If I ever hit the lottery I fully intend to retire to one of those swank apartment-hotels in Manhattan where there is 24 hour room service and they send up your meals on a tray three times a day. Given the means, I would eat out every meal, but because I am thrifty, I resent what even mediocre restaurants charge for food that is not as good as the slop that I can, and generally do, prepare at home.
I was having this discussion with a friend of mine and we started reminiscing about local restaurants popular when we were growing up: Long-gone icons like Creightons, home of the “world’s best apple pie” and Wolfies, where they kept communal bowls of coleslaw on each table, and Fowlers, where blue-haired ladies and their doddering husbands would start lining up by 3:00 in the afternoon.
As we reminisced, I mentioned that a favorite “special-occasion” restaurant of my parents was a place on Federal Highway called the Brave Bull Steakhouse and his eyes lighted up. “My mom was the hostess there,” he told me and the next time I saw him he presented me with a relic of the era: a 1971 menu that his mom had saved.
I opened the menu as I waited in the interminable drive-through line at Pollo Tropical and I was transported to a past that I had forgotten existed; a time when my dad would don his leisure suit and my mother would tease her hair and they’d hop in the Impala for a night on the town.
I’m sure they would have started their meal with a glass of fine wine, Vin Rose for my dad ($2.00) and Liebfraumilch for my mom ($2.25). After the extravagance of the wine they would have looked at the appetizers but passed over them, because they could not justify the additional expense of the French Onion Soup (50 cents) or the Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail ($1.65) when the entrees came with a baked potato, fresh-baked bread and a salad with a choice of dressings including Green Goddess and Mexican-French, whatever that was.
And then to the entrees. They probably would have waffled between the chopped sirloin steak ($2.50) and the Prime Rib ($3.75), but my dad had a big appetite, so perhaps he went for the “Hearty Eater Special”: a ¾ pound sirloin for $4.85. Although my mom dearly loves lobster there is no way she would have splurged on the Surf and Turf ($6.95), the most expensive item on the menu. Additionally, they would not have dreamed of incurring any extra expense by splitting an order of onion rings (50 cents) because they wanted to save room for dessert.
After their meal, they would each have had a cup of Sanka (25 cents) and my mom would probably order the homemade apple pie (45 cents) and debate having it a la mode (15 cents extra) while my dad would have had the chocolate cream pie (65 cents). After a second cup of Sanka my dad would dig a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet, wrinkle it slightly to make sure two bills were not stuck together and carefully calculate a ten per cent tip. Then he would wait for his change, count it and then they’d call it a night.
As I dreamily closed the menu I fantasized about what it would be like if my partner and I could enjoy a fine steak dinner, including wine, dessert and tip, for under $20, but then the car behind me blared its horn and I came back to reality. I drove up to the window and paid for our fast-food chicken and white rice dinner: $19.85. Plus tax.