss the Skandi Buffet!

this reminds me of those restaurants that had kiddie menus where the meals were named after zoo animals. I saw it in quite a few places, even some upscale hotel dining rooms. My mother's favorite department store had an old grand old Art Deco dining room on its top floor. It was starting to fade but one could still imagine a scene from The Women happening there.

This thread is incomplete without a mention of the horrendous Red Barn chain. I hated their crappy free crayons even more than their pigeonesque chicken legs.

I remember Tastee-Freeze. It was where all the cool kids would congregate on hot summer nights on our shoreline. We'd drive back and forth to see who was there before we would actually stop there.

R138 -- I can't remember where this was--Eurodisney or Tokyodisney or some such--but my son took his family there, and some Winnie the Pooh-themed restaurant was selling "Pooh Burgers." I'm sure this was a hit with American visitors.

R141 - this more along the lines of "ELEPHANT - grilled ham and cheese sandwich with dill pickle, coleslaw and a soda fountain drink. Ice cream in a metal bowl for dessert." or "GIRAFFE - egg salad sandwich with French fries, a fountain drink, and rice pudding for dessert"

We lived across from a Purina plant when I was a kid, and there was a cafe. My father never let us eat there because he was convinced that they made the food with the same ingredients as their dogfood. He also hated Stuckey's and would get his food elsewhere while we ate there. We were fascinated by the plastic-encased scorpions and "genuine Indian" turquoise jewelry with "made in Taiwan" stamped on the back.

A cafe in the purina plant? I find this so hilarious

There is still a York Steak House in Columbus, OH. I grew up eating at the chain's mall locations in northern Virginia, so when I was passing through I thought I'd give it a shot.

I am sure it's the same food I remember and it is even decorated the same. Taste buds change, though. Nothing was appealing. We sure loved it in the late 70s-early 80s though.

There's another, small chain called Country Cookin in Virginia that is sort of the same idea, and while it's not as good as it was, it's passable.

Cracker Barrell has good food, but their portions are so small you have order 2 dinners to get full.

Where is Aunt Danny's Restaurant?

Old Spaghetti Works - same concept as the Old Spaghetti Factory, maybe a copycat chain. It was edible enough, I suppose, but nothing special. Even as a small child I could tell what a ripoff it was to pay so much for such simple food you could cook at home for pennies. But then, of course, you wouldn't get to dine in such "atmosphere" surrounded by old-timey flair.

I ate at Aunt Fanny's when we went to visit family in the south back in the 80s. I was just a kid then but I have a vivid image of a young boy standing at our table wearing a blackboard with the menu on it.

I had forgotten about that place until a couple of years ago when the memories suddenly hit me out of the blue and I had a major "WTF was THAT?; did that really happen??" moment.

Atlanta was also home to Mammy's Shanty.

....

The Sambo's where I grew up (Erie, PA) eventually changed its name to Sam's and the mascot changed from a tiger to a little fat white guy (a chef, I think). It went out of business not too long after that. I can't find a picture of the later logo and mascot online.

Yikes, the Coon Chicken thing is for real:

How much effort and money went into painting those little black mammys and sambos on those wooden matches?!!!

I had to look that up r132 because I found that be so shocking

I got my period at Lums

What about The Firehouse on Long Island? My whole family shit and puked for hours after their awful food. And that other crappy place with the salty popcorn and the Flying Squadron theme? Awful.

Also in Atlanta, there was a local chain called Johnny Reb's. Johnny Reb's Dixieland featured a black musician, Graham Jackson, who performed Confederate songs. He later worked at a plantation-themed restaurant, Pittypat's Porch, which is still in operation today.

[quote]This LP, recorded by Graham Jackson live at Pittypat's Porch, featured a wealth of Civil War era southern-themed music. Given the fact that Graham Jackson was a distinguished black musician, the presence on his album of the 3 Confederate heroes (Davis, Lee, and Jackson) and the Confederate battle flag is, to put it mildly, a bit jarring at least by today's standards. What to make of this I have no idea, beyond the assumption that the man was trying to feed a family.

Mammy's Shanty? Coon Chicken?

People are just mean.

Grew up in Nevada and my parents only took us to casino buffets as children. The worst could be found at either Circus Circus or the Golden Nugget.

We will take your vile restaurants. All of them.

Farrell's

Mostly known for their sundaes, such as the Zoo, which was delivered on a stretcher by two waiters, or the Trough, for which you got a ribbon that said "I made a pig out of myself at Farrell's"

"We serve FUN at Shakey's -- also pizza. SHAKEY'S!"

This wasn't really a vile place, but it was a place we went to as teens when the oldest among us got driver's licenses. Their lunch buffet had a lot of slice options and it wasn't what we'd think of good pizza of today, but it was like good bad pizza. In the late-'70s.

I worked in the Northeast in the late-'80s who moved here from Atlanta and she said there was a chain there called Po' Folks and basically the entire theme was the comfort food and the happy ignorance that comes with poverty. Signs were deliberately misspelled or phonetic equivalents. She told me the cashier station had a sign that said, "Har's war ya pay!". I looked it up, and the name still exists, but everything looks spelled right. All now in FL and AL, I guess.

R43:

"You mean de diamonz is WUTLESS?!"

Farrell's was a lot of fun. The player piano, the candy shop, the wacky atmosphere. If you rdered the Zoo, as stated above, two guys ran around with it on a stretcher while a siren rang, then they deliverd t to your table and by then it was a half-melted cauldron of ice cream slop. The Mount Whitney sundae was a mountain of ice cream, enough for about 8 people: And the Trough, as mentioned... If you finished it all you got that "I made a pig of myself" ribbon. I think they had food, too, but I can't remember,

Ah, Farrell's; my first job was washing dishes at a Farrelll's in Altamonte Springs, Fla. Dunno if there are any others still open, but there's one in sacramento, calif.

