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

My mother was the recipient of this gift and she worked in Schraft's in the 40's. She loved the book and it brought back a lot of memories and even taught her a few things she didn't know - a real task with my mother. She recommended it for anyone who worked or ate there.

Bring them back...Schrafft's, of course! Brings back memories of Aunt Lillian and Mary Jane shoes!

Lavishly illustrated throughout, "When Everybody Ate At Schrafft's" by Joan Kanel Slomanson is a compilation of memories, pictures, and recipes from a very special New York City based restaurant empire that grew to more than fifty establishments popular with celebrities, businessmen, and the public at large. Slomanson writes with a special expertise as a former advertising agency creative director and a friend of Schrafft's founder Frank G. Shattuck's grandson who provides files filled with exclusive information on Schrafft's -- including hundreds of previous unavailable recipes. "When Everybody Ate At Schrafft's" also includes maps of all the Schrafft's locations, including more than 50 in New York City, and the many motor inns that stretched along I-95 from New England to Florida. A welcome addition to any personal or community library cookbook collection for the recipes alone, "When Everybody Ate At Schrafft's" will also have a very special appeal for anyone who has ever dined at a Schrafft's and would appreciate the nostalgic pictures capturing the look and feel of a unique era in American restaurant history.

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!

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.