Served by a Clown, a King, a Colonel - History of Fast Foods

A continuing look at food that is suppose to be bad for you began in the article Depression-Era Foods. This time we take a look at the food served at fast food restaurants. Fast foods began with the boxcar dinner and evolved with the popular roadside drive-ins. These establishments needed to cook their food fast so they would be able to serve thousands of customers a day. So anything that took an hour to cook was replaced with what could be prepared in five minutes. The arrival of the mascot helped fast food establishments turn into nation wide franchises. Why else would McDonalds and Burger King do so well when there were already thousands of hamburger stands across the country? Ronald McDonald and the Burger King attracted families by the millions to their restaurants, just as Colonel Sanders attracted families to eat fried chicken. If you do not have a mascot then the next best thing is to give your restaurant a theme. White Castle is usually in a building shaped like a castle. The next step was to turn your restaurant into an amusement park style arcade as was done with Chuck E Cheese. Fried food promoted by circus clowns and cartoon characters? I would not be long before Fast Food got a bad reputation as junk. But where did our favorite fast foods come from?

The Most Hated Food of 1917
Just where was the hamburger invented? That all depends on who you believe. It could have been invented at a lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut, around 1895. Invented by Louis Lassen and simply called a chopped beef sandwich that was until a bunch of tough drunk German sailors from Hamburg who ate the meal began to demand that the lunch wagon owner change the name of the sandwich to the name of their hometown, or else. Looking to avoid a black eye Louis quickly changed the name of the sandwich to Hamburgs on his menu board, and the name stuck. Out west Oklahoma claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger which was allegedly first served at a barbecue in 1891 by Oscar Bilby who used his wife's homemade buns to create the sandwich. Texas also claims to be the home of the first hamburger, invented by Fletcher Davis who then brought the sandwich to the St Louis World's Fair in 1904, although there is no explanation how Texans and Oklahomans came up with a German name for the food. The Texas claim came from a story that the first hamburger appeared at the St. Louis fair by a unknown vendor. Other fairs who claimed to have been the birthplace of the hamburger include the 1885 Erie County Fair held in Hamburg, New York. The story goes that Charles and Frank Menches were serving sandwiches made from sausages and once they ran out of that meat quickly replaced it with ground meat. And the other claim is the 1885 Seymore Fair where Charlie Nagreen made a sandwich out of meatballs, naming it hamburger because it looked like the similar Hamburger Steak. Hamburger Steaks and other cooked chopped beef dishes had existed for hundreds of years, but only the hamburger served that beef as a round sized patty on a bun. While no one can be sure exactly where the Hamburger came from or how it got it's name, what is known is that it nearly became extinct after America entered the first World War. Assuming that a sandwich with a German name like the Hamburger must in fact be a German food, restaurants and lunch counters across the country removed it from their menus as anti-German sentiment took over the country. Four years later one of the first chain fast food restaurants, White Castle, revived the hamburger under the new name of Slyders. The popularity of the White Castle Slyder saw other restaurants reviving the hamburger.

They're Not From France
Ironically while the first World War nearly did away with the hamburger it also introduced Americans to French Fries. Eventually both foods would become as inseparable as Laurel and Hardy. French Fries had existed in America under various names but did not catch on until American soldiers began to eat them while stationed in Belgium. It was American soldiers who reportedly began calling them French Fries for the first time because the language of Belgium was French. As soldiers returned home the name spread to lunch counters where the food took on a sudden popularity. Once again the exact history of this food is murky as many different fried dishes using potatoes existed all over Europe dating back to the 1600's. The much thicker English version of the Belgium Fries, called Chips, had been sold in the United States for decades, even resulting in the invention of potato chips. But returning soldiers wanted them cut into sticks the way the ones in Belgium had been, so the Chip was replaced with the French Fry. Shoestring sized fries proved to cook really fast and therefore became a major side dish at fast food restaurants, served along with Hamburgers which had also made the menu due to it also being a food that cooked fast.

