Did Stores Really Have Restaurants In The Olden Days?

My 46 year old mother told me with vivid recollection how my grandfather would punish her aunt and I by making them eat with him at the Kmart Cafe. This would have been in the mid-to-late 80s.

When did DL become a day care center?

That should have been “my aunt and she”.

They still do, dear - even in flyovers... just not for the poor. Run along now.

Kmart and Woolworth had food cafes (like the type you see in Costco). Sears and Pennys? I don't think so.

Kmarts definitely used to have a cafeteria-type thing in the back of the store in the '60s and '70s. Along with a deli/sandwich place in the front.

I don't recall ever seeing a restaurant in a JCPenney store or a Sears (although the latter used to have a candy counter.) I think Montgomery Ward may have had a snack bar or a cafeteria. And variety/five-and-dime stores (like Woolworth) nearly always had lunch counters.

There were no Venture or Zayre stores in my area so I can't comment on them.

Major department stores usually had restaurants, even in their suburban branches. And of course some (like Nordstrom) still do.

Nordstrom had the best tuna salad sandwich ever.... but they changed it.

Yaaas. My G Ma used to take me to JC Penney’s for lunch. We always got the Turkey Clubs. Bambergers also had a restaurant. I really liked the French Onion soup there. Kmart also had a restaurant but we wouldn’t lower ourselves to eat there. Just shop.

Woolworths had a counter with red stools.

......

KMart in the Bronx had a Little Caesar's Restaurant until a year ago that I know of--that's the last time I went there.

In my area, Penny's and Sears did not but the nicer departments stores did.

I havent been there in years, but Neiman Marcus served the best popovers with strawberry butter.

Where I grew up, Sears and Montgomery Ward had restaurants, like the kind you'd find at IKEA. Bullocks and May Co had tea rooms.

Woolworths had decent food in the 60s and 70s. It was as good as any diner. They had really good soup and basic food like grilled cheese, patty melts, etc.

KMart's food was crap. As others have said, it was kind of like what Costco has. More hot dogs, sandwiches, gross salads. I remember eating one of their salads and the bacon bits tasted like plastic. When Kmart first opened in the East Village, they had a restaurant on the second floor. They got rid of it in the late 90s.

Sears used to sell gas, so who knows. Maybe at one point, they did.

Macy's in NYC for awhile had a "to die for" soda fountain. They dropped a dollop of real cream in the bottom of their milkshakes. Then "they" took over and Macy's quit running restaurants and just leased the space out to McDonalds and other chain restaurants which serve crap food. Frankly, the only people that eat in Macys now are those who are too lazy to go find better food.

The local Lazarus had a wonderful little cafe until Macy's bought it. Now the store looks like an Indian bazaar.

In Florida, most Targets have a Starbucks. So this custom has not entirely died out. It is just that instead of the food being in the back of the store, it is now in the front.

R3 Wrong again.

Didn't they teach in high school about the black boycott of the Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C and other lunch counters through out the south? Or were you staring at the football jock in history class wishing you could suck his cock.

The K-Martk where I worked during high school, had a cafeteria until the store closed in the mid 80s; Horrible bland old people food. The K-Mart also had a deli counter with an ICEE fountain.

Our local Zayre's had a small grill and cooked breakfasts, burgers and hot dogs I don't remember any other meals though. It was a small nook next to the electronics department. The prices were really cheap and it seemed like more of a loss leader than an actual viable business.

Finally, the local Woolworth had a small cafeteria, too - but I never ate there, but one of Woolworth's lunch counters was the setting for for an important civil rights sit-in. The Woolworths lunch counter in Greenville, NC was a whites only lunch counter and four black college students sat at the counter. This led to the eventual desecration of Woolworth's lunch counters throughout the country.

desecration = desegregation, damned autocorrect.

They don't teach much history in most US high schools anymore. Very scary.

I worked at a JC Penny store that had a small restaurant. This was a part time job while in college in the 70's. As I recall almost all of the stores had some kind of cafe or restaurant. The higher end stores tended to have a little fancier restaurants. Kmart and Target mostly burgers & other fast food.

These days every Target seems to be different. Some still have the regular Target snack bar (sometimes branded "Food Avenue"), and/or a Starbucks, but other ones have franchises, like Which Wich, or Pizza Hut.

Some Wal-Mart in the 80s and 90s stores had cafeterias like the K-Mart ones.

Macy's in NYC has a very nice Italian restaurant on the 6th floor.

R20, Greensboro, not Greenville. Someone in another thread posted a photo of a Woolworth's lunch counter and I posted that they were nice but black people couldn't eat there. I was accused of making racist comments by people who obviously had no idea what I was referring to.

Both of the Hudson-Belk's in Raleigh - the old downtown one on Fayetteville Street and the one at Crabtree Valley Mall - had a cafeteria called the Capital Room. We went to the Crabtree one because back in those days, no one really went downtown after 5PM. As far a cafeterias go, it always felt a little more upscale, with offerings of prime rib and roast beef - and the décor of the seating area looked a little more like a traditional restaurant. At the end of the cafeteria line, they had a man who would ask how many were in your party and direct you to an appropriate open table. Along one wall they had larger tables for parties of 6 or more. These tables felt especially fancy because they were each in their own semi-private "room" that was enclosed on three sides, with the fourth side open to the rest of the dining. Hudson-Belk's is now just Belk (they dropped the Hudson and dropped the 's) and there hasn't been a cafeteria there in ages. After one of the renovations, they had a small sandwich café but they don't even have that anymore.

Growing up in Florida in the late 70s/early 80s, my mom and I would often treat ourselves during the week and go out for dinner and a movie, because my dad worked nights. She would come home from work and pick me up and we'd go to the Hollywood Fashion Center mall and eat at the restaurant in Burdines department store, which was really fancy (or it seemed so to a little kid), and then we'd drive across the highway to the Plaza Twin to see a movie. On Tuesday nights we'd go to the Sears Hollywood Mall (which was the one Adam Walsh disappeared from, and I remember it happening because before that, my mom used to just drop me off in Sears toy department while she shopped. After Adam disappeared from that very same toy department, I wasn't allowed to be alone until I got a little older.). We would eat at the Wooworth's or Walgreens diner they had in the front right section of the store. They had waitress service and booths, as well as a counter, but it was just grill food, but I loved it.) And then we would drive across the highway to the Florida Twin theater and see whatever was there because Tuesday's were $1 day.

I used to love those outings with my mom. Burdines' restaurant made me feel like a grown up.

