Adam and eve on a raft sink em

Table of Contents

Introduction

Growing up in New York City, I have always been surrounded by diners that serve up homemade meals. Whenever I am ordering off of a diner menu, it always seems to take longer than usual, because of the myriad of choices that can take up several pages. There are many ways to prepare sandwiches, eggs, and coffee, amongst other things, and the sheer number of individual orders that need to be carried out can confuse the waiters, waitresses, and cooks who have to memorise hundreds of food combinations.

For many years during the 19th and 20th centuries, diner employees and short-order cooks all across the United States of America, would come up with idioms known as “diner lingo” for these orders in order to speed up production. The colourful jargon had made its way into the American English lexicon in the late 19th to mid 20th century, but only a few terms are currently in use. Diner lingo may soon meet its inevitable end because the number of people who speak it has declined. Fortunately, historians have been able to preserve diner lingo, for nostalgic purposes and to teach future generations how Americans once communicated. Well anyway, may I take your order now?

Extravagant orders

Now we put some of these above terms and more to the test. To all of you reading this article, the following sentences in this section may sound like something out of a Lewis Carroll novel; but in a diner, luncheonette or cafeteria, these statements would have been normal. This first group of sentences are actual combinations that were popular in the United States:

Diner LingoWhat it Means Burn one, take it through the garden and pin a rose on it Hamburger with lettuce (garden), tomato and onion (rose) Burn the British, and draw one in the darkToasted English Muffin (Burn the British) with black coffee (Draw … dark) Noah’s boy with Murphy carrying a wreathHam (Noah’s Boy) and potatoes (Murphy) with cabbage (wreath)

But of course, many orders can be made up by combining random diner lingo idioms to represent all types of dishes. The following orders have been made up by yours truly. Try these dishes in your own kitchen:

Diner LingoWhat it Means Making two cows cry by dragging them to WisconsinTwo cheeseburgers (cows / Wisconsin) with onions (cry) Leaving Dolly Parton high and dryTwo chicken breasts (D.P.) without condiments (high and dry) Pope Benedict, meet Mike and IkeEggs Benedict (P.B) doused with salt and pepper (Mike and Ike) Wax pistol in PittsburghSmoked (Pittsburgh) pastrami sandwich (pistol) with American cheese (wax) Hamlet’s problem with his wartsDanish with two poached eggs in hot sauce (HP), topped with olives (warts)

Now that we have run the gamut of the types of diner lingo, I will discuss the origins behind certain idioms. Most terms have little to no recorded history, but these precious few give us an idea of how diner lingo has evolved.

Lingo #1: Adam and Eve on a Raft and related terms

Our first diner lingo idiom comes from the 1890s. “Adam and Eve on a raft”, which means ‘two eggs on toast’, was first seen in the 1894 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary with the following example:

“One day he ordered poached eggs on toast. Going to the slide the waiter yelled out: ‘Adam and Eve on a raft.’ The order was changed to scrambled eggs, when the waiter rushed off, and in stentorian tones there came the alarming direction to those below: ‘Shipwreck that order!’”

At a particular diner in the Bowery section of Manhattan, diner employees came up with their own diner slang. This excerpt came from the Atlanta Constitution newspaper in an article entitled, “Story of a Queer Café in New York” from 1899:

“An order for eggs on toast went to the kitchen as, “Adam and Eve on a raft,” but if after giving this order the customer wanted the eggs plain, the countermand went out as, ‘Save Adam and Eve; sink the raft’”.

Another variant on the lingo was documented in a 1936 article in The New York Times entitled, “Lexicon of the Soda Jerker”:

“Expressions used throughout America include…“Adam and Eve on a raft—and wreck ‘em” for scrambled eggs on toast”.

The “Adam and Eve” theme is no stranger to diner lingo. If someone wanted to order a stack of ribs, the waiters would yell out to the cooks, “Give us a First Lady”. They did not mean bring out the wife of the President, but were referring to the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, making her the first lady on Earth. When dessert came around and a customer wanted an apple pie, the order coming to the kitchen would be “Eve with a lid on it”. This originates from knowledge that the apple is the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and “lid” refers to the crust covering the apple. Finally, “Adam’s Ale” which simply means ‘water’, obviously stems from the idea that it was the only drinking liquid available on Earth at the time.