There's several Farrels in the so cal area, including down the street where I live in Rancho Cucamonga.

The only remaining Farrell's are in CA and Hawaii. I was a kid growing up in Sacramento when an air show jet crashed into a restaurant filled with a Pee Wee football party. Over 20 died. I drive by the Executive Airport and the old location from time to time and marvel at how a jet could have been allowed to take off from such a short runway that ended practically only about 50 or 60 yds from the restaurant. And the area is densely populated.

They are opening up new Farrell's restaurants in malls and the restaurants are always packed. They are in expansion mode.

There used to be a lot of restaurants that let you shell peanuts on the floor, but they must have had people slip and sue because you don't see these places anymore.

I disliked the food at Swallow at the Hollow, an odd barbeque chain.

I was going to say North Woods Inn too. People love that steak house, but the floor was cover with peanuts shells, with copious amounts of hidden rotten food mixed in, very disgusting.!

Happy Joe's Pizza during my college years. It's a Midwestern chain. Maybe it's because I grew up in an area with a large Italian-American population, but the local pizza joints I went to as a kid were all excellent. They had to be to compete with each other. Happy Joe's was disgusting--the crust, the toppings (all canned), the bland sauce. Just terrible. And my fellow students used to act like it was the greatest pizza they had ever tasted, especially if they grew up around this shitty chain. I always hated it and couldn't even choke down one piece without gagging. Some of the students who grew up in Chicago, where they have some good pizza, also backed me up on this.

Beefsteak Charlies in the NY area. Just. Terrible.

Isn't Coon Chicken the mascot Enid passes off as her own artwork in "Ghost World"? Jeez, I never knew it was a real chain, I thought it was a fake mascot.

For the longest time, those racist caricatures were hugely popular amongst white Americans, R159. My grandmother got a set of "coon" salt and pepper shakers in the 1930s and immediately packed them away, for whatever reason. They were from some "nice" restaurant in the south, but I can't for the life of me remember the name that was imprinted on them.

All the pizza in Pittsburgh. Except Mineo's.

That's where my restaurant is, you cad!

I am fascinated by Lum's, is this still around? I live in NYC but always up for a roadtrip...

[quote]It boggles the mind that in a world where "Song of the South" is not readily available and "Amos n Andy" are frowned on if not forgotten, such fuckery was still taking place so relatively recently.

In the 1980s most straight people primarily thought of AIDS as the set-up to a never-ending slew of tasteless jokes.

You don't serve pizza, Lidia dearest. And you have that lovely pasta tasting.

Ponderosa was disgusting. McDonalds gave me hiccups every time we went their but my brother and sisters liked it. Monkey Wards and Sears had restaurants that were gross. Woolworths was OK, though. In NYC there were places I didn't like, such as Mama Leone's, Lindy's, Katz's, Barney Greengrass (I was too young to like that).

I somehow doubt that someone living in Manhattan would find Applebee's "sophisticated" and want to go there on a trip to New Orleans.

Maybe he was from the Bronx?

What a grotesque response R183.

Is EVERYONE in NYC as sophisticated as you seem to think YOU are?

Back in 2007 I was in CA for a family funeral. My uncle took me to San Francisco for the day. He was so excited to take me out for sea food. We went to the Bubba Gump place. I cried on the inside.

Huddle House, your place for bad pancakes. As if that were even possible. But it is.

Reply 176: Yes! One and the same! Ghost World and Coon Chicken Inn. That is why my family member brought up the CC Inn after watching Ghost World.

Is that John Wayne Gacy at R175?

Shake Shack

Margie's Diner in Goleta, CA. The food was shit, but they gave you LOTS of it. My dad, who had a cast-iron stomach, got the howling shits every time we ate there. Once after a weeklong camping trip he got terribly constipated, so he went to Margie's Diner for their congealed glop du jour. He shat all night, just like he knew he would.

The Kountry Kitchen in Elmer, NJ.

Our church youth group used to go to Shakey's from time to time when I was in grade school and I thought it was a blast, including the silent movies. But yeah, the pizza tasted like it came from the grocery store. Didn't realize until I Googled just now that they're still in business.

The food was shit, but they give you lots of it!

Pea Soup Andersen's on Highway 101 in Buellton, California is still there, serving the same signature split pea soup they have been serving since 1924. Probably from the same pot all this time. It's good, as pea soups go, at least, but nothing worth traveling out of your way for. If you order a bowl of it they will refill your bowl as many times as you want! The best thing about the place is the candy and souvenir shop.

[quote]Before us kids left from preschool, for the lunchtime party, all the kids had to sit in a circle with their eyes closed while I walked outside the circle and tapped the invited kids in the head to let them know they were invited.

Was that acceptable to the teacher? That's pretty terrible and mean.

Has the Waffle House been metioned?

R102, I'm actually from St. Louis, so am familiar with Imo's. Their pizza is definitely an acquired taste. Very thin crust with a hybrid cheese of provelone and mozzarella they call "provel." No, the pizza we had on our road trip would make Imo's pies seem like the best Italy had to offer.

Waffle House rocks R197 especially at 2:30 in the morning.

The House of Pies in Los Feliz.

Another thumbs up for The Waffle House.

Couldn't live without it. And the cheesy cheapness only adds to the ambience.

How does Waffle House compare to IHOP?

It's like comparing Fellini's Satyricon to Grease.

Is that good or bad? I did not care for either of those 2 films.

I'm told Horne's was pretty bad.