I used to love going to the downtown Lazarus department store in Columbus Ohio when I was a kid, because we'd always end the shopping trip at the Lazarus restaurant. And they had this hot-fudge-ice-cream-cake for dessert that was a real treat.

I had completely forgotten about K-mart having a lunch counter. As someone up-thread mentioned, it was nothing fancy: hot dogs, hamburgers and basic sandwiches, and there was definitely a prominent ICEE machine. Instead of traditional barstools, ours had bucket seat in K-mart blue.

In the old days, Carson's, Marshall Fields and Lord and Taylor had nice restaurants...those days are over.

Pharmacies also used to have ice-cream counters.

The K-Mart Cafe in the East Village K-Mart was AWESOME! The food was meh, but they put it in the huge space on the second floor with floor to ceiling windows that looked out on Astor Place. The view was gorgeous, the tables were very spread out and the seating area was so large that you could hang there uninterrupted for as long as you wanted. When I was going to film school at NYU, I used to have my crew meetings there because it was larger than my apartment.

My friend and I would love to go when he visited from LA because of all the characters there. The woman who ran the cafe was a middle aged black lady with a really hight voice. We used to call her and the staff (behind their backs) Shirley & Company because she sounded just like the lead singer of the song Shame, Shame, Shame.

Then there was an old Hispanic woman who, no matter when we went there, was always at a table with a cup of coffee, falling asleep sitting up, her head snapping back and a snore-snort emitting from her before she'd wake up for a few seconds and then repeat. I don't think she was homeless (she didn't look it), and we used to call her Narcoleptic Lady (or Narco for short).

The K-Mart/K-Cafe was only three blocks from my apartment and I used to shop there for all my sundries, so I was there a lot. My friend and I both were devastated when the K-Cafe closed a few years later.

In Minnesota, WT Grants, Dayton’s, Donaldson’s were very popular department store restaurants back in the 70s. Good food too. Not the fast food crap they serve today.

r34, that store is currently under renovation. I don't know what they're going to do with the second floor because currently it's not accessible. But a Target is moving in up on 14th Street, so KMart knows it needs to up its game.

Tootsie fruit???

Anybody here from St. Louis remember Pope's Cafeterias and their other operation, Seven Kitchens? Seven Kitchens only operated in a couple of malls. Up front, was the snack kitchen, where you could get hot dogs, popcorn and other stuff. Arranged in an L shape around the back perimeter were 6 small kitchens, each kitchen of which featured a separate cuisine, i.e. Italian, Mexican, American, Chinese. etc. There was a common seating area for all the kitchens in front. Kind of like a precursor to the food court.

Some JC Penny's stores definitely had restaurants. I remember eating at one in Ohio every so often in the early 80's and getting tuna salad on a pita. It was the first place I'd ever encountered pita bread.

I miss Zayre

The Macy's in Brooklyn (Fulton Street) used to be an A&S (Abraham & Strauss) store up until the early 80's. My family was middle class and it was considered a pretty fancy store when I was growing up in the 60-70's - my mother liked to go in, but it was an extravagance to buy items there. They had a restaurant on the 6th floor and I finally ate there when I got my first job. The menu wasn't fancy, but I had onion soup for the first time and loved it. The only other thing I remember ordering there is a BLT club sandwich.

Eaton's (Canadian department store, 1869-1999) had wonderful restaurants in most of its downtown stores.

The most famous was on the 9th floor of the Montreal store. It was the subject of a National Film Board documentary "Les Dames du 9e" (The Ladies of the Ninth). In the documentary, there were interviews with people who had birthday dinners at Eaton's as children. A generation later, they took their own children there for birthday dinners, and found that many of the same people were still working there! Hard to imagine that happening now.

Yes, Montreal has declined a lot since then.

[quote]These days every Target seems to be different.

I worked at a Target in high school and college back when they had less than 100 stores (yes, I'm an eldergay). We had a snack bar with the usual hot dogs and sodas, but there was also a doughnut machine that made deep fried cake doughnuts that got dipped in icing and sprinkles.

What is this "Penny's" store? I've heard of JC Penney's, but never "Penny's."

Liberty House in Honolulu was the place to be for luncheon.

The only applicable store for me was Woolworth's, and yes, it had a lunch counter. But my mother and grandmother and I preferred the tea rooms, Clara Louise or the Geier Girls'. I was fascinated in particular with the glasses filled with water and crushed ice.

R42 . Thanks for the memory. I loved to eat my lunch on the top floor of the Eaton's store in Vancouver. It had a great view and was right beside the old court house, later the Vancouver Art Gallery. While going to university I worked part-time at the Eaton's in Winnipeg and ate there often - my favourite was their chocolate cream pie - a real treat. Another Winnipeg memory is my dad bringing home sliced roast beef and gravy from the Woolworth's.

R47 = Truman Capote

I grew up in Washington, D.C., which had NICE department stores for NICE ladies, with NICE places to eat. The waitresses with their uniforms....I can see them now.

Customers were treated well in those days. They weren't "clients," or whatever the fuck they call them now.

The Alexander's on Queens Blvd. in New York had a coffee shop. I used to go there after high school sometimes. I loved their chicken croquettes. The whole chain went out of business in the early 90s.

I grew up in Washington too. Woodies and the old Hecht's had wonderful restaurants. Lansburgh's had a huge counter for service and also a mezzanine restaurant where you could look out over the shoppers. Of course all of these restaurants were hard fought for by Black Washingtonians who ere denied service. So, while I have fond memories they are never far from what the generation before me had to do for me to have a fudge sundae in Woodies restaurant with my mother. Memories are nonetheless memories.

[quote]While going to university I worked part-time at the Eaton's in Winnipeg and ate there often

Hi R48. In Calgary, our Eaton's was a much smaller store, but its restaurant always seemed like something special. During my teens, I had a favorite Eaton's meal - fish and chips with apple pie for dessert. Maybe I'm romanticizing, but I still think they were the best fish and chips ever.

As an adult, I often went to Eaton's after work on Friday for the roast beef dinner. It was just like home cooking and the portions were huge - all for about $5, I think.

Damn, I miss Eaton's!

Both Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue in Houston still have upscale restaurants inside their stores.

As a little kid, H. L. Green and S. S. Kresge had decent food, as I recall. A lunch counter and tables or booths. W. T. Grant and McCrory's didn't have any.

Sears sold popcorn and maybe candy. No food at JCPenney.

Does anyone remember the name of the restaurant in Maison Blanche in New Orleans?

