Hello, and welcome to save your prediction of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reason and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode for you about Lowry's Yes, the seasoned salt and the restaurant. It's both. I didn't really realize this, but it is very much both.
I didn't realize it either. I didn't know about the restaurant, so this was a fun one. I learned a lot me too. Yes, yes, genuinely really fun. Like, yes, genuinely really fun. Opened up a lot of rabbit holes as always. But was there any particular reason this was on your mind?
Lauren?
Oh?
Was there? I should be better prepared for this question. I love that you're not. It's great. I think it had been on my list for a while as one of those things that I kind of sometimes my episode topic selection process involves like going to my kitchen cabinets and digging through them and seeing what brands we haven't talked about yet, and I strongly suspect this was one
of those, but who knows. It is also, you know, like grilling season here in the United States and Lowry Season salt is a very popular addition to grilled proteins, so yeah, and all kinds of things and everything else.
Yes, as we were doing this research, I looked in my own cabinets as well, and I do have some Lowy's.
I think I have.
Womon pepper Okay, yeah, it wasn't the original flavor.
I have some other interesting huh. Yeah. Yes, Oh.
I would love listeners write in about you'll look in your own dabit and see what you have.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm positive that some of y'all already are composing emails, so we're ready looking forward to hearing from you. Yes, also unrelated to Lowry's, but we do have a bit of an announcement to make. So there is a PRX Podcast Creator Summit, which is an ongoing series of podcast conventions for creators to get together and kind of talk about how to do like like like what what the podcasting field is like, and how to make one and put it out there and
you know, the entire creative process. And it's coming to Atlanta in July, and they got in touch with us and asked us to come do a panel about food podcasting. So if you are in the Atlanta area and would like to come see us talk to some they're really cool humans, possibly cooler than us humans about food podcasting that is happening on July thirtieth from seven to nine pm here in Atlanta. The panel is called Feeding the Culture telling Atlanta's Food Stories. So yes, definitely come check
it out. And they have a lot of other content. Oh yeah, so much programming. I think I think it's going to be super cool. Yes, I do too, So yes, let us know if you're coming. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but okay, yeah, So back to back to Lowri's. For other related topics, you can definitely see are McCormick episode. This one reminded me a little bit of Stofers as well in terms of brands that I didn't know had a bustling restaurant industry.
Yes, that's true, you're right, I forgot about that. But I guess this does bring us to our question. Sure, yes, Lowries, what is it?
Well, Lowy's is a brand of seasonings that originated in a steakhouse by the name of Lowy's The Prime Rib. The seasonings and the restaurants are two different companies. Now we're going to be talking about both of them. So the Prime Rib is a place that literally only served prime rib as an entree only entree on their menu for fifty five years. Yep. It's a very old fashioned white tablecloth everything table side, kind of like theatrical dining experience.
And they created the original seasoning to go on their prime rib but also their salads and sides. That original seasoning is a seasoned salt blend made up of salt, sugar, peprika, celery seed, turmeric, onion, and garlic, a few things for texture and or to prevent caking, and smaller amounts of a few other herbs and spices like basil, for example.
And people will use this seasoning on anything and everything as a dry rub on proteins of whatever kind, on vegetables or potatoes or casseroles in the flour dredge for breaded fried foods, as a table seasoning for things that we're not cooked with it to begin with. It is very popular, if perhaps considered like a little bit basic in these are modern times. It's a really pretty orange color from the paprika, and it's just it's a good
balance of like salty, sweet, heady savory. So it adds just like a nice little zing but not too much zing to whatever you're making or eating.
Yeah, it's really pleasant. It's like a nice Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, kind of easy, you know what. I just want to give this a little bit more flavor.
