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Midcentury North American Restaurant Placemats
- easton 1y agoUntil this point I didn't know Big Tex was real and not just something in King of the Hill. And I've been to Texas! Guess it's time to go back.
- bombcar 1y agohttps://www.roadsideamerica.com/ https://www.roadsideamerica.com/ Has tons and tons of those-find some near your location!
- interloxia 1y agoThe Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. Which is what Internet Archive has as their latest scrape too. The previous scrape worked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250906155345/https://www.roadsideamerica.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250906155345/https://www.roads...
- bombcar 1y agoThe location of the Big Potato is a secret of national import!
- interloxia 1y agoIn related news please note that the Big Potato in Robertson Australia has been painted and is now the Big Babe in celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the making of Babe the movie. https://robertson.nsw.au/bigpotato.html https://robertson.nsw.au/bigpotato.html
- pixl97 1y agoSeeing the Texas maps without interstates was interesting too, they make up so much of our driving these days.
- dreamcompiler 1y agoVery real. It burned up a few years ago and they rebuilt it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tex Also the Alamo (as in "Remember The") still exists. It's now a museum in downtown San Antonio. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Mission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Mission
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI've been scanning and cleaning up a 200 page book that is a collection of "Travel Mats" that were printed during the Route 66 heyday [1]. Each focuses on a specific highway and list motel and diner stops. [1] Example: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.library.unlv.edu%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2Fblogs%2Fpaljusaj_1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=12d1bec47ef5c76004b3516a7f85655a911d2af72706f3dad737acdd492ad201 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... I should have it done and posted to archive.org this Fall sometime.
- 0xEF 1y agoReally appreciate work like this, thank you. My wife is the creator in the relationship, making a variety of apparel and decorative things for the home. She takes a huge amount of inspiration in her designs from Midcentury stuff like this, so she'll be thrilled when I share this with her.
- comrade1234 1y agoReminds me of this collection of Chinese menus in North America dating back to 1896: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-worlds-largest-collection-of-chinese-food-menus-was-collected-by-single-man https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-worlds-largest-col... It was collected by a private collector in New York then recently sold to the university of Toronto. I first heard about it it maybe a decade ago and have been waiting for a coffee table book since. I would also be interested in recipes to go with the historic menus. For example dishes with sweet and sour have changed a lot from more liquid and vinagery to the goopy sweet mess we get now.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoThis is a great collection. I'd love to print up a custom one for hosting purposes. Anyone know a supplier who makes these off the shelf? Or will I have to work with a local print shop.
- bombcar 1y agoDepends on how realistic you want it to be. Even a Kinko’s or whatever they call it now can print on a large piece of paper and you can get a tool to cut the edges and curled ways. But if you really want that quasi-white newspaper feel- you’re gonna have to find a supplier who can get you the paper.
- jihadjihad 1y agoThe IHOP one is great, almost looks like a poster for a midcentury film, like John Ford or something.
- Theodores 1y agoThese hark back to a time before franchises took over. Nowadays, anyone wanting a restaurant (and customers) is obligated to make it a McDonalds (or other well known chain). If they don't, then McBigChain comes to town and they have no customers. What is odd about this state of affairs is that everyone wants Mom and Pop, family owned, unique diners, however, where do people go when the kids in the back want their Happy Meals? You always know what you are going to get in a chain, and that is the magic of franchising.
- Hilift 1y agoThere was a really good "chain" in the 1960s southeast US called Davis House (or Davis Brothers). It was a more upscale version of a restaurant that served mainly Kentucky Fried Chicken, although there was many other dishes. "The restaurant was originally named Johnny Reb's Chick-Chuck-'N'-Shake, and was sold in 1966 to A. T. Davis, Tubby's brother, who became a franchisee of Col. Harlan Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken." http://www.highwayhost.org/DavisBros/davisbros1.htm http://www.highwayhost.org/DavisBros/davisbros1.htm https://mistercola.com/products/vintage-placemat-davis-brothers-restaurants-cotton-field-pictured-albany-georgia https://mistercola.com/products/vintage-placemat-davis-broth...
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoThese restaurants still exist in the US, in some regions more than others. Usually the placemats are loaded with ads for local businesses now and less interesting.
- mcphage 1y agoMighty Taco used to have some pretty good placemats: https://www.mightytaco.com/AdVault https://www.mightytaco.com/AdVault (most of the way down on the page).
- jmclnx 1y agoVery nice, I got a chuckle from the one that said "How do you want your eggs". In the 80s where I worked, we had a large project to enhance the systems to our plant in Ireland. So for a couple of months a team from Ireland came here to the US to work with us. The question "How do you want your eggs" at a breakfast place confused them to no end. Seems at the time in Ireland, eggs only were cooked one way, kind of like pouched. I do not know if that is now still true.
- KineticLensman 1y ago(Brit here). When I used to travel to the US for work / holidays I was always amazed at how many breakfast options were available compared with UK ‘greasy spoon’ cafes. I used to make it a game to try to order breakfast specifying all the choices I wanted without the waiter having to ask me any questions.