Every year when we went to visit family in central Florida, the trip always included a stop at The Kapok Tree in Clearwater. It was an astonishing tribute to style and size over substance. Ir was something akin to Versailles meets Branson on an epic scale. The food was garden variety suburban hotel wedding banquet, but mom and the aunties got to keep their glasses if they ordered one of the overpriced girly drinks.

In Detroit there was the Sveden House which had some of the nastiest swill ever made . People would be lined out the door on holidays for this joint . MCL Cafeteria in Tel-Twelve Mall had good fried chicken but the corn bread was made from Spackle .

I worked at a Pewter Pot!

How about a Rinkum Ditty Omelette?

London, 1976.

There was a hamburger chain called 'Strikes 1926' - named after the British General Strike of 1926.

I mean, who names a restaurant after a 'strike' & national catastrophe?

I seem to remember there were photos of people on strike all over the walls.

& the British could never make a decent hamburger for some reason. They still can't.

London, 1981.

Pizzaland - you'd go because very often it was the only place open at odd hours in the 'thriving metropolis'.

The worst Pizzas you've ever had in your life, served with a baked potato.Who doesn't want a baked potato with their pizza? & how can you make a plain baked potato taste so nasty?

Britain, 1970s

Wimpy Burgers.

The name says it all....so does this photo.

These guys say it better than I ever could.

omigosh, they're hilarious, R212.

Mister C's in Omaha Nebraska. Pasta right up there with Chef Boy Ardee and the toughest meat on earth.

R211, Cher wrote in her autobiography that when she and Sonny first hit it big and went to London, she tried a Wimpy burger and said it tasted like dog food.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R191 That's hysterical...your poor mother..lol

Beefsteak Charlies

The Ground Round

Piccadilly & Lubys cafeterias.

Tads Steakhouses

Dear God, R216, these people thought McDonalds was an IMPROVEMENT on their local burgers?

Because McDonalds was even worse back then that it is now. The burgers were still the same nasty gray greasy things, but when I was young in the 70s the drinks were watered, the pies contained only scalding-hot apple goo and no chunks of fruit, and the milkshakes would still hold a straw upright after they came to room temperature, they contained so much glycerin. And so on. I mean it's still awful now, but either they've stopped diluting the Coca-Cola or Coke Inc. has started diluting the standard product.

In Baldwin out on Long Island there was a diner called Chat and Nibble. It was awful. We called it Spit and Dribble.

R126, and to the other Boardman person who asked about Dairy Queen - if you're referring to the one on Market street, it's still open. I just stopped in there the other day when they were giving away free ice cream cones.

This isn't from my childhood, but Hothead Burrito's is pretty lousy. I believe they are based out of somewhere in Ohio. They're a shameless Chipotle knock off, but their burritos are awful. I don't know what the tortilla's are made out of, but they're super tough and chewy - you practically have to gnaw on them to rip a bite off. Their meats and other fillings strangely have no taste to them. And their house hot sauce, literally just tastes and looks like corn syrup with red pepper flakes in it - it's disgustingly sweet and ruins an already bad burrito.

The Kuntry Kubbard, in Michigan. I'd order the Big Kuntry Breakfast for the name alone.

r164, nope - their (mis)spelling tradition lives on. Check out the "Menu" section - "po-taters," "Kuntry fried chicken," etc.

R219 I don't know about glycerin, but what made McDonald's "shakes" thick back in the day was PLASTIC.

Polyethylene to be exact. My father's company manufactured the globules of plastic which went into the shakes. They also made the packaging film for cigarettes and chip bags etc from the same material in a different form.

r81 - I I went to the Jolly Troll mentioned in the article several times when I was a kid. . We rarely went out to eat so it was a treat for a kid with all those trolls. We also had a Sveden House buffet that we went to. The only thing I remember is that the chicken was tiny pieces, must have been real young birds. The Swedish meatballs were pretty good.

Farrells was a lot of fun as was Shakey's pizza. The pizza at Shakey's was nothing special. There was also a pizza place that had a real theater pipe organ in it. I thought that was cool too.

Another vote for Pancho's in TX, it had a bad reputation in town for being where obese folks liked to strap on their feed bag, wave their little flags and stuff themselves full of greasy, cheesy Tex Mex. I also got sick at nearly every steakhouse I ate at as a kid. Probably contributed to my becoming a vegetarian.

No one's brought up Casa Bonita in Denver? A tacky restaurant with such awful food that it inspired a South Park episode.

The time I went, the divers were all flabby white dudes...and, the whole place smelt like chlorine from the pool.

The food was bland by bland Mexican standards...why would you eat bland Mexican food in a town full of Mexicans?

I was very fond of Shakeys Pizza when I was a kid. The pizza was better than the food at home (anything was), and they used to play interesting old comedy films - Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy short films, that sort of thing.

I did grow up to be a bit of a film geek, and Shakey's really was my introduction to classic and silent film. So what if the pizza was bad, it was way better than being at home.

Victoria Station. Where you ate in railroad train cars and the waitresses dressed like old west whores, with bustiers and feather headdresses. Fun for the whole family.

Didn't the Rattlesnake Club in Denver have some shenanigans too?

I think they took the shenanigans off the menu a couple of years ago r231

The Buckhorn in a rural area of Minneapolis. There were couple of Buffalo in,the corral outside (not for food). Inside was rustic wood paneling. Think I got the fried chicken, long ago.

My mom took me to Steak and Ale for my 16th birthday. I thought it was incredibly sophisticated and elegant.

bump

Itchy’s on interstate 70.

We had a Pewter Pot and a Lums outside of Boston. I tasted sauerkraut for the first time at a Lums and hated it.

In New Jersey we went to Steak & Brew for a special treat.

The very last Pig Pen is still open in San Antonio.