Lord & Taylor had The Bird Cage tea room (in my childhood there were real birds in cages; somebody must have figured out what a health hazard that was--my childhood was a very long time ago btw); B. Altman (gone now) had Charleston Gardens. Bloomies in its heyday had Quarante Carrotes; Saks had some kind of restaurant. In DC, Woodies had a really nice restaurant, as did Garfinckels.

I am glad I mainly grew up in Chicago...as far as I know all lunch counters and restrooms were integrated...I did not have to put up with a lot of prejudice on the Northside, I know thevSouthside was different. Back then, the Northside was a pretty great place to live. Woolworths counter, great hotdogs.

R41, that A&S had a couple of cruisy men's rooms, too...

Phipp's is a great big bunch of gyps.

This is for R16 and R30

Lazarus downtown had several different kinds of restaurants.

They did.

And it wasn’t THAT long ago that my boss used to take me to lunch at Henri Bendel and pump me for information about the other VPs. Okay, that was about 20 years ago. We had quiche and salad.

R16 Yes! The best buffet I've had was also the smallest, and in an odd place: the cafe in a Lazarus department store. Very small selection but each item was the finest quality.

There was one soup (broccoli-mushroom chowder), one hot entree, one hot dessert (always bread pudding with whiskey sauce), a small choice of green salad ingredients, their fabulous chicken salad, sometimes a delicious salade de boeuf, assorted sliced meats. It is missed.

There used to be a full service restaurant on the top of Macy’s in the Burlington, MA mall. It seemed out of place, even years ago. I don’t know if Macy’s owned it, or if the Mall did. I don’t know if it’s still there, or not. I used to see the Christmas Moose there all the time.

Sure, larger Sears stores had a restaurant, don't remember much about them since my Mom refused to spend money on any food while shopping.

When I moved to Atlanta, Davidson's, one the big department stores downtown, had a nice restaurant. It was on the mezzanine level. You had to take escalators that went under the crystal chandeliers in the very high-ceilinged perfume/cosmetics area to get there.

Later, it became a Macy's. Now, it is some tech startup.

[quote]Lazarus downtown had several different kinds of restaurants.

Flagship stores were often full of restaurants. The Dayton's (later Marshall Field and eventually Macy's) had a casual dining lunch spot, a food court style fast food section and a giant takeout deli in the basement, an old school ladies who lunch style restaurant called the Oak Room with linen tablecloths and chandeliers on one of the upper floors, and a giant cafeteria/buffet on the top floor called the Sky Room. Now it's the grocery stores that have restaurants - and in some places even cocktail lounges.

The Walnut Room

Go to the UK and eat at Debenhams!

r59, does this brink back memories?

*bring

The JCPenney, Sears, and Strouss (now Macy's), as well as Woolworth at our local malls all had restaurants. It was mainly basic family style stuff - think Perkins. I used to love getting the turkey with stuffing and gravy & mashed potatoes. KMart had a restaurant too - i loved their cheeseburgers. They also had a deli counter towards the front that also sold ice cream, and an arcade in the back.

Even Ralph's Supermarkets had lunch counters into the late 70's . They were usual dirty though.

Grew up in the 60s. Cities like Hackensack, Paterson, and Trenton were shopping areas before malls. As R72 says, the five and ten cent stores - Woolworth’s, Grants had both dining counters where meals were served as well as a lunch counter for hot dogs and hamburgers and grilled sandwiches. We had two large department stores in town - Quackenbush and Meyer Brothers that also had very nice dining rooms as well as counters. I remember having lunch and ice cream sodas there with my mother and aunts.

One of the department stores in the mall where I grew up had a tea room. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, but it's probably a Dillard's or a Macy's by now.

There was also a smallish department store that hung on into the 90s in a strip mall that had once been upscale but had gotten REALLY rundown by the time I was in high school that had one as well.

For the ladies who lunch in Philly, the Crystal Tea Room at Wanamaker's was THE place to see and be seen.

The place is spectacular and though Wanamaker's is long gone, the Crystal Tea Room is still there, a highly regarded events venue.

1943 menu from the Bullock's-Wilshire Tea Room.

I have a Macy’s which still has a restaurant.

Jacobson’s had a restaurant.

I have an area Neiman Marcus which has a restaurant.

My nearest Sears had a restaurant in the late-1970s. It was a cafeteria style.

Kmart had those.

Woolworth had one.

A lot of independent pharmacies had nice soda fountains, and occasionally a luncheonette or tea room as well.

Macy's Union Square San Francisco has a bunch of restaurants inside, here and now.

There's at least one full-service restaurant, a food court in the basement, and a couple of Starbucks' and snack counters scattered through the store.

Macy's Herald Square definitely still has a restaurant.

No, but it made me hungry

Yes, and I used to eat there for lunch with coworkers, but a small group of ladies preferred to have lunch down at the Y.

[quote]In the old days, Carson's, Marshall Fields and Lord and Taylor had nice restaurants...those days are over. And so are the stores.

You're obviously a Chicagoan around the same age as I am.

Yes, the nicer city department stores had nice sit down restaurants as did the suburban mall branches when shopping was a half day or all day event. The five and dime lunch counters mostly catered to the area shop and office workers.

I don't remember many in the early big box stores having food though since the whole point was to run your errand and go home rather than make an event or a day of it.

I guess I'm old though because I do see coffee shops/cafes in grocery stores and fast food stuff in places like Walmart or Target but I just get the appeal. I don't really consider them restaurants. I'm there to buy groceries or run whatever errand, not for fast food.

I don't get it..

I used to go to one of Frederick & Nelson's restaurants every Tuesday in downtown Seattle for the Split Pea Soup.

So did the bigger nicer drug stores. Williams Drugs in Houston, they had ev thing, and a fine lil restaurant on one side. best burgers n fries in town. many fab memories there with granny after we shopped all day. Twas there at lunch I heard bout JFK bein murdered. Burned into my brain.

Downtown department stores usually had a tea room, a fast service restaurant (soup & sandwich) and perhaps a soda fountain in the basement. Suburban branches often had a tea room restaurant, but these disappeared over time. Woolworth and Kresge stores usually had a luncheonette--later Woolworths had full service reataurants. . Grants usually had them in downtown locations. JC Penney had coffee shops in the stores they built during the 60s but not in later stores.

KMart sold cheap, smelly hoagies and stale popcorn--those are smells that people instantly associate with KMart. They also had cafes that were a bit like Kresge luncheonettes.

The nice restaurants in department stores may be gone (although L&T still has one, I think), but you can get a glass of wine or a beer at many supermarkets and at Whole Foods. Why anyone would want to is a different story....