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to think about it too hard. I just want to shake something on it. Oh, I've done that. Great, let's go. And I forgot to write a little bit of poetic thing into here, and we just got a lot of Supreme Court cases in this morning, so I'm just going to keep going. I'm not sorry about it, y'all. Well, we'll come back and be poetic
about something else later. A heck all right. So Lowry's Restaurants is a family owned group that currently operates and or licenses fourteen restaurants, all beef heavy in the United States and internationally. Like literally every single one of them features Prime Rib. This is sort of a theme. The Prime Rib flagship location is in Beverly Hills. There's one in Vegas. They do have other entrees now, like lamb chops, lobster tails, salmon rockefeller, even a cauliflower steak or other
seasonal vegetarian offering. They offer apps like shrimp cocktail or steak tartar or lobster bisk Sides like creamed corn, creamed spinach, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, and gravy, maybe a grilled asparagus. The baked potatoes are dressed table side with toppings like bacon bits and shives and sour cream and butter. The basic salad, which is lettuce and chopped eck and croutons, maybe with other vegs added in, It is also mixed
table side, like in this specific nested bowl setup. It's called the spinning salad, And so it's a nested bowl set up. They've got crushed ice in the outer bowl and the server will spin the inner bowl real fast to like distribute the vinegarette and chill the salad. It's a whole thing. But yeah, just like really classic mid
twentieth century American steakhouse kind of situation. They also have locations of the Prime Rib in nine or ten real swanky neighborhoods and cities around East and Southeast Asia, with like the same table side carts and the same staff uniforms and mostly all the same menu items, which at a certain point is wild to me.
Yeah, yeah, but they are definitely the restaurant that gives a restaurant that gives that vibe of this.
Is the experience. Yes, yeah, this is what it is. Oh, yes, we're going to talk a lot about that, but probably more humans are familiar with the seasoning. The brand is now owned by McCormick and Company. And yeah, that original blend also has a low sodium version and a version
with black pepper added. The brand does have other seasoning blends like a garb like salt lemon pepper, Jerk Seasoning, Cajun Seasoning, Nashville Hot seasoning mixes for things like tacos, chili, spaghetti sauce, and Sloppy Joe's, plus a line of bottled sauces and or marinades like a like a honey taraiaki and a Cuban style mahome. There's also a few like just straight up spices under the Lowry's label, like you know Bay leaves. Here's some Cuban. Yeah. There's one blend
name that I find a little bit aggressive. It's called Total Seasoning. Oh no, I mean it's just like garlic and onion and like a Regino Parsley's Lantro extract. But total seasoning, I mean emphasis added. But yes, I think they probably wanted to be there. I think you're correct. I will say that you can definitely make your own seasoning blends at home, and there are many do recipes out there if you want to look them up.
But yeah, yes, this is something I sometimes encounter because I just grew up. You know, you reach for like Chinese fi spies, for example, and I find so many recipes that are like, you can just make that.
If you don't have it, do you have these things? You probably have these other things. Yeah, you can make it. But anyway, what about the nutrition. Okay, don't eat brands, don't brands, steakhouse experiences like the Prime Rib, do Countess treats. Don't worry too hard about salt unless that is specifically a thing that like your personal health or family history
tell you that you should worry about. There was an over emphasis for a long time, I think on worrying about salt in the United States, like drink water for sure.
But you know, yeah, yeah, if you're worried about it, yeah yeah, a medical professional.
Yeah absolutely, And you know, and if it's a thing that you do need to be worried about, then yeah, maybe make your own at home that doesn't contain salt. I don't know. I did want to put in here, And this is one of many side quests that, like, I argued with myself about including, but I found this
so interesting that I wanted to say it out loud. So, Okay, in the United States, you don't have to list all of the ingredients in a packaged food if they're in there in small enough amounts and or if they can be lumped under certain terms like spices or natural flavors. And it seems that Lowerries will not post a list of everything that it contains, but if you ask a specific question on the McCormick's product page for Lowries, they
will answer. That is why I specifically listed basil in the description above that is not on their ingredients list. And I can furthermore tell you that Lowry's Seasoned Salt does not contain tomatoes, mustard, or yeast extract. It's also suitable for vegans.
That's interesting, Okay, Yeah, I mean I like that they respond, But you know.
Oh, I love prompt and decisive customer service so much. Yeah. I think that's why I made this note because I was like, ooh, this is thorough customer service.
Yeah, yeah, probably don't want anybody, I would hope don't want anybody to get sick.