Anyone remember The Ground Round? Or a crepe chain called Magic Pan? I also remember a soda fountain called Bailey’s in Boston, in the Prudential Center.

Did you ever eat at Itchy’s?

R237 here. It was actually called Brighams soda fountain,

I used to befriend homeless people in the Bailey's at Harvard Square

I've been to Casa Bonita R228. As a kid visiting relatives in Denver, I loved it! I thought it was the coolest thing ever to see those divers. Is it still around? I loved Burger Chef, Farrell's and Shakey's. They all had really good food as I can remember. But one place that's been around apparently forever, and which I only went to ONCE as an adult, in fact, last year, was CULVER'S. God, how does that horrid place stay in business? The time I went, the food tasted rancid and the interior of the restaurant was unbelievably depressing and smelled like vomit.

My roommate after college was a waiter at steak and ale. He used to crack us up with stories about how nasty the kitchen was all the time.

Prechewed Charlie's -- I mean Beefsteak Charlie's.

I miss Luby's.

R237. Magic Pan!!!!! I have been trying to remember the name since this thread popped up again. Thanks. The height of luxury!!! They had one at Lenox Square in Atlanta.

Fajita Round-up in Sedona AZ

L-K was in a lot of small Ohio towns. It was a Big Boy knockoff that also had motels--they were called Lawsons in bigger cities. When Consolidated Foods bought the Manners Big Boy franchise, they converted the Lawson restaurants to Big Boys and eventually sold off the L-Ks.

I went to Aunt Pittypat's once with a group--it was an awful experience, esp. given the Black stereotypical plantation waiters in supposedly "progressive" Atlanta. The Varsity is another vile detination--I liked the onion rings but have never had such heartburn. The cafeterias of the South--very popular with the blue hair set. Shoney's truly vile. Sambo's seems remembered for teh racist name more than for the typical coffee shop food.

Another shout out for Itchy’s off of Inrerstate 70 in MO.

R245 I think Magic Pan was moderately upscale. They had seafood Newburgh crepes, and chocolate filled for desert, and I remember a spinach salad with mandarin oranges and almonds. This was 1979 or thereabouts. They had one in Boston, on Newbury Street or Boylston.

^ yes. And the hostesses at Magic Pan were in those Swiss poofy dresses.

Oddly enough, I also lived in Medina, OH when I was young and the only restaurant I ever recall going to was The Red Barn.

After we moved to Grand Rapids, MI, we made fun of Russ' Restaurants where you had a telephone at your table to call in your order. This was so you didn't have to tip your waitress. That's how cheap Dutch people are.

I remember LK Restaurants had Pierre the Bear for us kids

Sambos

Do any of you remember eating in department stores? Lord & Taylor had a pink cafe and served quiches and salads. Near Boston, a Department store called Jordan Marsh sold giant blueberry muffins.

Was it vile, r254?

I just learned that they still sell Orange Julius. I thought that went away in the 1980’s.

Pretty much any restaurant in Northern Maryland or Pennsylvania. The whole area is total white trash.

[quote] I got my period at Lums

Luck you. I got someone else's. And it was cold.

Po' Folks Restaurant.

It was a vile as its name. Everything tasted the same - odd - and frankly it was embarrassing to go there.

Medina didn't have Turloff's--it was Marion. very different place. Medina is basically a suburb of Cleveland.

I LOVE these threads so much! Thanks for bringing back memories of The Magic Pan. I went to the one at Montgomery Mall in Maryland, and thought it was so classy.

There's a Magic Pan at Reagan National.

R158 Pittypat's Porch has managed to survive because they don't dress any of their servers like slaves, I ate there back during the Atlanta Olympics, the hostess was a very beautiful young black lady, she wasn't dressed like Mammy but instead Scarlett. I was young at the time, and I think I made her week, because I said she looked like Queen, from Alex Haley's Queen, who was played by Halle Berry. The restaurant wasn't great but I remember their fried chicken wasn't half bad.

R4 I love Morrison's or Picadilly for roast beef. I would never order meatloaf from any restaurant.

A poster mentioned The Heritage Cafeteria in Springfield, MO. My grandma used to take us when I was a child and we thought it was very fancy. Right before it closed my sister took my mom for old times sake. She said the food was vomit inducing.

Before Magic Pan, wasn't there another crepe restaurant in Boston, around Boylston? La Crepe or Creperie, something like that.

Also, what replaced the Hilltop Steak House?

R94 is evil

Deanies Seafood at the lake in NOLA.

R259 - thank you for mentioning Po'Folks. God it was awful. I remember trying to pull the hammered in pennies out of the log while we waited for a table.

Also - the Shakey's by us closed down and became a Horn and Horn Smorgasbord. We went once when Mom let Dad pick the restaurant for dinner. It was like eating at a food kitchen from a TV show. Mom never let Dad pick the restaurant for dinner again.

I grew up in Denver and the only time we ever went to Casa Bonita was when out-of-town vistors came. I loved the skimpy-bathing suited divers and one learned quickly to opt for the fried chicken instead of the Mexican dinner. It had a seating area under the waterfall designed to look like a mining tunnel that originally had creaking sound effects like the support timbers were under strain, but they had to take it out after guests freaked out.

I went to Casa Bonita with a group last Fall. It's kitschy, sure, but the legendarily bad food was pretty average mediocre, not the worst I'd ever eaten. We all had a fun time and that was the important thing.

For the people mentioning Po'Folks, is the restaurant Folk's that I have seen around Atlanta connected to them? A re-brand perhaps? Also, the interesting thing about Po'Folks is that they were going to be sued by Country Music Legend "Whispering" Bill Anderson because "Po'Folks" was/is his signature song, but he ended up settling with them for the franchise rights to certain states, and getting paid to be their tv commercial spokesman.

