A Short History of Fast Food and Travel

In the Smart Set, Tony Perrottet looks back to the post-Civil War era for the origins of American roadside fast food. Here’s a sample:

The long-distance trains from Omaha to San Francisco had dining cars only for the first-class passengers. Everyone else had to wait until the trains stopped at specific stations for scheduled meal breaks, when hundreds of passengers would madly dash into cavernous dining halls on the platforms. Inside, cadres of white-aproned waiters were poised to splash meat and potatoes onto their plates and granular coffee into their cups. The whistle would blow and patrons would have to abandon their half-eaten meals and dash back to the moving train. The whole indigestion-inducing process, travelers complained, might last only ten minutes.

For anyone else who’s made the agonizing bathroom-or-Big Mac decision on a flying Greyhound stopover lately—sound familiar?

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