Oh sure, no. And that's exactly the thing, you know, like like people are writing in based on like specific food allergies or like you know, alpha gl syndrome or something like that, and so so, so it's really cool that they respond, yes, very well, we do have some numbers for you. Okay. So Lowry's, the Prime Rib restaurant, has served over ten million pounds of beef over its
eighty plus years of service every month. Every month they serve an average of eleven thousand, six hundred and fifty pounds of potatoes if you consider both mashed and baked. Oh my, you can order twenty two ounce steaks there. They come in sizes up to twenty two ish ounces. I've seen up to twenty four at some locations or at some points in the past. Those two ounces. It's still is that yes, yes, wow. And the restaurant side of the business is now a fourth generation, family owned
and full of personalities. I adore it out in La You used to be able to tour the Lowry's seasoning factory, and at its peak they hosted about fifty thousand visitors a year. On the seasoning side, because the seasoning brand is now owned by McCormick, you can obtain Lowry seasoned salt in a one hundred and eighty pound drum. That's like eighty kilos. That is, that's if I were to turn into a pillar of season salt, that would be more than one Lauren pillar worth of salt.
Yeah, yeah, that's a lot. I mean again, my brain is blue screening a little bit. Well, we do have quite the history for you.
Oh we do. I'm so excited. Okay, Yes, we're going to get into that as soon as we get back from a quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay, So yes. The history of Lowry's is a fascinating one, and it starts in nineteen thirty eight in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, with the opening of a very pash restaurant called Lowry's Prime Rib. It was the brainchild of business partners and brothers in law, Lawrence Frank and Walter Van de Camp. They served one thing, Prime Rib with sides. It was meant to be a
whole production too, and it was. It was served off of gleaming silver carts tableside as the meat was heated from underneath by hot coals. When full, these carts could weigh up to nine hundred pounds about four hundred and eight kilos, heavy enough that the floor needed to be reinforced with asphalt. The size included classics like cream spinach and creamed corn.
Which arrived on the cart along with the beef and the prime rib. Dinner included mashed potatoes and gravy Yorkshire pudding which is like a sort of custardy popover bread, a creamy horse bradish sauce, and that spun salad. And the price at the time a dollar twenty five. That's around twenty eight bucks in today's money, accounting for inflation, which is still like a pretty awesome deal. You can order the same thing from the same carts to this day, but I will say it costs a bunch more than
twenty eight bucks. Yes it does.
Those cards, however, they were not so cheap, hmm. The stainlessteel carts were designed in house, and the first two alone represented twenty percent of their initial capital investment.
I will say, like, if you've never been to this place, if you've never seen photographs from it. The carts are like it's not just it's not like just like a little serving trolley like it is this it looks kind of like a like one of those streamliners. Like it's it's like this very art deco just huge thing because they've got an entire rack of prime rib inside of it.
And when they roll up, the server asks you what specific cut of meat you would like and proceeds to carve it off for you or I'm sorry, the carver, not the server. Those are two different jobs, as I learned.
Yes we're speaking of okay, yeah, yeah, okay. So the restaurant also makes other claims like being responsible for the doggie bag and valet parking, which if so, I really don't like valet parking. But and they only hired women servers, and the servers had specific outfit.
Yeah, it's a uniform. It's this like kind of like late eighteen hundreds inspired English made type uniform, not like sexy maid like normal maide. It's like a it's like a brown dress trimmed with like with like white cuffs and collar and like a starched white apron and little starched hat. Situation Yeah, the table side meat carvers can
be and usually are dudes. They wear like white chef type uniforms with white gloves and a gold medallion on like a big red piece of THI fabric, which signifies that they have been through the carver training, which these days takes you six months.
Yes, they are very A lot of the things they have are very specif think about like how high do you have to stand aboor the gravy. They have a lot of exact procedures. But I mean it seems to have worked for them.
People like it. Yeah, they were inspired partially by like this famed nineteenth century English restaurant, Simpson's in the Strand, which is famed for roast meats, carved tableside and other marks of classic service.
So yes, and until the nineties their menu only changed in response to beef rations during World War Two and they offered roast turkey in its place. We'll get more into that later, Oh yes, we will. The menu changes. Oh my goodness. So how does this relate to the seasoning? Well, after the prime rob was carved, it needed to be seasoned. It was supposed to be seasoned.