R273 - Looks like they are 2 separate chains. There are still PoFolks restaurants in Florida (because of course there are) and the Folk's logo is too sexy for PoFolks.

I've heard that song while riding in the car with Dad, but never knew that backstory - thank you for it, I'll share when I call to talk to him tomorrow.

R36 Are you thinking of the mug and muffin in Harvard Square? I don’t remember a pewter pot. I think there was a Friendly’s there also

Farrell's was a lot of fun for kids. Our 4H club went there for a reward and stuffed ourselves with ice cream. They closed a long time ago here in Minnesota.

r266, I remember one on Boylston Street in the early '70s. I think it was called La Crepe. I was visiting a friend at Emerson for a month and we ate there a lot. Also at Ken's, and another sandwich place on the Beacon Hill side of Emerson. Do you remember that place?

[quote]There's a Magic Pan at Reagan National.

Just say "National." Or "National Airport" if needed for clarity's sake.

White Castle has those awful greasy sliders. I've been to one exactly 2 times. Once many years ago and then about 10 years ago because i couldn't remember what I didn't like about them. They were disgusting.

No, sorry r277. I was visiting a friend at Simmons.

I don’t understand the appeal of White Castle. The “burgers” are steamed and thin, and taste like meatloaf. The buns actually taste better. I tried them once; that’s it.

Yes, Harvard Square once had a Pewter Pot, back in the late 60’s. There was also another place there, for generic German food, called Zum Zum’s, that didn’t last long. I only went there once, too.

Brigham’s in Boston was more known for ice cream, though I enjoyed their Raspberry Lime Rickeys, which they used to serve only in springtime, for some reason.

When I was a kid, we’d go to Ho Jo’s. I loved their hamburgers and milkshakes, and especially their brownies, packaged in cellophane and sold at the counter.

There was a mostly ice cream chain in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, called Isaly’s. I loved their ice cream; my grammar school class went on a field trip to see their factory. But their stores also had cafeteria-style food, which I thought looked pretty vile.

On a trip to Myrtle Beach. S.C., I saw a restaurant called Mammy’s Kitchen. I never went there. Myrtle Beach also had more buffet restaurants than any place I’ve ever seen. I guess they don’t call it the “Redneck Riviera” for nothing.

Itchy's

[quote]There was a mostly ice cream chain in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, called Isaly’s. I loved their ice cream; my grammar school class went on a field trip to see their factory.

Hmmm...people who remember Isaly's usually make fun of people who say "grammar school." When I moved to Pittsburgh, it's one of the words I got mocked for, like "soda" instead of "pop." Most Pittsburghers call it "elementary school," I believe. This is in the days before "junior high" was called "middle school," of course.

Anyway, r281, I used to go to the Isaly's on the Boulevard of the Allies, now part of UPMC. I never ate the "real food," just the ice cream. A few years later, I would discover Haagen-Dazs was much better.

I grew up in MD/DC/VA during the 70s. I still remember a Shakey’s. I loved how you could watch the pizza being made. Remember the place as being rather dark. And can still remember the distinctive crust which wasn’t bad. The family also ate at Rustler’s which had delicious baked potatoes; Chesapeake Bay Seafood House (actually pretty good with hush puppies and all you can eat boiled shrimp): Mr. Steak; and department store restaurants (which always felt fancy). The worse food I remember eating as a kid was a burger on the Mall on D.C. while Mom and I visited museums. It had to have been horse or dog meat.

Growing up in Chautauqua County New York, I remember a lot of great restaurants like Davey's which was famous for its beer battered fish. But my memory of the worst is The Captain's Table which served chicken so dry, it could have easily removed my newly formed permanent teeth. My family never forgot that experience and of course we never went back.

I can't believe Red Lobsters are still around. We went one time when I was young and even not being a seafood afficianado I could tell the food was crap. Even the vaunted biscuits were just not that good.

And yet, r287, I have two friends who swear by Red Lobster. One of them literally made those biscuits at home yesterday. You can buy a mix in a box.

I ate there once with one of them. I had had sufficient for the rest of time. They go there now when they need to gossip about me.

[quote]r21 Who remembers Sambo's?

Sambo's was about equivalent to a Denny's. In my town you would just go to whichever was closer, if that's the mood you were in. They both were open (comparatively) late ... till 11:00 pm or whatever.

The murals and menus had already been overhauled to show a pale pink child in place of the originally dark one, so it didn't have any racist connontations for me back then. But today I'd never eat anywhere named Sambo's ... just as I wouldn't greet a black person with, [italic]"Hey, Sambo!"

R285 - Chesapeake Bay Seafood house was awesome. The last one I remember closed around 2000 (late 90s) - it was by Potomac Mills.

Mom loved department store restaurants. Hechts, Woodies, Garfinkels, Bloomingdales - Fair Oaks and Tysons were her spots.

I had the fried chicken at Pittypats porch in Atlanta when I was there on business in the late 80’s. I had never before or since been so sick in my life. I was stuck in my hotel bathroom for 2 days before I was well enough to go to a local hospital ER. I missed my flight home and over a weeks work. I should have sued.

My town had a Scotch and Sirloin restaurant and not far away was a Beef and Bourbon...both overpriced steak houses. The baked potato's came in foil and the iceberg salad with green goddess. Poncho's Buffet was awful crap..red colored pasty gravy for chili sauce.

In the UK we had Wimpy. Some people preferred it to McD's or Burger King because - wait for it - you sat down at a table and had a burger, chips (fries). On a plate. With a knife and fork. Yes, really. Their burgers tasted shittier than McD's or BK according to my mother.

