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Dining with Dave

An Era Almost Over…

A truly southern tradition, the cafeteria-style restaurant era is all but over. As a child growing up in Orlando, Florida, my first memories of dining out meant we were going to the down town Morrison’s Cafeteria after church on Sunday. I can still see the interior decor, lay out of the lines and even memories of being in the high chair as I pointed to the chop steak, turnip greens, and macaroni and cheese, and for dessert, it was the baked egg custard cup or the custard pie, almost every time.

I have to credit my parents with this odd passion for the cafeteria experience. A little history, My Mother and Father were deep, deep southerner’s by birth. My Mother was born in Baton Rouge, LA and later moved to Vicksburg, MS where she met and married my Father. Dad was born in Greenville, MS and then moved to Vicksburg after the flood. Mind you, I’m not sure which flood, but apparently there was a great flood in Greenville, MS that caused my Father’s family to move to Vicksburg.

All of my childhood, I was raised thinking that when people chose to eat out, that meant they were going to one of four locations of the then Morrison’s Cafeteria’s in the Orlando/Winter Park area. Needless to say, I was wrong, in fact, none of my friends were eating at a cafeteria, but other sit down restaurants with waiters and menus too.

As a young adult in high school - around dinner time, it was not uncommon for my friends to call the Piccadilly Cafeteria at the Fashion Square Mall only to have me paged and summoned to the manager’s office to coordinate that Saturday night’s events. That joke still gets play in some circles when I go home to visit with friends.

I guess it was the relationships my parents made at those places. The staff knew them and called them by name, the help catered to their peculiar needs, and fellow patron’s or regulars of sorts would often sit near us or even join us during our meals, just to talk and catch up with the goings on of the day. It was nice. My siblings used to jokingly say that the cafeteria was my parent’s version of being a member of a sort of country club. In fact in my adult years that name stuck, and going out to dinner meant we will see you at the "club".

The night my youngest was born in Jacksonville - January of 2002, I was on the phone calling the "club" in Orlando, where the manager made the announcement over the speaker system that Sarah was born and that Mom and baby were doing fine, Dad (me) on the other hand was a sobbing mess. For what ever reason, those days are all but gone now. There are only a hand full of cafeterias left. Morrison’s closed most of their stores and sold what they didn’t close to what is now Piccadilly Cafeteria’s.

Piccadilly Cafeteria’s closed probably 50 percent or more of their locations in shopping malls all over the south due to the retail giants trying to secure higher rents for the space the restaurants occupied. Now they are limited to stand alone locations similar to normal "sit-down" restaurants most of us are used to.

Upon a recent visit to the Piccadilly Cafeteria located on the west side of Jacksonville, not much has changed. That single principle might be the very answer for their current standing, not much has changed. In this incredibly fast paced society we live in, where change is the buzz word of the day, the cafeteria style restaurant is dying off just like the people and the generation that found them to be so nice. Truly an era, that is almost over.

Piccadilly Cafeterias, Inc. was founded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1944 by T. H. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton's goal was to build a chain of 40 cafeterias serving freshly prepared home-style meals at family-style prices. In 2003, Piccadilly operated about 180 cafeterias offering the same freshness, quality, variety and value that made the original Piccadilly Cafeteria a Baton Rouge institution.

In fifty-nine years, Hamilton had surpassed his goal by four and a half times, five years later (2008) and a merger with Morrison‘s Cafeteria‘s the count has now lessened by fifty stores to 130 locations in 15 states, and zero locations in Orlando. You may go to: www.piccadilly.com to find a store nearest you.