Food & drink takeaways - 4 September
A curated taster menu of every day’s food & drink associations
The experimental discovery of a street food classic, doors open for the first time to more convenient food on the go and the critic who invented the four-star restaurant reviewing system.
Just a flavour of what 4 September contributes to our food and drink experience.
Click on the links for extra helpings.
Food firsts
1885
First self-service restaurant – the Exchange Buffet - opens in New York City.
“Restaurant historians have labeled the Exchange Buffet as “the first waiterless restaurant in the United States”. . . Exchange Buffet offered a variety of different dishes to their customers. For example, they carried about twenty-five main entrée items, not including other items such as desserts and sandwiches. The Exchange Buffet, moreover, catered to a specific market: businessmen. The typical male guest would come into the restaurant and choose anything from sandwiches to cakes and eat it at a stand-up table. Then, he would choose his like of beverages.”
1949
Takeaway dish that would become the currywurst is invented by German chef Herta Heuwer.
“Heuwer’s snack stand on the corner of Kantstrasse/Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin was not very busy. So she experimented with different ingredients like tomato paste, curry powder and Worcestershire sauce. However, other sources say that Heuwer had simply run out of mustard and was looking for a new sauce for her sausages, on a rainy Sunday. Whether it was a brilliant idea born of boredom or an emergency measure, the sauce for the currywurst {header photo} was born which later became a world famous German export hit.”
Food birthdays
1768
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand
French writer, now best known for the steak created in his name
1783
American pioneer of the international ice trade. He created an export trade in block ice harvested from frozen freshwater ponds and experimented with exporting fruit preserved on top of ice in a ship’s hold
1920
Celebrated American food writer – the New York Times’ first male food editor – critic, cook and author, The New York Times Cook Book, International Cook Book, A Feast Made for Laughter
“Invented the restaurant review as we know it—part of a four star rating system based on multiple visits to an establishment. Known as an exacting, honest critic, Claiborne was just as likely to praise new talent as he was to reveal the shortcomings of old-guard restaurants.”
1944
American cook and author, The Healthy Exchanges Cookbook; HELP: Healthy Exchanges Lifetime Plan; Make a Joyful Table
1977
Romanian chef and blogger
Food in diaries and journals
1666
Famous diarist Samuel Pepys acts to protect his wine and Parmesan cheese from the Great Fire of London raging about him - by burying them. He writes:
“Sir W. Pen and I to Tower-streete and there met the fire burning three or four doors beyond Mr. Howell’s, whose goods, poor man, his trayes, and dishes, shovells, &c., were flung all along Tower-street in the kennels, and people working therewith from one end to the other; the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.”