Also in the UK - and this is one I distinctly remember - from the 90s was Spud-U-Like. It, erm, it served baked potatoes. Yeah. Each baked tottie was cooked until the exterior had the surface and texture of leather, or Ivanka's pussy for the right-wing fucknuts. What made it terrifying was that as part of the Spud-U-Like experience, you got to choose what sort of topping you wanted shat onto the radioactively hot surface of your potato. Did you want chilli (which I remember was a salty freak of a dish) or did you want plain old butter or - OR - did you want to try something from the exotic east? Maybe...chicken tikka! Again, a hot salty mess. My college had a Spud-U-Like nearby and I remember one of the girls saying that it was both the greatest laxative on sale and the best prophylactic. If your date with that hot guy from IT or Sports Sciences asked to go to Spud-U-Like, you could guarantee you'd go home unsullied, my dears.

My grandma would force me to eat at Po Folks. I would cry and basically throw a big assed fit every time she would force me to go there.

R293 didn’t even read your long assed thread! Lmao!

Cher wrote in her autobiography that when she and Sonny went to London for the first time, they ate at Wimpy and the food was awful.

If Cher said it R296, take it as gospel. Never trust a restaurant that at one time served burgers with *peas* on the side.

R296 her auto bio must have been very boring to read if she put shit like that in there.

R294 From what I remember, as a child, Po'Folks wasn't any worse than Cracker Barrel is today.

R299 but all of those embarrassing names and signs in their restaurant. I couldn’t handle that kind of shit as a fragile teen.

As if Pittypat's Porch isn't cringe enough, Atlanta used to also have a restaurant called Aunt Fanny's Cabin, with a plantation/slave/pickaninny theme. Black kids wearing signboards would announce the menu.

One of the early posts in this thread is from someone who ate at Aunt Fanny's Cabin.

There is a rural restaurant in Missouri that is called Itchys. Do not eat there! They serve all of their food table side in cast iron buckets.

R300 Well, we are different, I love country kitsch. Actually, kitsch of any kind.

Houston has (had?) a place called "Dirty's"

DC has (had?) a place called "Houston's."

[quote]From what I remember, as a child, Po'Folks wasn't any worse than Cracker Barrel is today.

Cracker Barrel is a little nicer than Po Folks. Even better was a long-gone chain called The Blackeyed Pea. Similar southern comfort/soul food-type menus.

Not too many northern Calif. people here. Who remembers the Bumbleberry chain in the San Jose area? Or Pancake Circus in Sacramento? Vips? The Ground Cow? Nation's Giant Hamburgers? Manning's or Compton's cafeterias?

R307 I remember The Blackeyed Pea, it was much more expensive. And, tried to behave like it was upmarket, none of the down home folksiness.

Question: is Sizzler still around? I remember being dragged there in the 80s when my family were on holiday in Florida and being confused as fuck at the concept of "strawberry margarine"...

My grandmother complained about Horne's Restaurants.

Horne's, the department store in Pittsburgh, r311?

No, apparently it was a restaurant chain in the southeast. She and my grandfather would pass them on the way to Florida.

R313 It was kind of a Southern version of Howard Johnson's. Most locations featured a restaurant and adjoining motel. For a time they were owned by Greyhound Buslines. Apparently, there is still one restaurant location in Virginia.

Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. Gullivers. Victoria Station.

We have a Black-eyed Pea in Denver. My office has it cater our holiday lunch. Very solid, down-home style food. No complaints.

R281 Raspberry Lime Rickey, yes! So good.

Folks is the same as P'Folks. Anything HQed in Atlanta is usually horrible.

Farrell's is one of the odder success stories--the colros of the ice cream did not appear to be anything in nature and the cinsistency was more crusty than creamy. I remember trying the mint chocolate chip--my favorite of that era and it just seemed weird.

A lot of these places---Red Lobster, for example, were better a long time ago--it's not just people getting older and thinking childhood favorites are now inedible. Francise/chain restaurants are a common target for vulture capital firms--the franchises, in particular, need little capital and to pay off the debt thay load on with purchase, they usually gut the service and product quality. Some of these chains have been bought & sold numerous times. Same things happens with retail--mature businesses are simply gutted by people who have no interest in investing in them. The cahsflow generated by restaurants or retail enables them to stay afloat even as they are losing oxygen.

R318 But, I love CocaCola and Delta, and they are what put Atlanta on the map business wise.

We had a restaurant named Nick’s Pewter Plate; everyone called it “Nick’s Putrid Plate “.

Lambert's Cafe, where the servers lob the dinner rolls at you like softballs

There was a steakhouse called Pardners that you walked through a rustic wooden cattle chute / hallway up to the counter and ordered, took a number, and they brought out your steak and baked potato or whatever. I think maybe they had a salad bar. It was fun as a kid. Closed a couple of decades ago, I think, or became a Ponderosa.

Drummer Boy Chicken. We never ate there, even though my sister worked there. Hmm.

When I moved to DC (1978), I used to see TV commercials for this place all the time. Never went there, though.

The guy that started Black Eyed Pea was a client of mine. He made millions when he sold the chain and immediately started a new chain, Good Eats, which was a carbon copy of BEP. Unfortunately for him, the fickle restaurant market changed dramatically and most diner-like places like it eventually closed.

R225, you are correct. I heard that there was plastic or petroleum by-products in the McD's shakes, but didn't believe it until I bought one, didn't finish it, and threw the cup onto the floor of my passenger seat (look, I was a teenager). When I went to clean out my car a few weeks later, it was not rotten, it was not spoiled, it did not smell. The remnants were exactly the same as when I had purchased it. That was the last time I have ever even considered one of those things.