In 1973 when I was ten my mother and grandmother and I took a long summer trip through Texas, visiting relatives. In Mc Allen, and the US/Mexico border, we were taken to the local upscale department store (I forget what it was called), to the restaurant on the mezzanine. It was definitely for the Ladies Who Lunch crowd, and I was expected to behave my best.

Another Lazarus Mall visitor here.

I remember going for new school clothes in grade school with my mother and sister. We thought it would be so fancy to eat at the mall restaurant, that had a view of the lower walkways.

The staff was a bit stuffy, and the food was mediocre; soggy salad, greasy sandwiches. Mom joked, "I could make a better meal in my sleep. I think I have!"

We laughed and undertipped.

Macy's used to have a branch of P.J. Clarke's in the basement. Nice for getting drunk after shopping.

R84 I don't get it either. Wal-Mart's near me have a fast food chain inside, McDonald's or Subway. Since many people go there to buy groceries it seems like it would be best to keep them hungry. Although the people in Wal-Mart don't look like they're ever hungry.

I used to work at a welfare office in Las Vegas in the 80s.

Eating at the K-Mart grill was something that got rid of sluggish intestines...

This is a thread by our resident retard, r2. He spams the boards with stupid threads and they usually go ignored. Now it seems he's sockpuppeting to keep them going. Hooray.

[quote] I had completely forgotten about K-mart having a lunch counter.

How? How is that possible? We have threads about department stores and their lunch counters at least every 90 days.

I remember as a kid my aunt taking us to eat at KMart in the mall

One summer when I was in college, I worked at a lunch counter in, I think it was a K-Mart. I was a spectacularly inept employee. I remember opening a carton of individual jam/jellies and I sliced through the top layer. I couldn't tell the difference between chicken salad and tuna salad in the sandwich bar so I'd regularly make the wrong sandwich. There was something wrong with the Coke dispenser so it didn't mix the syrup/soda water correctly and one time a man in a suit ordered a Coke and I warned him it wouldn't taste good and he took out a small notebook and asked me how long it hadn't been working. Turns out he was a regional manager and later the long-suffering older woman who'd been working behind the counter for years scolded me for that, I didn't realise until then that she was my boss. Like I said, inept and STUPID.

One thing, all the food we served was pre-made and frozen. Maybe it was better quality ingredients back then but it was never fresh.

For heaven's sake, Kresge's had a lunch counter with cooked food. Woolworth's did as well, and these were 5 and dime stores. Sear's had a lunch counter, but the food was basic. In the city, the department stores had lovely restaurants with table clothes, china, nice food and all that. This is going back to the late 1960's and to mid 1970's.

You may not get the appeal of a cafe in a Whole Foods or a Starbucks inside of a Target, but trust me if you'd ever have to travel through flyover land for any length of time, you'd be eternally grateful for them.

Growing up in Baltimore, department store restaurants were de rigeur. Hutzler's downtown had their famed tea room although we always ate in the basement spot (first place I ever had chow mein, quite the exotic Asian delicacy then) and the suburban stores had nice places (the Valley View Room in Towson). Only ate at Stewart's on York Rd. and loved their vegetable soup. My mother would take me there after school for a bowl since it was the only way she knew to get vegetables into me. Don't remember if Hochschild-Kohn had a restaurant. Hecht's had nice ones.

The Rendezvous Restaurant was on the first floor of the Canal Street Maison Blanche in New Orleans.

Today the building is the Ritz Carlton New Orleans.

The larger Woolworth's, at least the ones in malls here in the Northeast, had Harvest House Cafeterias attached to them.

Woolworth's in Cherry Hill Mall (NJ) had a big lunch counter right in the middle of the mall.

[quote] How? How is that possible? We have threads about department stores and their lunch counters at least every 90 days.

Any links to these ubiquitous, quarterly threads about department store lunch counters?

We shopped at the Bamberger's on Market St. in Newark and supped at the Garden State Tea Room. White gloves for the women, please! Best behavior for the kiddies. Their Welsh Rarebit was a favorite. However, when we couldn't quite fit into that Miss Petite dress, we'd have the Slim Plate of cottage cheese, pineapple, lettuce, sliced tomato, and carrot curls.

When I was a kid, my favorite store was Treasury. It had it all--clothes, toys, a grocery store (with conveyor belt to pick up your groceries in your car!), and automotive department, and yes, a restaurant.

This was early to mid 70s. I have fond memories...we'd go as a family after church. Dad would leave the car at the garage dept if it needed a tune up or something, then we'd go eat at the restaurant. I'd get antsy and complain while we shopped at clothes or housewares until my mom would banish me to the toy department. Looking back, I was WAY too young to be on my own in a huge store like that, but back then parents didn't think about kids getting snatched. Or, maybe they were hoping I would be! Then we'd meet up in the grocery store. By then the car would be ready and we'd pull up to the grocery dock and young dudes would load the groceries into the trunk. (A blue Chevy Caprice with a trunk bigger than the whole car I have now.)

Looking back, it was kind of like what a (gag) WalMart super store is like today, but not as gross. I remember by late 70s /early 80s, departments started disappearing. The restaurant may have been first. Then the whole grocery part, then automotive, until it was just a sad clothing store, mostly. It's a real shame it didn't last...it was a good concept.

An old Treasury building.

R54 Neiman Marcus, Saks and Nordstrom in the Galleria all have full service decent restaurants. Saks also has a fun champagne bar with little snacks right next to the men’s department.

Macys used to have one on the top floor, years ago, and they opened a little cafe counter with soup and a salad bar recently.

There was a Marshall Field’s ages ago that had two restaurants, and Sakowitz had a beautiful one.

Neiman’s cafe is very old-school and still does the strawberry butter popovers and a demitasse of chicken broth before your meal. It’s a nice, civilized small touch.

R103 - Bamberger's in Newark still had a restaurant right up until it switched over to Macy's in the (I think) early 1990s.

The place then was called Louie B.'s and they served a light buffet lunch - things like quiche, finger sandwiches, chicken wings, a pasta salad and cake.

I also remember one of the stores in Willowbrook Mall (Penny's?) had a restaurant that some of my colleagues used to go to in the 1980s.

Why would anybody go to Zaire to eat at their little restaurant? I hear the Congo's is better.

[quote]I also remember one of the stores in Willowbrook Mall (Penny's?)

Is "Penny's" something different from JC Penney's?

r105 the caption with the picture says "Treasure Island," not "Treasury."

[quote]Is "Penny's" something different from JC Penney's?

The company is over.

Who cares how it's spelled.

Where was Pipps? I thought I'd heard of all the old time department stores but never heard of that.