Right right, because it's not the kind of thing that you cook with seasoning on it, other than maybe like like cooking it on a bed of salt or something.
Yeah, yes, which I would love to come back to because I recently have prime rib and I was like, it could use some seasoning, but I feel like it's rude in the United States something, so I didn't season it. But now I read this and I was like, that
makes so much sense. Yeah, anyway, all right, so co founder of the restaurant, Lawrence Frank, wanted to come up with their own seasoning that was more than salt, according to his son Richard Frank, for months, he tested out a bunch of combinations of herbs and spices until he arrived at something that he liked. It worked well, not
just for the prime rib, but also the sides. This original mixture contained onion, garlic, paprika, turmeric, salt, and sugar and was placed on all the tables next to the salt and pepper.
Yeah, it apparently contained seventeen herbs and spices and write like the servers like tossed it with the salads and we're told to suggest it for everything.
Yes, And the customers really liked it, and they started kind of pocketing it to take it home with.
Them, just just like oops and does that shape now yeap.
However, other sources claim that Frank came up with the seasoning first at his in Vandicamp's other restaurant, which also still exists, a Scottish tavern called tam O'Shanter, and that it was originally used there under the name season all spelled with a ze.
Yeah. Yes, whatever the case.
This pocketing of their salt gave Richard the idea to sell it outside of the restaurant, and I read that the first sales were made literally outside of the restaurant, like from the back of a World War two jeep. Oh wow, you really liked it so so Richard set up a separate company to make and distribute this salt, and the grocery chain Ralphs became the first major chain to start offering it in nineteen thirty eight.
Yes, the separate company was called logically Lowry's Foods, and I read that Ralphs wound up carrying it because the buyer for the grocery chain like eight at Lowry's restaurant one day and liked the stuff so much that he put in an order. But also okay, so like we need to point out here that seasoned salt was a new concept at the time, Like Lowry's was I believe the first commercial brand of seasoned salt on the market. Like it was a little bit revolutionary. You know, a
home cook could buy this one jar of seasoning. You don't have to spend a bunch of money on a bunch of different spices and like learn how to blend them yourself, and it just ritzes up whatever you add it to.
Yeah, and for people who couldn't go to this fancy restaurant for what one reason or another, it was nice.
It was like, okay, we go a little bit of accessibility of the of the brand, sure, exactly.
And they were pretty they were pretty aggressive and advertising. Reasoning was an early advertiser in Ebony magazine, for example, which first debuted in nineteen forty five. I don't know when they first ran the ads, but they said it it was early on.
Yeah. Yeah. In nineteen fifty three, they opened a manufacturing plant for Lowry's Foods out a little bit further east in La Out on the northeast edge of Allegian Valley. It served also as the headquarters for both branches of the brand and included like test kitchens and labs and the production lines for the spices.
And then in nineteen fifty nine, the company tapped designing legend Saul Bass to design the L logo that is still in use today.
Yeah, like the guy who did the title sequences for Vertigo and Psycho. That guy. Yeah. The logo's official name is the Fanciful L, which which I think is some kind of stage name for me.
But that's how you should introduce yourself at the podcast thing we're doing, the Fanciful OL.
Uh. Well.
Uh. It was one of the first seasoning salts sold commercially, and it was a real hit all across the US. In the seventies, President Nixon enjoyed a snack of cottage cheese seasoned with lowries. I have to say a lot of stuff I read about this, I couldn't tell if people were making fun.
Of him or not. But hard to say, hard to say it, hard to say. Sounds good to me. Yeah, sure, that sounds delicious. Uh Okay. Over the years, they expanded that La Plant headquarters into this whole thing, this whole like mission revival like hacienda themed tourist center where you could tour the factory and like buy local Mexican Calie themed gifts and Lowry's seasonings and like have like a breezy lunch or dinner and drinks out on the garden grounds.
It was called Lowry's California Center, and by the mid nineteen seventies they had like two or three restaurants on site, one known for stake Wow.
