The last Howard Johnson's restaurant closes in Lake George, N.Y.

I just read this and also really enjoyed it.

Pépin heaps praise on Howard Johnson (the person), and has no kind words for his son, whom he blames for the restaurant’s decline. Mainly lack of adaptability as fast food hit the country, but then also drastically cutting quality in ingredients.

Pépin claims that he would take home frozen restaurant food (as it was shipped to the restaurants), reheat it, and serve it to his NYC “foodie” friends, including renowned French chefs, without them being able to tell. I actually believe this since most of the pre-prepared food were stocks and sauce bases which freeze just fine, and also take the most time to prepare.

And to kind of tie several things together at once:

The podcaster Simon Majumdar recently did an interview with Jacques Pepin.

https://www.eatmyglobe.com/season-8/jacquespepin

During that interview, he mentioned that, as a special event, with Paul Freedman (author of "10 Restaurants that Changed America", they cooked one dish from each of the 10 restaurants for about 100 people.

Some of these dishes were from really high-end restaurants like Le Pavillon (where Pepin also worked).

"But the dish that everybody loved was the fried clams from Howard Johnson’s."

Thanks for sharing, enjoyed reading about your perspective.

Wait, the Bell Picturephone was real! https://ethw.org/Picturephone I had known for years that my grandpa Alistair Ritchie worked on this at the Labs, but the book “The Idea Factory” colored in the story with great detail on how advanced the system was AND how few units they ever sold. Everyone wanted to see the other party, but no one wanted to be broadcast. One Bell exec iirc planted a headshot of himself in front of the camera.

(Watched the original Kubrick movie when it was released. Thumb my nose at StarWars peasants ;-)

Ah, well, the future isn't what it used to be. At least we didn't get nuked yet, a distinct possibility at the time.

The one on US1 was still there until recently iirc

Somewhat related, I know of a Woolworth's that has been untouched since its closing in the 90s in a tourist city somewhere on the East Coast. I toured it by myself after a store owner friend gave me a key to the basement. I wanted to enjoy it more, but the constant dread of getting caught overwhelmed the fascination of this thirty year old time capsule.

> Howard Johnson's had fried clams, did not know that.

Funnily, I suppose there's many people who know about Howard Johnson's serving clams, even though we know almost nothing else about the chain.

This is thanks to Zappa's song/musical story Billy the Mountain, prominently featuring Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (the force behind The Turtles) on most memorable performances.

Excerpt:

    They left that night, crunchin' across the mojave desert
    Their voices echoing through the canyons of your minds
    "Ethel, want to get a cuppa cawfee?"
    
    "there's a Howard Johnsons! want to eat some clams?"
    The first noteworthy piece of real estate they destroyed was Edwards Air Force Base
    And to this very day, 'wing nuts' and data reduction clerks alike
    Speak in reverent whispers about that fateful night when
    Test stand number one and the rocket sled itself got LUNCHED!
    By a famous mountain-in and his small, wooden wife

> She admitted they were quite good, but there were no "bellies" (a particularly repellent portion of the dish).

I mean for, you, maybe. But throughout the eastern US, clams in all sort are not an obscure food item. Steamed clams are a common preparation (which is famously referenced in one of thr most memeified Simpsons scenes) and that is served as the whole clam not just the “strip”.

Also HoJos was pretty much responsible for popularizing the strip only variation throughout the US.

https://newengland.com/today/food/main-dishes/fish-seafood/f...

Whole fried clams may not be popular outside of the Northeast, they’re not exactly obscure.

As for HoJo style strips, it’s not like you can’t just get a fucking box in any supermarket freezer aisle. These are a Midwest food more than a New Hampshire food. Your secretary was humoring your “insistence”.

Looking at the other comments, it’s amusing how this post has pretty much drawn out the xenophobic middle American rubes of HN.

There are clam strips and fried whole belly clams. The latter are definitely better but you apparently don't like clams in general.

That said, as I get older I find most deep fried things are better not deep fried so I'll pretty much take steamers (steamed clams) by preference these days.

>Howard Johnson's had fried clam

They were clam strips from what I remember, and I am with your secretary. Clam Strips are a waste of calories :)

But I was rather surprised when friends from Atlanta GA visited and I took them to a place in New Hampshire, which I am sure your secretary has bee at many times. They thought Fried Clams were repellent, which was a big surprise to me.

The ended up getting scallops, but they did not believe were real because they were so large.

I'm in my sixties. I haven't been in a Howard Johnson's since I was a kid, but I distinctly remember the smell when walking into one, the smell of fried clams. It told me that we were on a vacation trip.

If you wouldn't mind my asking, do you happen to know where HoJos sourced its ice cream from? Did HoJos really make those 28 flavors or simply slap a label on some other creamery's work?

Also, if you can you should totally do a Reddit AMA. It's stories like your grandfather's I find interesting.

Thank you for sharing. Wish I could say I had a story to share, but I lived a pretty sheltered youth. I do remember it being called "Ho Joes" by everyone back then.

I imagine that sort of reward would not take place today.

Your memory has got me thinking. Eating out wasn't common in my childhood in the 1960s in the UK. My memories of sit-down meals at locations outside the house are mainly the Christmas dinners that the Marconi Marine branch in Liverpool organised for employees, and the summer trips that sort of happened based at school (double decker buses arrived, took us all out to somewhere like Blackpool or Loggerheads in Wales, and there was always a fish and chip sitdown when it was time to come back). And school dinners of course after around 1970 when I went to the big school which was further away.

Things opened up a bit in the 1970s and 1980s. I think it is a reflection of growing real disposable income, more restaurants and the cheaper chains opening.

Per the article, it's $10 per foot² of space leased. So I am guessing that to lease the whole place it would therefore be 7500ft² * $10-per-ft²-per-year / 12 months-per-year = $6250/month .

When I was growing up Howard Johnson's were everywhere. Their hotels were in every mid-size town as well. In the mid seventies there were over 500 hotels and 1000 restaurants. Just like Sears Roebuck it was classic Americana and you could easily make the assumption that it would be there forever, but by the year 2000 it had mostly disappeared. I admit to not knowing why.

Their hotels weren't anything remarkable but the restaurants were special. Perhaps tastes changed and once the restaurants retreated the hotels followed.

Cracker Barrel essentially fills this niche now.

I second the book rec, I thought it would be fairly predictable and lame, but it turned out to be completely awesome.

That honestly sounds like exactly the things that annoy me, those chain restaurants and franchises with always the same audience and food. Visiting is equivalent to going to a FedEx: You know what to expect, but you don't go there for pleasure.

That's good and expected for fast food (i.e. McDonald's), but fast food is something you do on the go: Using drive through or picking up, or when I was younger sitting in only transitionally with my friends to gulp down the fast food in the middle of our night out.

Luckily at least in the cities there are still a wide variety of individual restaurants, often better than where I'm from, especially (but not exclusively) if it comes to non-local cuisine. The chains take up space but they are still easy enough to ignore.