[quote]Who cares how it's spelled.

People who do things correctly.

It only took 60 yrs to capitalize on it, but Tiffanys now serves breakfast.

Thanks for the menu R77 - I like see what how foods have change over the years. I see a couple of dishes that I've never heard of before, and I wonder were they regional and why they fell out of favor. Several items that got me curious: strawberry frezett, is "fruit aspic" basically fancy Jello?; crab and orange cocktail(!?), lemon snow, orange rolls.

This place sounds hella fancy - on the bottom of the menu it says "daily fashion show held during luncheon". Also, the menu says 'minimum service 25 cents per person'. Can you imagine how paltry the tip would be on a 25 cent bill?

Aspic predates jello and was more savory than sweet --there have been a couple threads on it. It was the height of "class" through the 50s and more or less vanished.

Southerners claim to have invented it or at least made it one of their distinctive dishes but they do that with lots of things and aspic goes back centuries in England and France.

Southerners of a certain age continue to be delighted when seeing tomato aspic on a menu!

K-Mart here still has a cafe in it, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus all have restaurants.

Target also

Southerners of a certain age are pretty tiresome on the subject of food. They probably couldn't tell if their cornbread had sugar in it, but will complain if a recipe does.

And fuck you very much, r120.

Cornbread is better with sugar in it.

r115 Bullocks-Wilshire was definitely fancy -- even more upscale than the already upscale Bullock's. The building itself is gorgeous; it's now home to a law school.

Yes in fact some stores did in fact have a grille in back that served standard diner fare.

And there were what are called Spa's in the neighborhood where you could plop in, order a coffee, cabinet, shake, what have you.

The panic-stricken Billie Burke in "Dinner at Eight": "WHAT? NO ASPIC??????"

The restaurant at Barney's Hell's Kitchen is quite good.

In threads like these everyone always remembers how amazing the food was and how food in restaurants today is somehow inferior. I’m willing to believe this may be the case, but can anyone expatiate beyond “it was the best ice cream sundae I ever had!”? I’m genuinely curious

It may have been about the experience rather than the quality of the food--sitting down with your mom or grandmother in any of those department store tea rooms where the napkins might be folded into a fan or a swan, where something as prosaic as a couple of tea sandwiches was presented in an attractive way, with a garnish or a slice of fruit--everything served by a waitress in a uniform. It just made you feel special and grown-up. I would eat food in these places that I'm sure I wouldn't have touched at the kitchen table.

Here's the restaurant from the old Wanamaker's store in Philly, it lasted until 1995.

r129 I called my mother this morning to ask her about her experience eating at Philadelphia department stores; she mentioned this exact restaurant. She always gets a kick out of my sudden fascination with nostalgic topics. Thanks DL!

The tea rooms usually had a few signature dishes, but most of it was familiar and forgettable, in other words like any number of places. And, in the later years, particularly in the suburbs, they really weren't trying that hard.

Neiman's still have the amazing popovers with the strawberry butter. I was pleasantly surprised that the grand old department stores in London had proper dining rooms (with high tea!). Barney's also has dining rooms as well.

Even if it were around today the restaurant at Wanamaker's would have to get with the times. Tacos would be on the menu. Imagine trying to eat tacos with white gloves on.

Does Fred Segal in LA still have a restaurant?

I remember having lunch with my grandmother and mother at the restaurant in Famous-Barr in St. Louis. We always got the French Onion soup. I thought it was so sophisticated that they had models walking the restaurant promoting the newest looks.

Costco serves pizza.

Sadly, I just found out that Tiffany no longer sells engraved writing paper. Note cards, that's all.

r68, are you a Chicagoan? I have very fond memories of the Walnut Room. I'm glad Macy's has kept it running. Do you remember Hinky Dink Kenna's on the lower level off the underground walkway? Used to be a regular lunch stop when I worked in the Loop back in the day. We always went there for drinks before the downtown St. Pat's Parade when it was on Dearborn.

Damn, now I'm craving a Walnut Room chicken pot pie.

Wow, look at R122. We haven't had red tags in years.

Is there a Red Tag sale at Filene's?

Growing up in Southern Florida, we had the BONANZA of diners within stores. Woolworths and Murphy's had counter dining, with their Mel's Diner waitress uniforms, along with the Flo waitress characters. Our Walgreens had a restaurant, liquor store along with the drugstore. In the same complex, we had the S & S Cafeteria, where I was introduced to Salisbury steak. My link with show you the bevy of stores that used to be: Singer Sewing (my grandmother retired from them), Western Auto (my parents bought our Western Flyer bikes there). The shop The Reef Gifts was a card shop, but had games and carried the round counter spindle of the Matchbox cars in numerical sequence (which my Skanky brother has my collection, and refuses to give them back to me). We eventually got a the Woolworth version of a department store called Woolco, where I worked at when I was a stoner 18 year old. Our salaries were paid in cash.

I haven't read through all of the comments here, so if this has already been mentioned/discussed - apologies.

I have vague memories of dining in a department store restaurant with my mother like others here and my big take away was that the restaurant was so quiet and hushed. the space itself was designed to be relaxing (soft lighting, dusty pink walls, very comfortable chairs, there was music playing, but it was at a low level).

My takeaway was that the space was designed to relax the shopper, provide a place where women could put their packages down and order something for lunch (or just have tea and dessert) and be treated well/kindly by the waitress. I loved it. I've never forgotten it. I miss that - a public place where people were encouraged to stop, sit back, take a deep breath and relax.

Anyone else remember these restaurants the same way?

In the Real Olden Days..every Five and Dime had a lunch counter like this Lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina: where blacks were not allowed.

These guys sat there anyway and started a ruckus!

Davison's in downtown Atlanta had The Charl-Mont, The Terrace, & The Men's Grill . Rich's downtown had The Magnolia Room. All sadly long gone.

Would love to hear from our UK brethren about department store restaurants. Of course there's Harrod's Food Hall, although perhaps that is just a tourist spot, what about Liberty and other stores?

The food at The Dollar Store is really good and only costs a dollar.

Our Sears had a seperate sit down restaurant and so did the KMart, but it used to be a WT Grant. These were not lunch counters but totally separate areas of the stores. Venture and Zayre had counters, where you could eat at the counter or take it to a table like a lunch area in a mall.

I remember when our mall got a McDonalds, it killed off the restaurant in Sears.

Woolworth at Ansley Mall/Atlanta had a great lunch counter. They made the best hamburgers back in the day. None of these pre-formed frozen patties. The ladies would make the hamburger patties by hand per order. The best Cokes on the planet. Not the already mixed drink. Their machine would dispense the syrup and the carbonated water out of separate taps into the glass that resulted in the perfect Coca Cola with the perfect burn on your tongue.