All right, stepping back a bit. In nineteen fifty six, Lowry's Restaurant kicked off a tradition they called.
The Beef Bowl.
Every year before the Rose Bowl, the restaurant invites teams playing in the Rose Bowl to dine with them on different nights.
Don't want to calls chaoss by having them on the same night.
It started out as kind of an eating contest predictor of who would win, but nowadays there is a per person limit on meat portion size. I have to say it is still pretty big to my non football playing sixteen ounce serving followed by a twelve ounce second helping if you would like.
It, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say that. I would say that twenty eight ounces is a hefty, hefty portion. But yeah, apparently like that's relatively small potatoes or small prime beef compared with what some of the players would put away before the relative limitation.
Yeah, yeah, I mean you can look it up some of the past, like the teams who won versus what they ate at this.
How much they ate.
Yeah, and it's to me it was pretty shocking, but it exists, should you like to look into it. Lowry started expanding their restaurants to other cities in the nineteen seventies, and they opened their first international location in nineteen ninety nine. They also we mentioned menu changes. They added lobster and fish to their menu in nineteen ninety three.
As alternative entrees, and this was again the first time they had offered an entree other than prime rib in fifty five years. It wasn't until twenty thirteen, I believe, that they debuted another new entree, a grilled ribbi, for their seventy fifth anniverse. Right, I want to point out that a ribbi is the same cut as prime rab
It's just cooked differently. At the time, the publication Nation's Restaurant News called it a bold move, but I'm not entirely sure if they were being like a little sarcastic.
It's hard to say, because you and I were discussing before. People took this real seriously, seriously customers.
They genuinely did. So. Part of this was right before all of this happened. I think the grandson had taken over for the restaurant group, and he had some bright new ideas, you know, not to you know, he wanted to respect the tradition. He didn't want to pivot, but compound, you know.
Yeah, he wanted to make sure the restaurant could continue to thrive, staying what it is, but maybe also adding a little bit based on what was going on at the time trend wise.
Some people were mad. Oh yes, oh yes, they were oof. At any rate, the restaurant, the Prime Rib, started hiring men as servers in two thousand and four, amidst a class action lawsuit that they wound up settling for like over a million bucks. Men were previously able to work as carvers or bussers, neither of which get tips, and so a group of men sued for discrimination. Yes, and that brings us to some more changes.
In twenty eighteen, Lowry's expanded their bar and menu options, including offering vegetarian items.
Yeah, they like literally expanded their bar area to include more seating and allow for more casual dinner service at the bar, including a few lower priced options like a burger. They've been seeing good results at some of their other restaurant concepts and had just named another new CMO, the great grandson himself a chef, right, Yeah, I just wanted to help the brand revitalize.
Perhaps, Yes, And some people similarly did not like him. And he's very like af bowl about it, and.
He is he is, he seems. He seems aware and cautious and good humored.
Yes, which I imagine it is good to have undertaking something like this that's so so fond.
Of, so old and so beloved. Yeah. In the past several years, the Lowry's Restaurant Group has closed a few locations of their restaurants. I you know, I imagine it's rough running theatrical steakhouses during a pandemic and then during an ensuing recession.
So yes, I did look it up now because I was curious. And you can get it delivered.
You can, you can, I mean not like we actually I think that I think that there might be a service where they will mail it to you. But like a shipping. Yeah, shipping situation, but I didn't look that hard into it. Don't take our word for it. You can ask the Google about that. Meanwhile, though, we kind of consolidated all of our restaurant news up there. Meanwhile, Lowry's Foods Company was doing good. Lipton bought them in
nineteen seventy nine under Unilever. By nineteen eighty eight, their seasoned Salt was the top selling seasoning blend in the United States. At that time, they were making some one hundred and ten products and distributing them worldwide, though mostly in the US and Canada, with sales of about one hundred and fifty million bucks a year. They continued manufacturing and other shenanigans at the Lowry's California Center until Lipton closed it in nineteen ninety two as part of like
a general corporate consolidation move. It was well loved by locals as a lunch spot, but apparently never profitable, and I will say the center has since been reopened as a public park, the Los Angeles River Centering Gardens. It sounds lovely. You can like rented for special events. You can have your wedding on the site of Lowry's season salt history through Lowry's season Salt ride and grew the beast. I'll do that. I don't do as good idea for
the garden grounds. Yeah, don't. Don't through assault in gardens. No no, no, no. Well.
