"Quick Lunch," Grimes & the TImes

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

On Friday, someone showed me a book review, written by former food critic
William Grimes, of AN EMPIRE OF WEALTH: THE EPIC HISTORY OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC
POWER, by John Steele Gordon.

>From the NEW YORK TIMES, 3 December 2004, pg. E44, col. 6:

This is popular history, written almost entirely from secondary sources,
with a bare sprinkling of footnotes. The facts are not always correct. The
quick-lunch counters frequented by Wall Street brokers were old news by the
1860's, when Mr. Gordon claims they were invented.


So my friend says that I should know something about "quick lunch." What
version is correct? A quick check on Newspaperarchive shows not a single
citation for "quick lunch" before about 1890.

Frankly, all I know is what I read in the New York Times. I posted this
discovery to ADS-L a while ago. Read the entire old post again. Grimes knows  more
about New York City food history than the New York Times of 100 years  ago?


14 September 1903, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 7:
_Quick Lunch  Pioneer Dead._
Patrick Dolan, proprietor of Dolan's restaurant at 3 Park Row,  and known as
the originator of the quick lunch counter, died yesterday afternoon  at 4
o'clock of apoplexy.