- bombela 1y agoComing from France, the first time I was asked how I would like my eggs in the US I was incredibly confused. In France the menu would list the different cooking style the kitchen is offering explicitly. Many times they don't tell, it's whatever the kitchen chef decided was appropriate for the dish. In France it is also uncommon for the kitchen to customize the menu to your preference.
- pessimizer 1y agoI'd just like to add to this little subthread that short-order cooking had a lot to do with this - it's the intermediate step we went through between family restaurants and fast food. When I think of a single person standing at his station making 100 customized meals for people over the space of a couple of hours, that's my idea of "socialism" working. Incredibly hard to find real documentation on how short-order cooks work, but the best resource I've found (though brief) is Fast Foods and Short Order Cooking, by Pepper, Pratt and Winnick (1984). I've been dreaming about writing a manual for years, but I'd have to find some shifu to teach me. I was a grill cook (as a young person), but never had to handle the entire thing.
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- itomato 1y agoThese are cool to remember. I recently sat down at a diner counter with my young daughter for one of her first experiences and the Florida placemat provided some multi-generational continuity that I appreciated. You can get them by the thousand: https://cibowares.com/products/florida-design-placemats-package-of-1000 https://cibowares.com/products/florida-design-placemats-pack...
- twic 1y agoThe Ranch House (Central Pier, Atlantic City, NJ) offers a jelly omelette. A jelly omelette! Sounds mad to me but it's a thing: https://ahundredyearsago.com/2021/10/17/old-fashioned-jelly-omelet/ https://ahundredyearsago.com/2021/10/17/old-fashioned-jelly-... EDIT: a postcard from the Ranch House: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:x920gd38k?view=commonwealth%3Ap5549w67d https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:x920...
- mhuffman 1y agoWhen you realize that they make sweet crêpes just like this, it isn't so weird. It is like a fat sweet crêpe!
- timeinput 1y agoIf you like your eggs as a jellied omelette are you still "Sturdy, Reliable, Conservative" like THE BROOKSIDE RESTAURANT says?
- twic 1y agoReliably bonkers, i would say.
- _2d30 1y agoI think the Cliff's mat is quite attractive actually. However, my favorite by far, is the Greenville Lodge! Such a pretty looking graphic but if you look closely at the address/location information you see "Opposite Du Pont Plant"! That's fantastically mid-century to me. It's like a subtle joke you would've seen on Mad Men. My first impression from that mat was that it was AI generated hah
- rorylaitila 1y agoVery cool. I found some vintage ads at an antique shop a decade ago... and now I have over 100k in inventory. I had to limit the collecting to only major publications. There is so much vintage paper to be found. But I'd like to find some placements with local ads if such a thing exists. Last year I started publishing full page ads from the collection, I've got about 1000 online (https://adretro.com https://adretro.com).
- bkandel 1y agoThis is fascinating! Would it be possible to add some explanations for some of the gay ads? I feel a little clueless but I don't really understand why some of those are targeting the gay community.
- rorylaitila 1y agoThanks! Maybe I'll add some detail. Some of them are in the eye of the beholder, and maybe I take a little liberty :) It's not that they are targeting the gay community directly, but they may have subtle homoerotic wink and a nod... They definitely are not overt and would have gone over the heads of most people at the time.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI've seen some interesting modern ones in rural Oklahoma.
- stronglikedan 1y agoThat Florida one looks so familiar, that I'm sure I've visited someplace that used it. Or perhaps I'm just thinking of the maps of Italy that used to be popular on the placemats of Italian restaurants.
- bluenose69 1y agoThe cleanest one caught my eye, and then I read that it was a restaurant, Cy's, that was in Moncton, NB, about half an hour's drive from where I grew up. Although I never ate there, seeing that brought back fond childhood memories of the grownups talking about crossing the border to eat there.
- chiph 1y agoI was wondering why Cy's had so much whitespace. Perhaps it was cheaper to print? Room for the kids to use their crayons? The waitress wrote your order on it and it got used as your receipt? Or of course, they just liked it like that.
- daryn 1y agoLove this! Menu design has really lost a lot of it's art, especially with online ordering.
- diogenescynic 1y agoThese are beautiful. Love the character and level of detail put into them. Really glad this was shared.
- poulsbohemian 1y agoCouple years ago I was in a thrift shop and came across one of these for a steak restaurant - and there was my family cattle brand! Was done to highlight that their meat came from area ranchers, and now will make lovely wall art at my home. No idea if anyone older in the family recalled these placemats or when they were printed.
- caycep 1y agoWill they archive the "James Huang" placemats here in Southern California?
- gdubs 1y agoAs someone who grew up in the 80s/90s, this brings back memories because these types of placemats were still being used in a lot of places. And it's funny because today we talk about "iPad kids" and I'm reminded that staring at a mid-century designed map on a placement was basically the entirety of "entertainment" provided on the very rare occasion we went out to eat somewhere.