Lingo #2: Eighty-six

The next lingo has nothing to do with the preparation of food or drink, but the actions in dealing with rowdy patrons or the lack of ingredients in the kitchen. When you “eighty-six” something or someone, you get rid of it. It could also mean to refuse service to a customer, or saying that the order cannot be fulfilled. The term has the most complex history out of all the diner lingos, dating back to the 1930s, because there are so many theories as to its origin.

The Oxford English Dictionary, defines “eighty-six” in the context of refusing service to the rudest or most drunk of all customers. It alludes to the story of actor John Barrymore, a notorious drunk whom the establishments did not want to deal with:

“There was a bar in the Belasco building … but Barrymore was known in that cubby as an ‘eighty-six’. An ‘eighty-six’, in the patois of western dispensers, means: ‘Don’t serve him.’”

Another take on the term “eighty-six” came from the famous journalist Walter Winchell, whose column ‘Glossary of Soda-Fountain Lingo’, defined it as “we’re all out of it”. The most probable story is that in the New York State liquor code, Article 86 is the section dealing with the removal of problem customers. Other theories about “eighty-six” vary from the Army Code #86 that details when a soldier is AWOL or “Absent Without Leave”, to certain dining halls only allowing 85 customers at one time, denying the 86th person entry. Whatever the true story may be, “eighty-six” has gone beyond the world of diner lingo into American slang of the late 20th to early 21st century.

Regional lingos (SCROD/SHROD and Mexican-themed diners)

Some dining terms are exclusive to certain regions of the United States. For instance, in Boston, the fish of the day is known as a “SCROD” or “SHROD” in diner lingo. It comes from the acronym that stands for “Small Cod or Haddock Remaining on Deck”, but in essence refers to all types of fish in the sea. The term dates back to 1841, where its original definition is:

“A young or small cod fish, split and salted for cooking.”

By 1884 when diners were already in full swing, the meaning grew to include its impact on the public:

“Throughout all Eastern Massachusetts… it seems to refer to these small fish slightly corned, in which condition they are a favorite article of food, but the name is also transferred to the young fish themselves.”

Future of diner lingo

As the 20th century progressed, diners began to close down due to the increasing number of chain food and beverage outlets such as McDonalds and Starbucks. In addition, instead of the waiters physically communicating with cooks, automated systems for ordering took over, thus eliminating almost all of back-and-forth human exchange. Only a few diner lingo terms like B.L.T. (bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich) and mayo (mayonnaise) still find themselves on mainstream menus of all types around the USA. People of the last couple of generations would be more likely to associate the term “Quarter Pounder with Cheese” with a cheeseburger, as opposed to “Dragging one through Wisconsin”, or “Frappuccino” for coffee instead of “Cup o’ Joe”. Today, diners are operated like fancy restaurants, with high-end cuisine at expensive prices. However, diner lingo still exists, but barely, and only in retro-style diner themed restaurants that reach out to a select group of patrons. If more of the old-fashioned diners open up again, diner lingo could be resurrected and saved from being a dead style of communication and hopefully hark back to the symbol of Americana that it once represented.

Appendix: More Diner Lingo Terms

Diner LingoWhat it Means Heart Attack on a RackBiscuits and Gravy Life PreserversDoughnuts Zeppelins in a FogSausages in Mashed Potatoes Bossy in a BowlBeef Stew Maiden’s DelightCherries Foreign EntanglementsSpaghetti Frenchman’s DelightPea Soup HopeOatmeal M.D.Dr. Pepper Family ReunionChicken and Egg Sandwich CheckerboardWaffle Corrugated RoofLemon Meringue Pie Fish EyesTapioca Pudding Boiled LeavesTea Butcher’s RevengeMeat Loaf

References

http://www.dinerlingo.com/

http://www.jitterbuzz.com/diners.html

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Introduction

Menu

Extravagant orders

Lingo #1: Adam and Eve on a Raft and related terms

Lingo #2: Eighty-six

Regional lingos (SCROD/SHROD and Mexican-themed diners)

Future of diner lingo

Appendix: More Diner Lingo Terms

References

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