Posted on 06/03/2022 12:53:29 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
It's the end of an era. The last Howard Johnson's restaurant has just closed. Among the amazing things I found out while researching the subject of Howard Johnson's is that famous French chef Jaques Pépin was hired by the company to improve their menu. Pépin was slated to become a chef at the JFK White House but chose to work on the Howard Johnson's menu instead. Later Pépin co-hosted cooking shows on PBS with Julia Child. This video also reveals how Pépin rendered a CBS reporter speechless.
PING!
Ping
(Howard Johnson’s)
I remember when they had 1 flavor of ice cream 🍨🍦
Had a HoJos at the end of our street as a kid. My friends and I felt like grown-ups when we could go there ourselves to buy a milkshake or french-fries with our paper-route or lawn-cutting money.
I was looking for the pic right when you posted that.
Made me a lifelong fan of fried clams.
They had the best hot dogs.
Certainly a tangent; but, Julia Child was an OSS agent during WWII.
Oh man, I forgot about those it’s been so long. There used to be one just off the interstate west of Nashville. Our family used to stop there every time we went through.
Excellent
fried clams, chicken croquettes, milk shakes. that was really living!
Howard Johnson restaurants were located along the old highways.
IMP, the interstates led to their demise.
There was a Howard Johnson’s in the next down over from where we lived and got married. All the out of town guests stayed there on a group rate. Even had our names up on the letter board outside!
I remember the first time I traveled on the road by myself, I stopped at Howard Johnson’s in Springfield, Illinois and had the franks and beans and a small loaf of dark rye bread. Little did I know that Jacques Pepin had something to do with that. My college pals and I used to go in and plunder their all-you-can-eat clams on Fridays. In graduate school I would go in and order ice cream and coffee and the waitress would keep refillling the coffee and I would sit and smoke cigarettes and do my homework for a couple of hours and they didn’t mind. I think the last time I found a HoJo to stop at was over a quarter-century ago in Kentucky.
She and Paul both
“Made me a lifelong fan of fried clams. Plus clam chowder, good salads and their ice cream.”
About a year before my wife and I met each other, she had discovered HoJo’s in the midwest where she lived and the southwest where I lived, my friends and I discovered HoJo’s.
On the weekends, she and her sister RN students pooled their money to buy gas and tolls. Then, they drove to the nearest HoJo’s on their interstate to enjoy the food.
My friends and I did the same thing in the SW and got on a new interstate and went to HoJo’s.
Later we met, got engaged and married. HoJo’s was when ever she had the time off we had 15 $’s for the tolls and food.
She was a big fan of Julia Child and has most of her cookbooks. We both loved her sense of humor on tv.
Our fav fast food was A&W. They had the basic menus and often fav items for their area. Many if not most of them closed for the winter months sometime in Nov.. Then, they reopened a little before Easter.
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