Big Lots has great food and the portions are huge.

The ridiculously AWESOME cafe at Saks Fifth Ave's main NYC store, Cafe SFA, just closed this year.... The place was awesome.

Thank GOD Barney's still has Fred's....

Many days ago I saw one in IKEA. Oh the memories.

The Pleasure Chest had surprisingly good food but everything was so sticky.

r134, the one on Melrose still does. The Santa Monica store has closed down.

[quote] I was pleasantly surprised that the grand old department stores in London had proper dining rooms (with high tea!).

I believe you mean 'afternoon tea'

Ah mea culpa, r154.

R148, Then after a light ladies lunch, you could sashay around the corner and look for cream horns at The New Order.

r141 I want to hear more about "Miss Doly Coiffures."

Some of my best early memories are of getting dressed up and going "downtown" with my grandmother, in a medium-sized city in central NY, at Christmastime every year, when I was in elementary school. We would go through the Sibley's department store Santaland, she would do some shopping, let me pick out a few things for my mom and dad, and we would always get lunch and ice cream sundaes in the store's restaurant with big windows looking out on the city with all its (to me) hustle and bustle.

It was better than any mall experience the next generation would have, I'm quite sure

[quote]When did DL become a day care center?

There was a time when DL WASN'T a day care center?

Rodbell's down at the mall had a gay manager. The food was OK but the service sucked.

Up until, the trash took over, meaning the new owners, not the customers, Macy's 34th St. had the best restaurant on the 8th floor. I'd say until the early 80s.

They had a huge French onion soup, homemade soup loaded with caramelized onions and topped with wonderful French bread and tons of imported Gruyère cheese. They also had one of the best burgers and burger buns and fries ever and served with an onion relish that I have continued to try to make or buy without success to this day. Their ice cream soda's (my favorite was coffee soda with coffee ice cream) were a masterpiece, as was their malts, made with real malt and topped with real whipped cream, not stuff from the can. I'm sure they had other things that were equally delicious but I always decided between the soup or the burger and had the ice cream soda with either.

On the 8th floor was also a gourmet market with things you can't find for any price today and on the first floor on the 7th Ave. side they had the best butcher shop in the city, with prime meats and the best poultry and seafood.

Everything Macy's sold then, including clothes, bedding, furniture, toys, kitchen things, everything, was top notch all the way. It's all gone. Their stuff is crap and there is nothing I would eat there.

R41, I loved the A&S Fulton St. tea room too. Everything on the children's menu was wonderful and later on one of my favorite things they made was the Reuben sandwich.

If someone just wanted a quick snack in the A&S basement they had a snack bar that sold terrific 20 cent hot dogs and 15 cent soft ice cream Sundays. They came in chocolate fudge or strawberry. If you wanted just a slightly better 20 cent hot dog there was a Chock full o'Nuts on the next block, also on Fulton St. Do you remember that one? There I also loved the cream cheese and walnuts on raisin bread, 15 cents, the tuna on white, 20 cents and their amazing powdered whole wheat donuts that melted in the mouth like cotton candy, 10 cents each. I always got their orange drink, the best ever with real orange juice and flesh in it and my mom got their famous coffee, 15 and 10 cents respectively.

On weekends when my dad and sometimes grandfather came to shop at A&S we would first go to Junior's restaurant also on Fulton on the corner of Dekalb Avenue. OMG, was that good with literally hundreds of things to choose from, breakfast, lunch or dinner, each and every one of them superb. Today Junior's is shit, total shit.

What's sad is that people just accept shit today, from the White House to where we eat. I get that younger people have no memory of what good was, but you would think the Boomers around my age would put up a fight all across the country. Then again even if these places tried to make the exact same food from the old recipes it would not taste the same because the ingredients, even if they bought all organic, which of course they won't, are pure shit too.

I wonder if the food in France, Italy and Greece is as good as it was back in the day.

R66, I'm so sad to learn that Davidson's is gone. I haven't been to Atlanta in 3 decades so I don't know why I'm surprised but that was my favorite place to shop when we went there and yes, their restaurant was excellent.

Thanks to the upthreaders for mentioning the Crystal Room at Wanamakers in Philadelphia, chicken chow mein and bisque ice cream were my favorites on the menu. I miss watching the old grande dames knocking back their Manhattan's and martinis, while they waited for their pastel-colored filled tea sandwiches. Strawbridges had a very nice upscale restaurant, the Corinthian Room. I don't recall if Lits or Snellenburgs or Gimbels had restaurants.

In Indianapolis, L.S.Ayres had a lovely old style restaurant, can't recall the name. Soups were served in individual silver consommé' bowls. My husband was a Hoosier, and we'd always stop in when we went to visit his folks in Indiana.

For you Allentown, PA stumpjumpers, I'm sure you'll recall Hess's department store, with their always-crowded restaurant, known far and wide for their FRESH strawberry pie.

The local Woolworth's had a very long lunch counter. The usual menu items, nothing outre' or particularly memorable, except the deal on ice cream sundaes. Above the counter was a display of inflated balloons, inside of each was a small piece of paper with a price on it. You popped your chosen balloon, and paid whatever the price was(which ranged from the quoted menu price all the way down to a penny) Such a deal! For 30 cents you could gorge yourself on a plate of real french fries and a Coke. Kresge's next door had a counter, not quite as nice, but they did a brisk business selling real sliced roasted meats(beef, ham, pork) at a place set up practically at the front door.

R66 and R162 it was Davisons, not Davidsons.

At least the old Davisons downtown store wasn't torn down as so many were.

The 4 level Crystal Bridges at Rich's downtown Atlanta at Christmas time. All gone now. These days there's a huge hideously ugly federal building on the site.

And thankfully the beautiful chandeliers are still hanging in what was the street level shopping floor at the downtown Atlanta Davisons.

A hot fudge sundae with nuts in the Kmart cafe while mom shopped.

I LOVE this thread. Thank you OP, and please don't pay any mind to the few spoil sports who don't appreciate the art of reminiscing.

I am lucky enough to have experienced so many of the different stores listed throughout the thread due to my frequently transferred father. John Wanamaker, Strawbridge's, Davison's and Rich's, Maison Blanche and DH Holmes, B. Altman's, The Bird Cage at L&T, the humble Woolworth's lunch counter( or Woolsworth as it was called in New Orleans) and my favorite lunch spot of all time The Zodiac in N-M.

