The Lost Machine Automats and Self-Service Cafeterias of NYC (2023)

When I was maybe 5 or so, my mom took my sister and I to Chicago from Kansas City. That train ride in and of itself is something of time capsule in my memory. My sister remembered the glowing handrails (radium?). I remember the lounge car where passengers sipped cocktails and watched the lights at night rush past outside. The women dressing, in my fuzzy recollection, like extras in The Thin Man.

Chicago was where I got to buy a pie, or some kind of dessert, from an automat. What a magical thing to give a kid some coins and just tell them to go grab what they like…

There are a number of things from my childhood that I came to find later were just gone. (Or obscure now to the point they are essentially gone.) Imagine my delight when the film Dark City featured an automat.

I was surprised in Tokyo to find something of a hybrid. Those places where you place your order, pay through something like a vending machine at the entrance of the place. The order goes back to the kitchen and, after you've sat down and waited a short time, your order is up.

Struck me as an efficient way to not have to have someone running a cash register, seating you, taking your order.

Also, there's a documentary called "The Automat" [1] that I tracked down just recently—have not yet watched. (Looks like it's streaming on Amazon, FWIW.)

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4554690/

There's a pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93779577@N00/4235886625

It was a fun place. Wish there were more like it.

Today, the only remaining cafeterias in the SF bay area seem to be in-house feeding operations for employees. Many of the ones in hospitals are open to the public.

There's a minimum traffic level for a cafeteria, and it's fairly high. With low traffic, the food sits out too long and becomes leftovers. Like Whole Foods' salad and hot bars.

Restaurants seem to have fads. In the SF bay area, there are few French restaurants any more. California cuisine is dead. Fish is down. (Amusingly, on Doordash, all types of fish are treated as synonyms for "salmon".) Many restaurants no longer serve bread.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Choice

Instead of, here are all our ingredients, which do you want, it’s a precise set of premade meals with no substitutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat

The same source has an article about the pink granite quarry involved in a lot of NYC buildings,

https://www.untappedcities.com/stony-creek-quarry-and-the-gr... ("Stony Creek Quarry and the Granite that Built New York")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819

I think we still have automats. Ikea cafe for example, the cafeteria in the basement of the Natural History and Science Museum in Washington, D.C., any number of places where you get food, checkout, sit, eat, leave without interacting with anyone.

Here's another one with Jean Arthur at automat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIfzFGAAOyk

[1]: https://dutchreview.com/dutch-quirks/dutch-quirk-107-eat-foo...