In two thousand and eight, McCormick purchased Lowry's for six hundred and four million dollars.
At the time, Lowry's dry seasonings were about sixty five percent of their business, their bottled marinads were twenty three percent. Both as sold to consumers. Their marinads were the market leader in that category. It was the first time that McCormick got into bottled marinades. Food service sales made up the last twelve percent of the total corporate sales. If you were wondering where that last little smitch was, it was,
it was in food service. Yeah. And this, this whole deal was actually a really big situation in the seasoning business world, Like the FTC got involved because Lowry's was big enough that they had anti trust concerns about McCormick owning them, Because McCormick then would have controlled eighty percent of the seasoned salt market in the United States. In order for the FTC to allow the deal to go through. McCormick had to sell its own brand, Seasonal to Morton
Salt Company. Seasonal spelled without a zee with the normal the normal way that you would spell season, and McCormick had to promise to not buy any other season salt brands for the next decade. Wow, legal season salt drama like anti trust salt. I love it? Uh pretty good. They did release lines of lower sodium seasoning blends starting in twenty twelve, yes.
Which might have been in response to shifting dietary preferences and health concerns. So some are moving away from using season salts like Lowry's as we mentioned, and spicing things on their own.
Yeah, I'd say that there's also more of a desire these days to like experiment with your own seasonings, like find the exact blend that you like and make it yourself. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. Also, Okay, so that's our timeline. I think that's the end of our timeline. I there are more things, y'all. I like resubscribe to the La Times in order to write this outline because there were so many just just weird, little little tidbits in their articles that I was like, this is entirely worth my
subscription money. There are stories about like about like so like that original Beverly Hills location like was on one side of the street and then at a certain point moved to a new building or to a different building and the other on the other side of the street, and then moved like built a new location, like built a new fancy place on the original side and moved back there. And like this entailed you know, like a
lot of restaurant moving and shaken. But specifically they had to like have traffic cops come out and stop traffic so that the servers could push these like seven hundred pound carts back and forth across the road. Listen, Prime
rib is no joke. It's not It's not no, but okay, so so yeah, so that's one more, one more cultural tidbit before I'm done, because whenever I find an example of like the Internet maybe not being all a mistake to begin with, in my in my searching, I found this Reddit post discussing whether lowries can be used to protect against supernatural beings the same way that plain salt can.
The The text of the post was simply kind of in a situation here need to know fast yikes, which I believe was a joke, but the thread the respondents generally reasoned that like pure salt is best for ghosts, a spice blend with larger grains might work on like
vampires and fae that compulsively count things. Something as fine grained as Lowries probably isn't good for them, and for d like you'd really you'd really need to check whether they're affiliated with McCormick and company, because demons are rules lawyers and so like their corporate affiliations matter in situations like this, there's good consumer service. We can just ask. It's good to know, pardon, can you give us a list of demons who currently work for McCormick and company.
It's urgent. This is fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I just I just love that. Also, as y'all know, Annie and I are nerds for the television show Supernatural and other such speculative fiction. So that just made me really happy.
And I was telling Lauren before, I'm so happy that you put this in, because I had stumbled on something that said Lowry's was haunted, and then it was a dead end everywhere I went and I was so sad, and then I see this note and I was like, Okay, at least we've still got We've still got this element of supernatural here, and I think it's great. I love people really put some thought into they did. They did, and I generally agree uh with their what they came up with here.
Yeah. No, I think that that's all sage advice. I mean in a pinch, you know, like do what you gotta do, but in a.
Pinch, yeah, get the lorries, hope for the best.
Yeah that is but yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, Well, I think that is officially what we have to say about Lowry's for now. It is.
But we really want to hear from you listeners if you have any ways that you like to use it, memories with it, if you've been to the restaurant, or you've got any ghost or related.
Oh yeah, please let us know. Absolutely. But in the meanwhile, we do already have some listener mail for you, and we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from one more quick break for a word from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, And we're back with listener flavor Explosion.