I loved remembering each and every one of the posts which featured old menus and/or photos. I do understand why the youngish group here may be a tad fed up with our(Boomers) never ending sentimental journeys here at DL, but please allow us our fun. This is the only venue I know of where I can trade stories and hear new ones from my 50s born brethren.

I am now starting to understand why my parents used to enjoy listening to the local radio station which played Big Band era music on Sunday afternoons. It was not so much the music itself, but it was the memories evoked by the music of a "better time."

Macy's was always a mid-market store and before the 70s, it definitely was lower middle brow. I doubt that they had truly one of a kind things you can't find now. This kind of stuff brings out ludicrous nostalgia about places like Woolworth's where they have you Heinz canned soup and forgettable burgers.

I'm half tempted to count all the instances of "tea room" that keep popping up on this thread... Honestly, it's starting to sound like one queen going all rain man with the phrase...

That's what they were called, 171.

The Bird Cage at L&T was the nicest in the 50s and 60s, along with the small restaurant at Bonwits. Both had that hushed tone that a poster upthread described--just the clink of silverware and quiet adult voices. If I'd been dying during one of those lunches I wouldn't have made a peep.

Downtown Atlanta Rich's Department Store in its heydays.

Rich's on the day it was blown to bits.

This is the horror that's on the site now.

Here, Memory Laners, knock yourself out:

Does anyone remember when the flagship Macy's had Mama's restaurant? Now they have a Cheesecake Factory. How about Blum's, and their famous Coffee Toffee Crunch Cake? And Liberty House across the street (now Macy's Men's Store) had some restaurant on the lower level. Going back even further -- the White House had a restaurant, too.

Sorry -- forgot to mention I was talking about San Francisco.

I remember a Tad's Steak House across the street from Macy's 34th. A really good charcoal grilled steak, a good size one too and melt in your mouth, a big baked potato with butter and sour cream if you want, a nice salad with chick peas and your choice of homemade dressings, a good size piece of garlic bread, a fresh lemonade or soda of your choice or coffee or tea and a dessert, the Boston Cream Pie was especially good, all for the huge amount of 99 cents. There was no tip because you took a tray when you walked in and brought it to the table yourself. Seriously, this was in the 1960s. My family and I went at least once a week.

Once on her cooking show on PBS Lidia spoke about coming to America as a young girl and spoke about how excited her family was to find this place, Tad's Steak House. She too could not get over all of this wonderful good quality food for 99 cents.

R51, I was going to mention the coffee shop at Alexander's in Rego Park! How cool to encounter another local within the great wide world of DL.

My church youth group took a bus trip to DC and NYC in 1981 and I remember eating at that Tad's near Macy's. I don't remember how much the food cost then but do remember my salad containing a gritty sand-like substance and stopping eating it. Back home I dined with my grandma at Shillito's department store's Le Chateau restaurant in Louisville at least once, when even a suburban mall store would have a restaurant.

I think there may have been more than one Tads in NY, but I do remember that one--near the Port Authority terminal. (of course I also remember Schraffts and Nedick's and the Automat and Chock Full o'Nuts and later the lovely Zum Zum).

I love "tootsie fruit"!!!!!

It's a lot better than, "Hey Gurl"

R177 I remember Mama's an I sure do Remember Liberty House across the street. They had a little "bistro cafeteria on the ground floor in the rear of the store where I would often grab something on the fly.

R176 You have given me an orgasm of the heart! Thank you so much for the link to a site I would have never known of were it not for you.

And they even have a book on Thalheimer's in Richmond, Va. My old grandmother used to take me there from her house in Petersburg for a day of shopping every year. I highly recommend the site for everyone born in the years of '52-'65 because literally every store and tea room mentioned in this thread has a book or an article referenced there.

R12 does Macy's just sell crap merchandise, and ruin stores they take over?

Tad's was in Chicago and San Francisco and too cheap to be credible.

Apparently Tads is alive and well in San Fran and the theater district in NY. And while the prices aren't 1960s low, they are still pretty damn low. The Yelp reviews aren't terrible either.

I ate at Tad's when I first moved to NYC in late 1987 as a broke 16 year old. A full course dinner was $4.99. I didn't eat red meat so I had chicken instead. Chicken, baked potato, vegetable, garlic bread and a drink. I can't remember if dessert was included or if it was extra.

And in the mornings, I'd get a cup of tea and a buttered roll for $1 at the street carts.

Hi R161 - I sure remember A&S basement lunch counter. A trip "downtown" was not complete w/o a sundae. I remember the chrome machine and would watch fascinated while the custard came out in dollops. If we didn't stop at A&S, we hit the McCrory's a few blocks away, for an ice cream sandwich with waffles fresh out of the waffle iron and pistachios for my mom. They sold hot nuts by the quarter pound and back then they still dyed pistachios red -- we'd all go home with red fingertips.

I remember a CFON on Court Street that I went to a few times when I got older. I vaguely remember the nut bread and cream cheese sandwiches.

Yes, Tad's is still alive and well on Powell St. in SF (just around the corner from Macy's on Union Sq.)

Oh man R191, I'm drooling. I almost feel like traveling 3000 miles just to once again have a Tad's steak meal. I wonder why always the chose proximity to a Macy's. Although back in the 60s in NYC there was also one on 14th St. near the old S. Klien's Department store. Not as crummy as Mays but not as good as Macy's and much smaller. Still you could get some decent stuff there. They had no place to eat in that store if memory serves. I really don't remember. I was usually in the toy department while my parents shopped but afterward came the real reward with either Tad's Steak House, Joe's Italian Kitchen or the Automat. All three were a hop, skip and jump from Klien's. Sometimes during fall months we would eat at Joe's and save dessert to go across the street to the Automat and get the best pumpkin pie to ever be on earth. My mom would often take home a whole pie or two and we would eat all the filling out of one, neither of us liked crust, and leave the intact pie for my father.

Funny, to this day I don't like crust, no pie, not pizza, not any kind. When my mom served pot pies she would give a separate plate as I picked out all the crust pieces so I could just eat the terrific, chicken, veg and gravy inside.

I like most breads, just not crusts. Strange.

The Montgomery Ward near my childhood home in Phoenix had a buffet-style restaurant. I still have a photo of my little gayling self sitting on Santa's lap, with the restaurant in the background.

Sears also had a full-service restaurant, located across from the candy counter.

K-Mart had a self-service cafeteria in the back of the store. As a child, I always felt so grown-up and important when I was able to get my own soda from the soda machine.

[quote] One of the department stores in the mall where I grew up had a tea room.