I Hope Fido is Not In There!
Once again there is no exact origin of the hot dog. Wieners got their name from the Vienna Sausage called the Wiener Würstchen. Wiener was the German pronunciation of Vienna and Würstchen translates to "small sausage", the small sausage of Vienna. Eventually the hard to pronounce Würstchen was dropped by restaurants who shortened the name to Wiener. Ironically while the German word for small sausage was dropped from the name, Americans still referred to small objects as wieners, including an unflattering insult against the male anatomy. Another German sausage on a roll which had been brought into the United States was the Frankfurter which originated in Frankfurt. It was in 1870 that German immigrant Charles Feltman began selling sausages in Coney Island under the name Coney Island Red-Hots. While popular with other immigrants, natural born Americans suspected the food. A slang name of Hot Dog was created due to rumors that the Red-Hots had been made from dog meat and the name stuck. Actually hot dogs were usually made from prime beef and not the cows lips and other throwaway byproducts that they are reputed to contain, although occasionally pork is mixed in or substituted for beef. There are other stories attributing the invention of the hot dog name, but it was it's association as a Coney Island food that would eventually bring it worldwide attention. Feltman made so much money selling Hot Dogs that his little lunch cart soon became a stand which over the years expanded to a restaurant pavilion that took up and entire city block. When the backlash against everything German happened during the first World War restaurants simply dropped the Wiener and Frankfurter names and began calling the food Hot Dogs. By then Americans had accepted the sausage and began claiming it was a purely American invented food. Just prior to Americas entry into the first World War former Feltman employee Nathan Handwerker opened up a rival hot dog stand four blocks West. Nathan lucked out when the city announced they were rerouting all the trains to a new terminal to be built on Stillwell Avenue, right across the street from his hot dog stand. While Nathan's became the first Hot Dog stand visitors saw at Coney Island when leaving the terminal, Feltman's was now three blocks away. While the great Feltman's slowly went out of business Nathan's Famous became a national brand.

From South America to Europe and Back to America
Ancient Greeks would garnish flat bread with various cheeses and oils. The Romans continued this tradition with a dish with the unappealing name of Placenta, dough topped with cheese and honey. But the modern pizza did not arrive until after the discovery of America by Columbus. It was in the Americas that the tomato plant was cultivated by the Aztecs and then brought back to Europe by one of the explorers. This new fruit was a bit bitter compared to Apples, but grew much faster. While an apple tree took decades to grow a tomato plant bore fruit within months of being planted. Many believed that the tomato was poisonous and refused to eat it, so for nearly two centuries only the daring ate food containing tomatoes while the plant was mainly used as a decoration. It was poverty in Naples Italy that drove them to use tomatoes in their food instead of other garnishes, and soon it was discovered how easily tomatoes could be turned into sauce. Covering bread with sauce and cheese. The word Pizza translates roughly to toppings, pizza pie meaning a pie with toppings. Immigrants from Naples began to open pizzerias in the United States around the early 1900's. Initially starting in Italian neighborhoods and sold to Italian immigrants the was eventually accepted by all Americans and pizzerias spread out to other parts of the country. Since pizzas could be made relatively fast they became acceptable as fast food. There has been a constant debate as to what a proper pizza tastes like with each region arguing that theirs is the best. Many claim that Pizza Hut is not even pizza. The truth is that pizza will always taste different depending on the region it is made. The whole point is that the toppings, such as cheese, sauce and sausages, always depends on what is the cheapest in the area. Minerals in the local water also effect how a pizza ends up tasting. Because of this pizzas will always taste different from city to city, just about the only fast food that is not standardized.

Racist food?
Fried Chicken is one of the oldest existing fast foods as records of fried foods in batter goes back to the beginning of recorded history itself. In the south slaves were often permitted to keep chickens and would often cook them by frying. Remembering how they cooked food back in Africa the slaves would put several herbs into the batter which enhanced it's taste. Their recipe for fried chicken passed back to their white owners where it then went on to restaurants. One of the early chain fried chicken restaurants was, unfortunately, Coon Chicken Inn which first opened in Salt Lake City around 1925. Predictably, it's mascot was a caricature of a smiling black man with huge red lips. The owners decided to close their stores and sell off their assets in the late 50's as public sentiment was rising against racism, and immediately a chain called Sambo's Chicken opened to fill it's void. Little Black Sambo was originally a children's story about a young boy living in India who outwits tigers. When the book was published in the United States Sambo was illustrated as an African boy instead of an Indian boy drawing him in the style of the stereotypical negro with red lips. Although later releases of the book were properly illustrated with an Indian boy the character, but by that time American culture associated Sambo with the negative black stereotype. While Sambo's restaurant used images of the Indian child wearing a turban as a mascot the restaurant's name only further associated fried chicken with racism, as did the stereotype that, along with watermelon, it was the preferred food of African Americans. Struggling against the stereotype was Colonel Sanders and his chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. Although the Colonel was presented as the kindly Southern gentleman rumor spread that he was a racist, even suggesting that he had once owned slaves and fought on the side of the South during the Civil War, an impossibility as both Slavery and the war had ended thirty years before he was born. While the racial stereotypes of fried chicken still remained, fried chicken chains began to prosper. African American Harold Pierce opened up Harold's Chicken Shack in 1950 which would eventually become both a successful franchise and a Chicago institution. Roy Rogers opened his chain in 1968. Popeye's opened in 1972. Founder Al Copeland claiming that the name was based on the character Popeye Doyle from The French Connection rather than the cartoon character, although later the chain would pay Kings Features for the rights to use Popeye the Sailor as it's mascot.