That was like fireworks, you know, sure, yeah, yeah, okay, So Peter wrote, since you asked, I thought i'd tell you about my childhood cafeteria which has much more history and good vibes than I knew as a child. Clifton's Cafeteria,
which I knew through their Lakewood Mall brand. Surely the most pedestrian and norm core of the lot was a lot like your description of Southern style cafeterias, although perhaps less focused on the heavy fried side of things, including no hush puppies that I recall, quite a variety of healthier salads, and the iced tea was not sweet, but there were still big tam roast beef, my personal childhood favorite roast turkey, and all the various carbon vegetable sides
and casseroles. Their dessert offerings were okay, but not stellar, various pies and cakes, two flavors of ice cream you could probably guess which flavors those would be, and oddly three or four Surbet flavors, yes, Surbet, not Sherbert Jess.
Had to get that off my chest.
But the normy Clifton's I knew was connected to an illustrious and laudable history. The main branches in Los Angeles were opened in the depths of the Great Depression and had a policy that no one would go hungry even if they had no money. Their target profit per customer was only one half cent, which was a lot more back then, but still. The Los Angeles branches were also much more creative in their diner experience, having a very unusual design sensibility that some claim was the precursor to
the mid centry tiki barklays. Sadly, the Lakewood branch closed in two thousand and one due to low customer demand, and the last Cliftons, the one in downtown LA closed in twenty eighteen, and it is now only represented by a bar called Clifton's Republic, which has a bunch of small plates with modern fusion inventions which might be very good but have none of the tradition of Clifton's past. Yeah, I do have to say, small plates sort of antithesis.
I mean type of cafeteria. I mean, you know, it's kind of like you're ordering a number of things to make up your meal. It's true, but not in a similar way.
No, No, but I'm really glad you shared this because we did focus specifically on the South, but I know that there are pockets that had.
Oh absolutely, yeah. And California. California is a big cafeteria like mid century cafeteria area in general. So yes, yeah, it's so fascinated by all of this. I would not have expected y'all to have had hushpuppies out there.
I have to say. I don't even drink like sweet iced tea. And I was a little guest.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a definite, Like like whenever someone who is not from the South starts talking about iced tea, I'm like, let us specify just for one moment. Are we talking about sweet tea? Because that's what a Southerner means when they say iced tea.
Oh it's so ingrained. I was almost gast out. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing and this history. I'm sad that it closed. I at least it still has this little outpost. Yeah, you know, people like you to remember it. Yeah, and I am. I am intrigued in the the differences between regions of the items they offer, and so I like the healthier salads, not as much fried food.
Yeah, but again, again this makes sense, it does it does, Yes, yeah, and uh is it sure? But for sure Bay sure did? We We have no idea. We did an episode about it, Go see that one. We figured I figured it out at some point in the past. But now it's gone. It's blonde done. Christine wrote, this is a message I meant to send a while ago, because this is my curry leaf plant. I've had it for a few years now,
and I deliberately keep it small. The leaves are very nice to graze on and very tasty if flash fried, the flavor tends to not last in long slow cooks. I did have a brief flurry of research into when it was introduced into Australia, because Australia has a long fascinating relationship with the food and plants of the Indian subcontinent. From what I can tell, it only started to be sold commercially in nineteen ninety, so quite recent. But the main reason I wanted to write was to provide some
more details about Australian coffee. I think I rather shocked you, particularly Lauren, with my declaration that Australians have the best coffee. It's not just me who thinks this, based on some not very exten research of Reddit and Cora forums, Australians who have lived in the US, Americans who live in Australia, and some globe trotting content creators. Australian coffee is often considered as among the best in the world, if not
the best. I think this has to do with migration because of what socialists call targeted ethnic persecution and I call white people being racist to other white people. Australia didn't have a huge number of Southern and Eastern Europeans prior to World War Two. After World War Two, there was a drive to encourage migration, and for the first time this included Southern and Eastern Europeans in larger numbers, probably because we couldn't get enough from Britain and had
