When Everybody Ate at Schrafft's: Memories, Pictures, and Recipes from a Very Special Restaurant Empire [Hardcover]

Joan Kanel Slomanson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2006

When Everybody Ate at Schrafft's is a lavishly illustrated book about the Schrafft's restaurant empire and the era in which it thrived. It will bring back memories to former customers and provide recipes from the past, as well as awaken interest for those long-gone days in people unfamiliar with Schrafft's.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; First printing (stated) edition (April 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569802955
• ISBN-13: 978-1569802953
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,277,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A charming walk down memory lane, April 4, 2006

By 

Lady Broadbent (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When Everybody Ate at Schrafft's: Memories, Pictures, and Recipes from a Very Special Restaurant Empire (Hardcover)

This must be the first and most comprehensive collection of Schrafft's memorabilia to date. Joan Slomanson has collected quotes, recipes, images and memories from a varied list of celebrities, former customers and employees of the many Schrafft's that were on the east coast until the mid-seventies. It's surprising that there are not more photos of the Schrafft's 'stores' that dotted the streets of NY,Boston etc, ecspecially the interiors. This book is a sweet valentine to another era that should appeal to the anyone interested in food and a genteel lifestyle.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nostalgia......with recipes!, May 15, 2006

By 

J. Fischer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Everybody Ate at Schrafft's: Memories, Pictures, and Recipes from a Very Special Restaurant Empire (Hardcover)

Although I don't have much of a personal history with Schrafft's,
it was such a part of the life of the times it feels as though I was
a regular customer. Joan Slomanson has so captured the atmosphere of the
period and I can't help but feel nostalgic for such a less
complicated time. I know there are wonderful things today,
though they are buried in a lot of not so wonderful things, alas,
and we can't become what we once were, but how delightful it
was to spend the afternoon in the sincerity, innocence,
dependability, honesty and charm of a little corner of the past -
with some great comfort food recipes to try later! It deserves
to be a great success!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "S" for Shadow Layer Cake, Superb Food, and SCHRAFFT'S!!!, April 2, 2009

By 

Ace (East Coast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When Everybody Ate at Schrafft's: Memories, Pictures, and Recipes from a Very Special Restaurant Empire (Hardcover)

Page 147.... I stopped and stared at that picture of Schrafft's Fordham Road "Bread" window (I believe the opposite window had Peanut Brittle in it) the same way I would physically stop and eat it all in with my eyes, back in the 1950's, when I was growing up in the Bronx.

Mom Sylvia LOVED their Shadow layer cake and their WONDERFUL coffee -- We would eat there at least once a week (amazing, since our income level was not even considered middle class, back then) -- Mom would bring us kiddies there -- right after church on Saturday (Our Lady of Mt Carmel) OR right after another one of thse agonizing shopping trips to Alexander's ("Ma!! Hurry Up!! ..... Ma!!!They don't even have a TOY department here!!!!")

Schrafft's was truly a hallowed place. Their food was exceptional. Their ice cream was out of this world. I remember many times going in for Breakfast with Mom Sylvia and Sis, and asking Bill (the handsome guy who worked the counter at Fordham Road) "What's the Cake of the Day?!" And he would smile, call down the dumbwaiter and in seconds, a thoroughly confused bakery attendant ("They want WHAT for breakfast?!") would slide a layer cake into the dumbwaiter's gleaming, waiting tray, and the morning's first layer cake would appear, gliding up from the bakery below - and Ma, Sis and I would have cake for breakfast.

As the book makes quite clear -- Schrafft's cakes were glorious -- nectar and ambrosia -- and the best cake of them all was their Shadow Layer Cake -- oh I WISH you had put that recipe in this book!! -- (Or if it IS there then I haven't found it yet). Shadow Layer Cake was the ONLY thing that could calm down not only my stentorian, strident, 5'1" warrior-mother Sylvia, but also her equally formidable friend Dolly - when those two were sitting at the kitchen table, slowly devouring a whole Shadow layer Cake, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes in their stylishly long (this was the 1950's, remember) cigarette holders, us little kids knew that PEACE would reign until the whole cake was devoured.

Sitting at Schrafft's counter was fun -- sitting at the tables at Schrafft's was a European experience -- you were waited on hand and foot, and all the little kids were prodded to mind their manners.

And of course, we'd always bring "something Schrafft's" home to eat, in a white box, all tied up in string, and carried like it was the relic of a saint. Sometimes it would be Mom's Food-of-the-Gods -- Shadow Layer Cake -- other times, "just" cookies, much to Nonna Lucia's consternation (granny lived with us) -- she'd be up to her elbows in dough, making Italian Wedding cookies or italian Wine cookies and we'd waltz in the door bearing sweets from Schrafft's -- LOL!!

Recipes, images of old menus (oh.... what memories they evoke!), cartoons, stories and anecdotes are liberally sprinkled throughout this book. Wonderful! Wonderful!!!

This book is small but mighty -- well-written, with a tribute from Frank G, Shattuck himself (I knew that name as well as I knew my own name, by the time iI was 5 years old) has great recipes, exceptional nostalgia, and makes me long for those days when you could find a Schrafft's everywhere in Manhattan and in my neighborhood in the Bronx as well.

It gladdens my heart to know that I can bring a little bit of Schrafft's back into my home, with all those wonderful mouth-watering recipes liberally sprinkled throughout this book.

Like stars in the night sky slowly being extinguished one by one after a beautiful night's dream, Schrafft's beautiful restaurants started closing down, one by one. The one on Fordham Road was still there in the early 60's -- after that, I know not when it shuttered its doors.

However, there were still one or two Schrafft's left in Manhattan -- I remember keeping a copy of my bill until it faded, from one Schrafft's that I happily dined in, in the early or mid 80's.

Maybe one day.....there will be a Schrafft's revival??? I can dream. You can call me a (Schrafft's) dreamer -- but (maybe) I'm not the only one.....!

Thank you for a book well-written, with lots of love and memories on every page. ALL my friends from the Bronx are going to hear about this one!!

BTW -- Page 107 brought me some unexpected joy. Thank you.

PS -- Did you Know-- there was also a Schrafft's in (Laurel) Maryland, on the Baltimore Washington Parkway in the 60's -- as a heartbroken Bronx kid who had to move from New York to live in Virginia -- it eased my broken NY heart when I saw it as we were enroute from NY to Virginia, and I dined several times in that Maryland Schrafft's -- no it was NOT New York, but the fact that there WAS a Schrafft's not far from me was a great comfort to this very homesick kid. That restaurant closed some time in the 70's, I think.