I See Dead People Restaurants.
Read all the sad details in this op-ed piece in The New York Times. A landmark for almost fifty years, the Howard Johnson’s at 46th and Broadway (1551 Broadway) will be closing.
While anyone who visited this eatery thinks of it as simple American food, a kind of home cooking away from home, the article is by renowned French chef Jacques Pepin, who worked for Howard Johnson’s early in his culinary career, refining HoJo’s recipes with the help of Pierre Franey, another famous French chef, known to many as the 60 Minute Gourmet of the Times.
The property will be used as retail space with “a great signage component, ” according the the real estate broker for the deal. About a dozen (actually nine and counting) of the familiar orange and aqua roadside restaurants remain, according to an earlier Times article. The chain seemed everywhere along America’s highways, since its founding in 1925 in Quincy, Massachusetts as an ice cream shop. HJ was one of the country’s first franchises.