to relax our standards. This meant for the first time, an influx of Italians and Greeks, in particular. The US also had waves of migrants from these places after World War Two, but they were absorbed into already substantial populations here. They were establishing little Italyes and little Greece's. For the first time. They brought with them trattria and taverna culture which adapted to various Australian institutions very well, such as
the burgeoning cafe culture of Melbourne. I think it's also important to remember this coincided with the industrial development of single serve espresso machines. Australia didn't really have a coffee presence, so Italian and Greek cafes with these interesting new machines and this interesting new drink really took off. Melbourne is
particularly significant in Australian and world coffee history. I went back and listened to your McDonald's episode, and while you mentioned McCafe stealth McDonald's, you didn't talk much about the history. The first McCafe opened in nineteen ninety three in Melbourne as the brainchild of McDonald's Australia Managing director Charlie Bell. Bell later became the McDonald's CEO and spearheaded the healthier
McDonald's options. By the time the first McCafe opened in the US in two thousand and one, there were over one hundred in Australia and today around ninety nine percent of Australian mcdo donald's have a McCafe. But now I realize why McCafe succeeded in Australia while so many other US coffee chains have crashed and burned. McCafe is the Australian cafe culture that adapted across the world instead of a foreign coffee concept that couldn't force its way into
a well developed coffee culture. That's fascinating. This is all fascinating.
Now.
I'm like, now we need to go back and do an episode just about McCafe. Clearly, I would love to.
I would love to because we did mention it briefly in that episode, But every time I've seen them when I've traveled in another country, they look so nice.
They don't you know, they don't look like an afterthought, Like I feel like an American McDonald's. It's kind of like, uh, we vaguely shoved a espresso concept in here. Maybe it's more likely that it's like a frozen drink kind of situation and right, and then basically everywhere else it's like, oh, you wanted a cafe, we can provide that for you, no problem. Here. I feel like they were just like there's a Starbucks across the street man, Yeah, yeah, and you know that.
I think that's also interesting because there was sort of a at least very public backlash about McDonald's expanding into other countries. We've talked about how they're still pretty popular. But if you get the McCafe and it has I don't know, local coffee.
Decent coffee, and decent pastry, it's like, well.
That feels less of a American thing and more of a like this is actually we have good coffee. Yeah, Whereas for us, at least in my experience in the US, the McCafe is just like, really, you're going to.
Go in there, all right, I'll go, yeah, you're going there for coffee. You're getting a coffee from there. Partially because for such a long time the coffee like you could get a coffee at a McDonald's, certainly during the morning hours, but it was not a high quality coffee, no, and you knew what you were getting, yeah, oh yeah yeah. And if you kind of want something that tastes like diesel fumes, then you know, great, good for you. But yeah, but yeah, no, I did not know about any of this.
Thank you, as always for writing in. This is super fascinating. I mean, of course, right, like coffee is so good, that makes sense.
And I also love that you did some research on Reddit for I'm so sad that when I was in Australia, I wasn't a big coffee person. I drank coffee, but it was it was literally like, what is the thing that has.
Caffe in it? You can get through the Yeah.
I didn't have a lot of money either, Definitely, I wasn't looking for the but that makes me so sad. I would really appreciate it now.
Yeah.
Also, Christine provided a picture of her curry plant. It looks very healthy, very well. I still haven't had any, but I did look into Lauren you mentioned Chaiapanni and they do have it on their menu and it's several dishes. But the problem is, and I've told you this is a problem for me now, I want to order like six things, so I need to get a group together, okay, because I can't eat six things by myself.
Six things. I mean problem to have, but it's a lovely problem to have. But yeah, yeah, no, the next time that you have the opportunity to do it. They were really good. Yeah, they yeah, Like I just ordered one of the like chot kind of situations and it had a bunch of little fried curleaves scattered over it and they were so nice. They sound so nice. I want them. It's like really really bright and heady. Yeah yeah wow.
I'm very happy Christine that you wrote in about this and that you you have these leaves to snack on.
I also graze on my herbs. I'm just like a, hey, Basil, let's just do that. Dyl, Okay, let's go so good, so good.
Well. Thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If you would like to write to us, you can or email us hello at savorpod dot com.
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