Recently, the splendid P and I did some pop cultural spelunking by way of Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury is home to one of the last "real" Howard Johnson's restaurants, and by last, I mean, they're brushing off their HoJo affiliation next week. But the lunch counter is still there, replete with mirrored back wall, the Simple Simon & the Pieman graphic, HoJo's logo carved into the glass near the ceiling, milkshake mixers, and people who look like they've been there since opening day.
The entire experience was a peculiar patchwork of past and present, organic and synthetic, family-style and not-so-family style. Waiting-room mauves and greens were everywhere. The dining room seemed to be true to the original layout, as did the lunch counter. In the back of the dining room was an oddly placed salad bar, which glistened with beets and gelatins...this was across from a slightly off-balanced "Desserts" glass refrigerator which held saran-wrapped pies, mousses, and cakes. This was in the middle of the dining room, right next to a table of six.
The menus were laminated collages of inkjet printouts, old, copied HoJo's food photos, new items (wraps!), old items (fried clams!), and an earnest announcement on the cover promising their clientele that even though the HoJo's name was going away soon, they'd still get the same quality dining experience and service they'd come to expect over the years. And we have fried clams!
(We didn't get the clams - I couldn't muster up the stomach juice for it. I did, however, have a lovely cheeseburger.)
Adjacent to the dining room is the retro-phenomenal cocktail bar. It was a (karaoke on Saturday nights!) bar - filled with dark, heavy furniture and dark wooded walls. In the middle of the room, dividing the bar from the lounge area, were two gigantic fabric screens of a leopard and some other wild animal, presumably included to lend the lounge a more...exotic? exciting? urban? urban! feel, which I guess might give you some credibility if you were belting out "We Built This City" in front of the 1970's gas fireplace on karaoke night.
Supposedly, HoJo's is coming back (better than ever, etc.) as soon as they get their ice creams in order. Not the same as the "real" thing, but, awesome.
