Tray Chic: Celebrating Indiana's Cafeteria Culture by Sam Stall



A fun, fascinating read

Cafeterias.

"They're about as state-of-the-art as a brontosaurus. And almost as rare. Unless you live in Indiana." (p. 6)

Indiana, with its love of tradition (or is it fear of change?) has somehow kept the traditional cafeterias open and thriving, especially in central Indiana.


In Tray Chic: Celebrating Indiana's Cafeteria Culture, Sam Stall explores the history of cafeterias in general and then explores the particular restaurants that have survived from those days of the dinosaur until today, including the recently closed "Laughner's"(the granddaddy of them all), MCL (the biggest chain), Gray Brothers (probably the best), Poe's (located just a stone's throw from Gray's - it gets a lot of their overflow business) and Jonathan Byrd's (with the biggest cafeteria line in the world). Add to that a cafeteria in Oolitic and Shapiro's, a cafeteria that disguises itself as a deli, throw in a discussion concerning the differences between a cafeteria and a buffet, add lots of humor and great interviews with these successful business owners and you have the recipe for a fun, breezy read about a bit of Hoosier culture.

A must for that proud devotee of that Hoosier culture.

 I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tray Chic: Celebrating Indiana's Cafeteria Culture by Sam Stall.

 Reviewed on November 6, 2009.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution - A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Alister McGrath

Image
Strong, but not for those who are not well-versed in history   Originally published in 2007. Let me just note that Alister McGrath has taken on a large topic (Protestantism) in Christianity's Dangerous Idea and done about as well as one can in organizing the information and presenting it in a cogent and readable fashion. McGrath assumes that you already know a lot about history in general and about the last 500 years or so in particular. That is to be expected. If he had to explain every last detail this book it would have to have been 3,000 pages rather than the already hefty 478 pages of text plus 50+ pages of endnotes. If you are a person that has heard of the Huguenots, but are not sure if they are a native group in South Africa or a religious group in France, this book is not for you. This is not a complete history, either. It is an overview. If you are looking for a complete history of a particular denomination, you are likely to be disappointed. Some denom...
Read more

JOHN WESLEY HARDIN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published by Hourly History in October of 2025. John Wesley Hardin (1853-1895) is the archetype of the Old West gunman in so many ways: a) He was most active in the immediate post-Civil War era; b) His violence was not really directed for any larger cause, mostly just family beefs or perceived personal insults; c) Eventually, his violent ways caused his death. Hardin was credited with more than 20 murders, although he claimed he killed 42 men. He wasn't fighting to prove a point, like Billy the Kid claimed to. He wasn't fighting as an extension of the Civil War, like Jesse James claimed to be doing. Instead, Hardin was literally running and gunning as he fled from one jurisdiction to another. He hid among an immense extended family network, eventually killed someone, and then fled to another location to hide among another set of cousins. I found this to be an interesting read. Hardin was clearly some sort of sociopath - anyone who kills 42 people in multiple settings in less th...
Read more

DRAGONS of AUTUMN TWILIGHT (Dragonlance Chronicles #1) (audiobook) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Image
Originally published in 1984. Audiobook published in 2013 by Audible Studios. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 20 hours, 0 minutes. Unabridged. Way back when, I read every book in this series from cover to cover as quickly as they came out. I did the same with at least two other follow-up series from these authors and, if I remember correctly, I read other books that were connected to this series - but not by the original authors. I proudly had about a dozen related books on my book shelf. That was 40 years ago. I sold those books along the way and had largely forgotten about them. I was reminded of them and I decided to listen to the audiobook version of the first book just to see if they were as good as I remembered. Synopsis: Krynn is a mostly peaceful place years after a calamity caused the people to turn away from the old gods. Cynicism abounds and the people worship new gods that may not after much comfort, but at least they didn't turn away from the people at their time of gr...
Read more

