Posted on 02/27/2019 11:09:31 AM PST by Coleus
Move over egg creams and doughnuts. Sprouts are moving in.
Schnackenberg’s, an old-fashioned luncheonette that for 88 years served classic concoctions of seltzer with chocolate syrup, tuna melts and other staples of decades past, has closed, a victim of what its owner said were changing times and healthier tastes.
An eatery with a different menu and a different vibe will take Schnackenberg’s place on Washington Street, between 11th and 12th streets, under the name “Alfalfa.”
“Doughnuts and milkshakes are not the steady diet of modern Hobokenites,” said Joyce Flinn, who along with her husband, Eugene, bought Schnackenberg’s from the daughter of its original owners just after Hurricane Sandy.
“We had the most awesome doughnuts in town, and people would say, ‘Oh, I love those doughnuts!’ But if you eat one doughnut a month, that’s not going to pay my rent,” Flinn said in an emotional phone interview. “It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and we didn’t make it lightly. It was really a long-considered and painful choice.”
Schackenberg’s was opened in 1931 by the parents of Dorothy Novak (née Schnackenberg), who continued to live upstairs from the restaurant in the family-owned building until she passed away not long ago. During the height of the Great Depression, Hoboken was a largely working class shipping port that bore little resemblance to the popular night spot or high-rent New York City bedroom community it would eventually become. The food was basic luncheonette fare: burgers, shakes, tuna melts, store-made doughnuts, and a nod to Schnackenberg’s German heritage called the eggtzel, a kind of pretzel breakfast sandwich.
The luncheonette underwent a makeover after the Flinns took control. But, Joyce Flinn said a shrinking clientele and a protracted construction project on Washington Street that discouraged walk-in traffic made it clear
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
It is sad. Melancholy.
And, I’ve never really ever experienced these east coast places, but am still sad.
I never had an egg cream.
What’s it like?
I tried to make one once using a kosher chocolate syrup and seltzer water from a bottle.
Awful tasting.
And being from the east coast, I’ve been in these place.
I’ll be OK without them :)
I liked driving into A&W and getting served in the car like I was on Happy Days though :)
Normally, I don’t post these.. but I like it, maybe you do too, or will.
Egg Creams are the best. Drank plenty as a kid but haven’t had one in many years.
The other I posted was just one I found on a search.
When I was a college kid there was a pharmacy close to campus that had a small lunch counter in back. Simple lunch food, egg salad sandwiches, tuna melts, chili dogs, soup of the day, chipped beef and gravy over toast. Nothing fancy, but good and cheap. Building was torn down circa 1990 and a cookie cutter apartment complex went up.
Sad to see a piece of Americana history go away. You don’t see lunch counters like that anymore.
A not-bad proximity, depending on the brand of cream soda, would be mixing a can of cream soda with a chocolate Yoo Hoo.
My Father was a Soda Jerk (testing how old FReepers are) when he was a Kid in New Jersey.
He made the best Egg Creams and Ice Cream Sodas I’ve ever had.
As I write this I am looking at our Seafoam Green Hamilton Beach Malt (Model 25) Machine 1930’s Vintage that he bought from his old Boss. Still works like a charm.
“Egg Creams are the best. Drank plenty as a kid but haven’t had one in many years.”
“Awful tasting.”
Well.
I guess it’s a matter of taste.
I guess it’s chocolate syrup and soda or ohosphate. No cream.
Looks very much like Holstens; Watchung Ave & Broad St in Montclair/Glen Ridge, where my Dad took me for ice cream sodas as a kid and where a Sopranos episode was filmed. Still open.
http://holstens.com/ opened 1939
Hard to keep a store open @ $3.25 a shot.
I know I’ve had an egg cream long ago, but IIRC there was a trick that, basically, an egg cream had neither eggs nor cream.
From Wiki:
An egg cream is a cold beverage consisting of milk, carbonated water, and flavored syrup (typically chocolate or vanilla). Despite the name, the drink contains neither eggs nor cream.
The egg cream is almost exclusively a fountain drink. Although there have been several attempts to bottle it, none has been wholly successful, as its fresh taste and characteristic head require mixing of the ingredients just before drinking.
Not quite, and you’re missing the milk. If you put a little milk in a cream soda, you’ll get pretty close to a vanilla egg cream, which was always my favorite.
That’s like a time machine. It looks like very little has been updated since it opened.
“A not-bad proximity, depending on the brand of cream soda, would be mixing a can of cream soda with a chocolate Yoo Hoo.”
Thanks.
It doesn’t seem to my taste. It’s weird, I like milk product with my chocolate.
I love the egg cream mystique and history.
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