Who remembers "lunch counters"? (restaurant, burgers, grilled, tuna)

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

Once common in department, discount, and drug stores, I'm afraid they are a disappearing breed!

[Ohiogirl81]

My sister and I would hit the G.C. Murphy lunch counter whenever possible when we were home from college -- their food was pretty darn good, and the pies were out of this world! Woolworth's was our favorite place to eat when we were shopping downtown; they made a really good BLT and my mom would get iced tea and I'd steal the lemon slices. The department stores' basement cafeterias were popular, too.

The absolute coolest lunch counter I remember was a combination newsstand/cigar shop/candy counter/teen hangout on my suburb's Main Street. As little kids, we went there to buy Archie comics, penny candy and fudgesicles and if we went at lunch time we'd see the workers from the bank and 5 & 10 etc. eating burgers or grilled cheese at the long lunch counter. In the afternoons in the 60s, the place was filled with teenagers playing pinball and drinking milk shakes. In high school, we'd sneak over to avoid the horrid food at the cafeteria; it wasn't much of a teen hangout by then. Not long after I went away to college, the owners retired to Florida and closed the shop. Every time I eat an Ice Cube candy or smell a cigar, I think of that place.

[maggie2101]

I remember them at Woolworth's and J.J. Newberry. My little sisters and I would walk to Newberry's on allowance day and get a small toy and stop at the lunch counter for a basket of fries and a coke.

[gypsychic]

I ate at many a lunch counter growing up. They were in all the downtown drugstores and dime stores. Walgreen's had a soda called a "cherry smash" that I dearly loved!

[nmnita]

I think about every drug store and five and dime had lunch counters. My best friend and I would go to Woolworths every Sat. We would eat get a grilled cheese sandwhich, small coke and an order of fries to share. All this for less than a $ and we had at least a dime left for a tip. Of course there was no tax on restaurant foods in those days. I think the sandwhiches were about .25; a coke was a nickel and the fries .25. That would come to 85 cents, so we had the money for the tip.

The dept stores had more upscale dining, they were known as tea rooms if I remember right. Actually some of those still existed into the 80s in So Ca.

Nita

[P47P47]

When Harundale Mall opened in 1958, it didn't have a "food court". Instead, there were lunch counters at the Kresge's and Murphy's stores, and at the Read's ("Run right to Read's!") drug store (they made the best lemon phosphates), and a Horn & Horn cafeteria. Unfortunately, that pioneering mall was superceded by other nearby, newer malls, and it was demolished several years ago.

[Bulldogdad]

Last one in my area close in the early 1980's or were turned into full scale restaurants.

Sears, Weinstocks, Gemco, Kmart, Newberrys, Woolworths, Montgomery Wards....

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by Mouldy Old Schmo

Once common in department, discount, and drug stores, I'm afraid they are a disappearing breed!

As a kid in the Forties I remember that every drug store in our small town had at least a soda fountain, and as others have mentioned Woolworths had soda fountain/lunch counter combinations. When I moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1960, the Woolworths in our neighborhood on Broadway had a lunch counter...terrifice when your salary was on just above fifty bucks a week.

[sheena12]

There is still a lunch counter at Boscovs Department Store in Wilkes Barre PA where I live. It serves all of the old favorives, grilled cheese, tuna salad sandwiches, soup of the day, a selection of pies, ice cream and other old fashioned items.

Where I grew up both corner privately owned drugstores had soda fountains that also sold burgers. That's gone.

I also remember Woolworth and Newberry.

[DawnMTL]

I'm an avid reader and whenever I read a book in which there's a scene that takes place at a lunch counter, I wish that I lived in that time. There's something about it that I find terrifically appealing and, somehow, romantic.

I don't know if this is a valid memory or not. I wonder, sometimes, if I made it up. There was a Woolworth's in Montreal (where I lived) when I was a little girl (I'm 47 now). It's not there anymore but I remember going there with my grandmother (that part I know is true) and having grilled cheese sandwiches at the lunch counter. The sandwich is the part that I'm not sure about -- I don't even know if there *was* a lunch counter there before it closed... or if I've so completely romanticized the idea and made it my own.