Worst restaurant was a buffet called Bonanza that we had scattered throughout the region. My parents hated taking us there, but on long road trips we'd sometimes stop there and load up. They had all-you-can-drink pop and all-you-can-eat soft ice cream, which my brother and I took advantage of. The food was nasty, just inedible, and Dad (who loves to cook) gritted his teeth having to stop in there and attempt to eat whatever germ-ridden, lukewarm buffet fare they served. One time we were there, my father witnessed a fat slob filling up a cup with soft ice cream, and then heading into the men's room. That was the last straw for Dad, and absolutely the last time he would ever take us there.

I may have gone to a wedding at the Peter Pan Inn, r324. My cousin got married somewhere in Urbana MD in the late '60s. I think that's where it was. There were peacocks.

Pancho's queso was neon orange, and the refried beans could be used to pour foundations or sidewalks. On the plus side, they gave free sombreros to kids.

Pitt Grill was a diner chain that was like Waffle House, only greasier.

OMG, the Jolly Troll at r81. There was one in the Chicago suburbs off the Kennedy that we loved when I was a kid. Mechanical trolls and big bowls of canned peaches! What wasn't to love?

This thread has it all: horror, fascination, and hilarity! Kudos!

Anyone interested in starting a companion thread on delightful restaurants of our youth?

OMG! R12 and I are from the same hometown!

Sizzler. Lol. "I'll have the #5 Cowboy Special with mashed potatoes and green beans".

"Right away. And pleas help yourself to the all you can eat salad bar"

Sizzler. When I was a kid I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and I wasn't supposed to chew for a few days. When that was over my parents took me to Sizzler to celebrate, and on the way home my mouth started bleeding like crazy. Next day the dentist said that the meat tenderizer they soaked the steaks in at Sizzler probably dissolved my stitches.

That said, if you ate all your fries and the piece of Texas toast and then sent the steak back for being too rare it would come back with a brand new piece of toast and another whole side of fries!

Lums. The food wasn't all that bad, but the smell of those hotdogs cooking in the warm beer almost made me nauseous just walking in to the place. I seriously think it's why I've never liked beer.

My folks forced me to eat at Lums. I cried like a baby every time because I thought they put human lungs in their food.

Any restaurant where the menu has as many pages as Tolstoy novel. There were two here in Berkeley. Spenger's Grotto in Ocean View which was a complete tourist trap. Not a single bit of seafood was fresh. You were better off eating clams from a gas station vending machine in Arizona. Whenever I had out of town visitors they always asked about Spengers. I told them they would regret ever eating there. It's finally closed after decades of being in business. No locals ate there more than once. I guess the same is true of the out of towners but Spengers must have had a great p.r. team to lure in visitors. And it was very pricey for such a crappy place.

Another Tolstoy sized menu could be found at this Italian place on Shattuck. They even boasted about how many items were on their menu. Can't remember the name (Scarantinos?) It also recently shut down after decades in business. I think all the cooking consisted of opening cans and defrosting freezer burned food bricks from the deep freeze. The restaurant was very dark, probably so you couldn't see how dirty it was. A lot of red so you wouldn't see the tomato sauce stains. (Which you could actually still see).

I think well drinks were fairly cheap and that's what kept the restaurant open for so long. But people still ate there. Imagine the worst frozen lasagna you've ever had, and this place would have a nastier version. The garlic bread was greasy and cold. A friend of mine recommended it, but I think he only went there once as a little kid and it might have seemed fancy to him back then. Literally any whole in the wall pizza place in town would be much better than this. When a place this bad stays open for so long, you have to wonder if it's a money laundering front.

I seldom went out when I was a kid but once I was taken to O'Henry's...I think it was the first McDonald's.

STOP TYPING!!! R258 wins the thread!

Sizzler

^ agree. Best DL laugh I've had in months.

Did you ever eat at Assy’s? I know you like to eat there.

R319: Coca Cola and its corn syrup--yuck. Delta--the absolute worst of the legacy carriers and their ground people in Atlanta are total idiots.

Only those DL sleuths that are so good identifying songs from a few la la la's can help here:

Does anyone remember in northern cal a restaurant that was names after something like a match stick? Like, the red match? Or something. Colors were a burnt orange and dark brown. Theme of fire/ warmth/ etc. At hostess stand they had a big bowl of oversized signature "cool" matchbooks. IIRC Center of each table had some kind of funky mini fire (more than just a candle).

Pancho’s Mexican Restaurants

Not vile, but missed from the Atlanta of my youth: Valle's.

Valle's was a New England institution--Atlanta would have been latecoing expansion. A step up from Ponderosa, but not exactly Mortons.

The Tee Pee Restaurant.

Something about the current climate tells me it's just as well that it got torn down some years ago.

The first fast food restaurant in my small town was Burger Queen, and it was ghastly. The ‘secret sauce’ slopped the burgers was tarter sauce.

Just as well that it's been torn down, no?

Assys

Sir George's Smorgasbord was a ghastly West/Southwest chain. It was super-cheap and tasted worse. We had a few fairly authentic Swedish smorgasbords in SoCal at the time (60s/70s) that were among my favorite childhood restaurants, but Sir G's was more like a "worst of" edit of Golden Corral or Old Country Buffet.

I'm surprised by some of the responses. Farrell's, Magic Pan and Velvet Turtle weren't vile at all. Farrell's used cheapo ice cream, but the experience was fun and as mentioned previously, are in comeback mode. Of my childhood restaurant chains, the only ones I really miss are Magic Pan and Hamburger Hamlet.

I do remember lots of really terrible suburban "Chinese" restaurants that served corn starch and MSG glop with no Asian vegetables, tough and stringy ribs, surprisingly delicious egg rolls, and (according to my parents) super-strong cocktails to detract from the overall awfulness of the food. But even 50 years ago there were a few good Cantonese and Mandarin restaurants in SoCal and it was the one cuisine that my parents would drive out of their way for us to enjoy.