It was a T-hole up in the third floor men’s room and I sampled lots of anonymous cock in there. Good memories!

When I was a kid in the 70's my Mother's purse was stolen at Tad's by the DeMIlle Theater on Broadway. Police found it a trash can around the corner and everything was there but the cash.

There was a cafeteria in the Sears store where I grew up, but I never ate there. My mom would take me to Charleston Gardens at B. Altman once in a while. I'd always get a grilled cheese and pink lemonade and a brownie a la mode. The local Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus had restaurants. JC Penney and A&S opened in 1980 I think when we got our first mall. No restaurants in either store because there was a food court! Complete with Mr. Greenjeans and The Magic Pan restaurants for "fine mall dining" when you wanted something fancier than Sbarros.

Why did these restaurants disappear? People seem to have more disposable income now, no? Is it because no one sits down to eat anymore?

[quote] And Liberty House across the street (now Macy's Men's Store) had some restaurant on the lower level.

Liberty House San Francisco had two restaurants: The Plum, which had waiter service (and a bar) and the strangely-named Anxious Grape, which was cafeteria-style. One of their most popular dishes was onion soup, with shredded cheese and croutons, served in little cast iron kettles. They also made a great chili. It was the first place I had a tuna and sprout sandwich, served in a pita bread (very '70s).

The Plum was much fancier, with specials such as Beef Wellington. The lines would get quite long, and they served champagne while you'd wait. For dessert, the waiter would wheel over a silver dessert cart and you'd choose what you wanted. Macy's, across the street, had Mama's, which was cafeteria-style, so the Pacific Heights Ladies Who Lunched preferred Liberty House so as not to have to carry a tray (not to mention the aforementioned bar).

In 1982 Neiman-Marcus opened with two restaurants, a casual pseudo-healthy cafe whose name escapes me, and the lovely, more formal Rotunda, which may be the sole survivor of these bygone department store dining rooms. Saks Fifth Avenue had their own sit-down restaurant on the fifth floor. Even staid I. Magnin got into the act with Narsai's Cafe (run by local restaurateur Narsai David).

[quote] Is it because no one sits down to eat anymore?

That would be my guess. I graduated college in 1983 and got my first corporate job in 1984. NOBODY ate lunch at their desk, and only the hourly people brown-bagged it and ate in the office lunchroom. We wore suits and ties in those days and we would always go out for lunch, mostly to restaurants with waiter service, at the very least to the large cafeteria in the building.

There were no laptop computers and no mobile phones and you were expected to have conversation with your colleagues. In my first management training class (remember those?) we were instructed on how to behave when the boss takes you to lunch.

On the rare occasion I'd go to lunch alone, I'd read the newspaper, but it was not uncommon to see well-dressed people, sitting alone at tables, just enjoying their meal.

My current boss, who is old enough to know better, eats lunch at his desk every day and socializes with nobody. Ninety percent of the people in my office sit in the lunchroom and stare at their phones, while they eat with one hand.

A proper lunch has gone the way of the dodo bird.

[quote] Why did these restaurants disappear?

Most of the big downtown flagship stores closed long ago. That took care of many of the restaurants therein. Other stores that had restaurants I believe just got tired of the expense. Running a full scale restaurant is not an inexpensive operation. And with all the fast food places the started opening up nearby I think the store eateries started losing a lot of their business to them and just decided it wasn't worth it anymore. There are still a few stores around with restaurants, but they are few and far between.

r199, I miss lunch too. I would occasionally eat at my desk if I was super busy and had a deadline and would order something in, or someone would bring something back for me. But usually I would go with a group of co-workers, sometimes meet up with friends, and go have a nice lunch. I don't remember it costing a ton of money either and we very rarely had fast food (which was hard to find in NYC back in the day).

I remember our mall in Hollywood, FL had a separate restaurant in it, not attached to any department store and not part of any food court or a fast food chain. It was at one of the main entrances of the mall and was the first place you saw on the right as you entered. There was very low lighting and smoky thick glass so you couldn't see inside, and there was a door to get in instead of just an open space. We never ventured in there until the mall had an appearance by three of the actors from All My Children. It was Dorothy Lyman, Richard Shoberg and someone else I can't remember. When they were done, my friend and I followed them into the restaurant, determined to get autographs. We got stuck ordering lunch and it cost us all the money we had so I couldn't go to the movies that week or buy any records.

I remember being able to get Lyman's fairly easily, but I had to follow Shoberg into the men's room and wait for him to finish peeing. I was 10 years old, and I knew it was an invasion of privacy, but I had spent all that money, so I was determined. He did sign but I don't think he was too thrilled to be watched while he stood at the urinal.

After I moved to NYC as a teenager, I would see and even interact with celebs fairly regularly through my work, so I very quickly shed the autograph habit, but when you're growing up in Florida in the 70s-80s, you just didn't ever see anyone from the TEE VEE so you had to touch greatness. Even if it was a third rate soap actor pissing at a mall restaurant urinal.

I haven't been to a mall in at least 15 years. Do they still have food courts?

What about Phipps' Fountain and Tea Room? Food always tastes DIFFERENT when they fix it. I don't know WHAT they do to it!

Sears at Valley View mall in Dallas had a restaurant and also a kiosk that sold hot peanuts, cashews and candies including chocolate turtles.

I think it was the malls that ruined the department store restaurants. Quicker (and cheaper) to grab something on the fly from a food court or fast food place than to sit down in The Bird Cage and be waited on.....but not nearly as much fun. Those L&T restaurants had dessert carts that would be wheeled to your table so you could choose--heaven for a kid.

They disappeared with downtown department stores. They never were that popular in shopping mall locations. They were never very popular--the downtown stores, with their multiple operations were more likely to make money because they usually had a central kitchen.

r68 I'll see your Walnut Room Chx Pot Pie and raise you an Irish Coffee in a souvenir glass!

I'll drink to that!

Some pictures in this blog post showing Kmart's restaurant and deli. Can I interest you in a 33-cent sub? Some Hungarian goulash?

They have them now. Every Wal Mart I've ever been to has a fast food outlet in there somewhere.

My K Mart (closed down now) used to have their own snack bar, not like a McDonald's or anything. They had pretzels, god awful frozen pizza barely heated up and rubbery hot dogs. The pretzels were good.

Speaking of pretzels, I wonder why Costco stopped serving those huge hot pretzels. They were the best anywhere, but very, high in sodium. My dad had one way back when and later that night had to go to the hospital for fluid collecting in his lungs from his heart not being able to manage all that sodium, and he only ate half the pretzel and I had the other half. Then again I was young and without heart problems.