THE PROVING GROUND (Lincoln Lawyer #8) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Image
Published in 2025 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Lincoln Lawyer returns for another case in The Proving Ground . Mickey Haller has moved away from defense work to civil litigation. In this case, an AI program designed to be a friend substitute to young adults and teens told a teenage boy to get rid of his girlfriend in a way that could easily be interpreted as killing her. So, he took his father's unsecured pistol and shot her in the high school parking lot. Haller is suing the company for marketing a faulty product towards teens. He is pretty sure he has the goods - bad programming and an unethical marketing team that is more concerned about demonstrating the potential of the AI so the company can be absorbed by a bigger company with deep pockets. They wanted the payoff rather than making it safe. But, as Haller and his team start to dig, they find they are out of their depth. Tech writer Jack McEvoy come...
Read more

JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1979. Synopsis Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison.  The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison. What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-C...
Read more

CHURCH REFUGEES: SOCIOLOGISTS REVEAL WHY PEOPLE ARE DONE with CHURCH but NOT THEIR FAITH by Josh Packard, PhD and Ashleigh Hope

Image
Published in 2015. Packard and Hope set out to investigate why formerly active members of Christian churches (all denominations) leave and don't come back to any church at all. These are not members that leave and go to a new church - these are members that completely walk away from any church. He calls them "dechurched" or "dones", as in they are completely done with church. Every year, churches across the country lose active members. In this case, Packard and Hope are not talking about merely regularly attending members - they are talking about members who lead committees, music directors and even former clergy. These are part of the leadership of the church - the people that are committed enough to get things done. Packard and Hope assumed that these folks were simply "burnout" cases - people that just were tired and dropped out altogether.  "Instead, the dechurched are walking away from church work, but not the work of the church. They're ...
Read more

WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON (audiobook) by John Green and David Levithan

Image
Audiobook published in 2010 by Listening Library. Performed by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two Chicago area teens named Will Grayson who attend different schools and do not know one another. One Will Grayson is determined not to risk hurt romantic feelings by not putting himself out there to make connections and possibly get hurt. Instead, he focuses on knowing all about obscure bands and lives vicariously through his over-the-top best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny Cooper is a massive mountain of young man who is also gay and is also the school's most talented athlete. Think of the biggest football lineman you have ever seen, make that lineman great at every sport, able to sing show tunes at the drop of a hat, and the biggest social butterfly in the school. The other Will Grayson is a closeted gay teen who has found an online boyfriend from Ohio. He muddles through high school life by g...
Read more

THE LONG HAUL: A TRUCKER'S TALES of LIFE on the ROAD by Finn Murphy

Image
Published in 2017 by HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books. Read by Danny Campbell. Duration: 8 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged. Finn Murphy is a long haul trucker, meaning he drives the trucks that you see on the interstate. Murphy doesn't just haul anything - he drives a moving truck. He packs, loads, hauls and unloads households - more than 3,000 of them by his estimation. Finn Murphy's transportation for a promotional book tour . Murphy tells about the generalities of driving a big truck, particularly a moving truck. He includes several entertaining stories about his life on the road.  The listener (I heard this as an audiobook) gets a feel for the comings and goings of the truckers in the moving industry.  His story of his first day as a mover is a classic "how can this get any worse" story. I first heard about this book in an interview on NPR with Terry Gross . This is ironic because the author discusses how so many truckers listen to NPR because i...
Read more

BRAVE COMPANIONS: PORTRAITS in HISTORY (audiobook) by David MCCullough

Image
Originally published in hardback book form in 1991. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 11 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged Brave Companions: Portraits in History  is a collection of previously published articles and speeches. It's a smattering of this and that - sometimes it's about art, sometimes about scientists, sometimes about politicians and sometimes it's just some musings from McCullough about history. It doesn't matter, almost all of it is interesting and well-told. McCullough understands the value of telling history as a story - as always he is very approachable. My favorite entry was the story of the railroad that preceded the Panama Canal. It was an amazing story of the power of human will against nature. McCullough reads this audiobook, which is great because McCullough has a fantastic speaking voice and is well known for his voice work. I envy both his writing ability and his talents as a speaker. My fav...
Read more

THE HIGHWAY (Cody Hoyt #2, Cassie Dewell #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Image
Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds  or the movie The Silence of the Lambs  you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done. In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. T...
Read more