Blue-plate special
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by restaurant
Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...
s, particularly (but not only) diner
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
s and cafe
Café
A café , also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee, like an American coffeehouse. In the United States, it may refer to an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches...
s. It refers to a specially low-priced meal, usually changing daily. It typically consists of a "meat and three
Meat and three
Meat and three or meat and three veg is a popular meal combination found in rural cuisine in the Southern United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom....
" (three vegetables), presented on a single plate, often a divided plate (rather than more elegantly on separate dishes). The term was very common from the 1920s through the 1950s. , there are still a few restaurants and diners that offer blue-plate specials under that name, sometimes on blue plates, but it is a vanishing tradition. The phrase itself, however, is still a common American colloquial
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
expression.
A web collection of 1930s prose gives this definition: "A Blue Plate Special is a low-priced daily diner special: a main course with all the fixins, a daily combo, a square for two bits."
History of the phrase
The origin and explanation of the phrase are not clear. Kevin Reed says that "during the DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, a manufacturer started making plates with separate sections for each part of a meal—like a frozen dinner tray—it seems that for whatever reason they were only available in the color blue." Michael Quinion cites a dictionary entry indicating that the blue plates were, more specifically, inexpensive divided plates that were decorated with a "blue willow
Willow pattern
The Willow pattern, more commonly known as Blue Willow, is a distinctive and elaborate pattern used on ceramic kitchen/housewares. The pattern was designed by Thomas Minton around 1790 and has been in use for over 200 years. Other references give alternative origins, such as Thomas Turner of...
" or similar blue pattern, such as those popularized by Spode
Spode
Spode is a well-known English brand of pottery and homewares based in Stoke-on-Trent.- The overview :Spode is a Stoke-on-Trent based pottery company that was founded by Josiah Spode in 1770...
and Wedgwood
Wedgwood
Wedgwood, strictly speaking Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a pottery firm owned by KPS Capital Partners, a private equity company based in New York City, USA. Wedgwood was founded on May 1, 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood, an...
. One of his correspondents says that the first known use of the term is on an October 22, 1892 Fred Harvey Company
Fred Harvey Company
The origin of the Fred Harvey Company can be traced to the 1875 opening of two railroad eating houses located at Wallace, Kansas and Hugo, Colorado on the Kansas Pacific Railway. These cafés were opened by Fred Harvey, then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad...
restaurant menu, and implies that blue-plate specials were regular features at Harvey Houses.
The term became common starting in the late 1920s. A May 27, 1926 advertisement in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
for "The Famous Old Sea Grill Lobster and Chop House" at 141 West 45th Street promises "A La Carte All Hours", "Moderate Prices", and "Blue Plate Specials". A December 2, 1928 article, lamenting the rise in prices that has made it difficult to "dine on a dime", praises an Ann Street establishment where you can still get "a steak-and-lots-of-onion sandwich for a dime and a "big blue-plate special, with meat course and three vegetables, is purchasable for a quarter, just as it has been for the last ten years." The first book publication of Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
's story, Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alexander Hall. The screenplay was written by William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, and Gladys Hellman after a short story by Damon Runyon. The film stars Shirley Temple, Adolphe Menjou, and Dorothy Dell in a story about a little girl held...
, was in a 1934 collection entitled "Damon Runyon's Blue Plate Special". A Hollywood columnist wrote in 1940, "Every time Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
enters the Metro commissary, executives and minor geniuses look up from their blue plate specials to look at the actor and marvel." In the 1953 The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners is an American situation comedy television show, based on a recurring 1951–'55 sketch of the same name. It originally aired on the DuMont network's Cavalcade of Stars and subsequently on the CBS network's The Jackie Gleason Show hosted by Jackie Gleason, and filmed before a live...
episode
Episode
An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars...
"Suspense," Ralph, suspecting that Alice plans to murder him with a carving knife, says to Norton, "Did you hear that, pal? She wants to borrow a carving knife. I never thought I'd end up a blue-plate special."
"No substitutions" was a common policy on blue-plate specials. One 1947 Candid Microphone episode features Allen Funt
Allen Funt
Allen Funt was an American television producer, director and writer, television personality, best known as the creator and host of Candid Camera from the 1940s to 1980s, as either a regular television show or a television series of specials...
ordering a blue-plate special and trying to talk the waiter into making various changes, such as replacing the vegetable soup with consommé
Consommé
In cooking, a consommé is a type of clear soup made from richly flavored stock or bouillon that has been clarified usually through a fining process involving egg protein. It usually requires an advanced knowledge of cooking and past experience to create a high quality consommé...
, while the polite but increasingly annoyed waiter tries in vain to explain to Funt that "no substitutions" means what it says. Our Man in Havana
Our Man in Havana
Our Man In Havana is a novel by British author Graham Greene, where he makes fun of intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants....
(1958) by Graham Greene has the following exchange regarding an "American blue-plate lunch":
"Surely you know what a blue-plate is, man? They shove the whole meal at you under your nose, already dished up on your plate -roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sausages and carrots and French Fried. I can't bear French fried but there's no pick and choose with a blue-plate."
"No pick and choose?"
"You eat what you're given. That's democracy, man."
Contemporary usage
Road food experts Jane and Michael SternJane and Michael Stern
Jane Grossman Stern and Michael Stern are American writers who specialize in books about travel, food, and popular culture...
entitled their 2001 guidebook "Blue Plate Specials and Blue Ribbon Chefs: The Heart And Soul Of America's Great Roadside Restaurants".
In contemporary use, a "blue-plate special" can be any inexpensive full meal, any daily selection, or merely a whimsical phrasing. A travel columnist says that a Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
eatery offers "budget blue-plate specials along with more refined fare." The Turner South cable channel calls a daily movie selection, scheduled at lunchtime, its "blue-plate special". Mystery writer Abigail Padgett's second novel about amateur sleuth Blue McCarron is entitled The Last Blue Plate Special; no meals here, the blue plates are part of the decor at a clinic where patients are dying mysteriously. A reviewer uses the headline "The Red, White and Blue Plate Special" for a review of a book on "Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks". There is of course (at least one) blues band named Blue Plate Special. Boston Children's Museum
Boston Children's Museum
Boston Children's Museum is a children's museum in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the education of children. Located on Children's Wharf along the Fort Point Channel, Boston Children's Museum is the second oldest children's museum in the United States...
presents a participatory-theatre show, sponsored by health insurer Blue Cross, which teaches good nutrition; the show is called "Blue Plate Special".
In popular culture
The Georgia Institute of TechnologyGeorgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
's college radio station, WREK
WREK
WREK is the radio station staffed by the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology. It is located at 91.1 MHz and on channel 17 on the Georgia Tech cable TV network, GTCN...
-Atlanta, has a weekday show named "Blue Plate Special" that offers a diverse mixture of nearly every genre of music offered at the station.
External links
- Blue Plate Special, anyone? Kevin Reed's article
- Blue Plate Special A competing explanation by Michael Quinion
- Blue Plate Special "a square for two bits"
- Children's museum show (sponsorship by Blue Cross mentioned elsewhere)
- WREK Sound Blocks (Georgia Tech's WREK radio)