A Gastronomic Peep Show

When New York dined à la vending machine.

Daniel Lavery’s The Women’s Hotel is now open for literary check-in. Today’s newsletter was inspired by Tuesday’s book talk at Morton Library in Rhinebeck. Order, read, review—and do the same for another great new book: Alex Hannaford’s Lost in Austin.

In 1912, New York's culinary landscape underwent a seismic shift when the first Automat opened at Broadway and 42nd Street—a fever dream of modernity where the American Dream came pre-sliced and hermetically sealed behind tiny glass panes.

It wasn't just a restaurant; it was a gastronomic peep show where famished urbanites could feast their eyes on an array of culinary delights before committing nickels. The Automat stood as a gleaming Art Deco cathedral, its congregants worshipping at the altar of coin-operated cuisine.

An earlier attempt to introduce the Automat concept in New York. The Harcombe Restaurant Co. opened an Automat at 830 Broadway shortly after the Philadelphia location, its first, but it was the Horn & Hardart chain that would go on to dominate and define the Automat era in New York City.

Inside this chrome-and-glass labyrinth, social strata dissolved faster than bouillon cubes in hot water. Horn & Hardart, the masterminds behind this food-dispensing phenomenon, had inadvertently created a great equalizer. Wall Street tycoons and street sweepers alike fumbled with their coins, united in the delightful indignity of struggling to operate what was essentially a giant vending machine for lunch.

Each miniature portal concealed a potential disappointment or delight: perhaps a slice of pie so geometrically perfect it could make Euclid weep, or a sandwich cut with the precision of a mob hit. The air, thick with the aroma of coffee and broken dreams, carried the discordant symphony of a city's collective digestive gurgle.

By the 1940s, the Automat had become a ubiquitous part of New York City's dining landscape, a culinary curiosity-cum-cultural icon. At its peak, Horn & Hardart operated 40 Automats across the city.

But New York's love affair with the Automat, like many of the city's passionate dalliances, burned bright and fizzled fast. As fast food chains multiplied with the persistence of cockroaches, the chrome dulled, the little windows clouded, and New Yorkers moved on to the next culinary craze, leaving behind a graveyard of abandoned apple pies and mid-century optimism.

Today, as we swipe and tap our way through meal delivery apps, we might pause to remember the satisfying chunk of a nickel falling into a slot, the anticipation of a door swinging open, and the realization that sometimes, progress tastes a lot like slightly stale rice pudding.

See you soonish! In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram and my books on Bookshop, Amazon, and your local bookstore or library. If you’d like me to sign or personalize my books, purchase copies from Oblong.