To those above asking, Harvard Square definitely had a Pewter Pot Muffin Shoppe in the late 1960s that was part of a small Boston chain. There was another one on Boylston Street across from the Prudential Center and couple of others as well.

The muffins and coffee were great. I only have good memories!

Loved Bonanza and Sizzler as a kid.

Pancho’s was disgusting and we never went back. Furr’s Cafeteria was also pretty awful.

r343 Can you narrow it down to a specific city and type of cuisine?

Any old-time San Franciscans remember Zim's?

R354. Around the Bay Area burbs. It is a very old memory from when we visited cousins there. It was a dinner place. Prob a little nicer and not "vile" but still just plain american food. Burgers. Steaks. Etc. I hate it when I can't remember things like this

^ something like the Matchstick. Or like that

Yeah I remember Zim's . Bad cafeteria food. They were usually open 24 hours so if you wanted to eat after the bars closed it was one of the few choices.

Anyone remember a small south eastern chain that seemed to stress their various teriyaki?

So bad it became known as terrible yucky for tourists.

Po Folks. God, there’s still one left in Panama City, Florida.

r357 Stickney's?

The Ground Round. The highlight of going there in the 1970's was the guy walking around the restaurant twisting balloons into animals and giving them to kids-like me.

Maurices Piggy Park in Columbia, SC. They've done an about face in the last 15 years now that the founders dead but before that you could still walk in the door in the early 2000's and find a table filled with KKK/White Supremacy literature.

New York was not immune: who remembers Brew Burger?

Ever see that South Park episode about Cartman wanting so badly to go to a theme restaurant called Casa Bonita? Well it’s real, or it was in the late 80s/early 90s when I was a kid.

I went a few times, the real highlight of my two visits being getting flashed by a pervert in the men’s room and the 400 pound mother of my best friend (whose birthday it was) shrieking blue murder and chasing the guy down and slapping him. Ah, Mrs. Gibb.

The divers were pretty hot. But it was the corniest place you ever saw, with terrible, terrible food.

R363 The interesting thing, to me, the one time I went there, was that the place was packed, but it was almost all black people. After seeing the "literature" and reading about the owner's racism, I couldn't figure out why so many black people ate there. The food made me sick, btw. And, even though I am a native South Carolinian, I HATE mustard based BBQ.

Bickfords-A pancake house. I loved their huge apple pancake. But anyone that remembers it says the food was awful.

Any Chicago area folks remember Prince Castle? The cheapo White Castle knockoff?

They did have great milkshakes.

White Castle should only be eaten when you're stoned.

Wasn't Bickford's a Boston chain? Or maybe all over New England?

Old-fashioned institutional cafeteria-like decor with aged waiters and waitresses in the 1960s-70s? But like r367, I remember it as a really great cheap place for a big weekend breakfast.

R370 the Bickfords off the Braintree exist on Rte 3 was the place to go after a night of drinking in Boston, and it was disgusting. I was going there in the 2000s, pretty sure they're all closed now.

The Bickford's my parents took me to as a kid in the 1970's was in Westchester Cty , NY.

Not quite qualified for a vile list, but I hated Division 16, or whatever number it was, in Boston.

I lived there for two years in the Greenhouse on Huntington, across from the Xtian Science Center reflecting pool. There were great little places in Back Bay, and Beacon Hill for sure. Anyone remember Another Season in Beacon Hill? My favorite was a Thai place in Back Bay. Can't remember the name and I went there weekly.

As for Division whatever I never understood why everyone wanted to go to an expensive burger joint.

Division 16 had a decent brunch that we enjoyed when we were in school, but our taste was sim0lerthen.

Another Season was a really fun restaurant and also catered some parties I attended. I still have a cookbook written by the owner, whose name was Odette I think.

Do you remember L’Espalier? They had a take out shop on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley I think. So good.

That’s meant to spell “our tastes were simpler” above.

You can search some historical menus on the NYPL website; here's Howard Johnson's:

R365, Casa Bonita has been discussed several times in the thread already.

Right next to my high school was a A frame shack called Pup-N-Taco. Hot dogs and tacos were two for a dollar (mix or match). The hot dogs were fuchsia and left red coloring stains on the bun. The tacos were dripping in grease with one teaspoon of canned dog food folded inside. Salsa was pure liquid from packets. Hated it but ate it every other day.

we ate at the b&m cafe. we called it the "bm cafe" because their food always tasted like shit.

And therefore, r377?

And, therefore R380, it's silly to post as if you were telling us something we didn't already know.

Does anyone else remember the terrible, overpriced fondue chain? There were still a few just a decade back I think. You’d get chunks of meat and veg to dip in cheese, as though that was the height of glamorous sophistication.

The Melting Pot chain is still around, R382.

Any Indiana eldergays remember "Chili Bill's" on the westside(?) of Indianapolis? My husband had fond memories of going to that greasy spoon after hitting the bars when he lived and worked in Indianapolis.

The name "Jolly Cholly" just popped into my head so I googled it. Not a chain but a hamburger stand in SE Mass. We regularly drove to RI when I was little so this must have been the highlight for me.

hot and a lot was the name of a place near pittsburg pa. we didnt eat there but I was intrigued by the name.

while eating at an area boston market i found a used tampon on the floor under the table.

That's definitely vile, r387. I once found a roach crawling up the wall of the men's room in an upscale Mexican restaurant in Pittsburgh, PA. I had not seen that before, though I had been to a couple of the Brew Burgers mentioned above, which were all over Manhattan in the 1970s. Their bathrooms smelled.