hun restaurants

I'd be interested in hearing from LTH'ers which restaurants are their favorite "hun" restaurants. "Hun" restaurants, simply, are those places where waitresses (always waitresses) invariably call patrons "hun" (or perhaps "sweetie"). Generally, we're talking about sandwich/pancake/coffee places, but sometimes bar/grills qualify. Table service is a requirement.

Here are a couple:

On the near south side, I nominate White Palace Grill, a tiny place on the corner of Canal and Roosevelt (a corner which will shortly be taken over by Whole Foods and Panera Bread, though WPG should survive). While the food at White Palace is good-not-great, the decor is about the most authentic (read: old) of any place around the south loop, prices are dirt-cheap and the waitresses always call you 'hun'.

In the loop, my favorite is the Exchecquer Pub on the corner of Adams and Wabash. Great burgers, beer and fries there. It's a great place to go before going to Grant Park for a music festival. It has Chicago sports-themed room and waitresses who always call you 'hun'.

Diners and their ilk have been discussed on LTH in great detail. Do a search on hashbrowns, Edgebrook Diner, Diner Grill, White Palace, biscuits & gravy. Any of those will yield a trove of places such as you are describing.

Renga-Tei.

The diners around me in Lakeview, for some historical reason perhaps*, seem to have fewer grandmotherly types who call you hun, and more white-haired waitresses with tattoos who curse like truck drivers and seem, from their conversation, to lead Springeresque lives.

* Okay, I'll say it, even if the Encyclopedia of Chicago is too PC to have an entry on it. Industrialization around and after WWII drew a lot of poor whites from areas like Appalachia into the city, just as it drew Native Americans and Southern blacks. Hence, diners with older ladies sporting tattoos and talking like truck drivers. Which still doesn't explain why it's hard to get great biscuits and gravy or pie in this town.

It's funny that this topic came up. I hadn't been called 'hun' in a million years prior to yesterday. It happened not once, but twice at the "World's Least Likely Place To Be Called Hun"-----Bill's Drive-In in Evanston, by none other than one of the wonderful Indian counter-ladies.

I have two nominations:

Kevin's Hamburger Heaven in Bridgeport is a good "hun" place and Tortas USA you can be sure to hear "sweetie" quite a few times.

Hi,

I definitely got the hun-treatment at Jeri's Grill recently.

Not food at all, at the Speedway on 41 and Buckley Road in North Chicago, there is a young cashier who is deep into hun culture. We have had many pleasant conversations over the years, I don't believe she knows my name nor I know hers. She simply knows me as hun.

Regards,

At first, I thought this thread was about a request for restaurants wherein diners slayed their foes and ccoked them on their shields before making a ritual sacrifice to ensure victory on the Steppes over the next week. For what it's worth, I think the spelling is "hon", even though "hun" is seemingly more correct (much like how the erstwhile President/CEO of Death Row Records spelled it "Suge" (short for "Sugar"), while "Shug" Knight would have easily avoided confusion amongst mainstream white journalists reporting the latest run-in with the law by "Embattled Hip-Hop mogul "SOOJE Knight").

Anyway, I know now what you mean, and nominate the Bridgeport Restaurant, corner of 35th and Halsted, for my GHR submission (Great Hon Restaurants). This was the first breakfast out that I enjoyed after I moved to Chicago in late September, 2001, and, after about a week of living in Logan Square and not hearing the classic, grating Chicago accent with its flattened short A's and hardened end-consonants and extended S's, I began to think that the accent was a vestige of an earlier, forgotten time, swallowed up by melting-pot, big city immigration (and subsequent flight of the accent's practitioners) and general cultural homogeniety (the national news anchor or talk show host accent, which seems to improve the whiter ones' teeth become) . . . not that that would be such a bad thing, maybe, but still - that accent immediately signifies Chicago, much like "I pahhked the cahh at Hahhvahd Yahhd" does Boston; "Aay, whaddya youse doin aftah da game?" does NYC;, the weird, almost adolescent-sounding long "O" ("Piece of Tooest and a Cooeke for me") does Philly amd Baltimore, setting your lake on fire does Cleveland, flinging your own feces while picking the nits out of your mate's fur means Orlando. and relating every current topic to either horse racing or basketball is Louisville's domain. I wanted to hear that accent (made famous nationally and in high comic fashion via the "Superfans" skit on SNL) and at 7 in the morning at the Bridgeport Restaurant, on a weekday among the disability/workman's comp/coming off the night shift crowd, I heard enough of daaet aaecent ta laaest me TWO lifffetimesss. Leading da charch in dis vocalized onalught was my waitress, with requisite beehive, snapping gum, ever present two pots of coffee for refills, nicotine stained... well, everything (probably her SOUL as well bore the marks of 45 years of Viceroys), and the complete list of pet-name terminology for my buddy Jim and me: Hon, doll, dollface, sweetie, sugar, sonny, darlin', dear, etc... That being said, the Bridgeport Restaurant (more rightly called a diner or snack shop or grill.. but hey, they DO have fruit cup on the menu, so "Restaurant" it is) is a fine establishment: my Bridgeport Special featured impeccable Sysco bacon and eggs, coffee just this side of dark brown, and toast. Jim's olive burger, in addition to the olives mixed into the patty, was inundated with green, pimiento stuffed delights, leaving a briny puddle in which to dip da friess (hmm.. fries n brine? Simply can't get your salt levels to the "fatal" range?). Our meal was accompanied by the lilting strains of 3rd generation Bridgeportniks. A sample:

"Hey Doug, Dougie, ya effer get to daaet '82 Caaedillaac in da tird bay dere? Naw, I'm just sayin, cuz, ya know, Tim dere was aaeskin boutit, and I says ta him, I says, look, ya gotta aaaesk Dougie, I says ta him I says.. oh, thaaenks Darlene, yah, I'll take anudder cup when ya getta chaaence dere... so, no, I says ta him I says...."

A classic. Go for brunch and then a Sox game, you won't regret it. Might wanna bring your own champagne and glass if you care for a mimosa, though.

Reb

Rebbe:

Paß uf di auf! While I will not say I do not in some measure share your feelings with regard to the articulatory habits of the native population of the city that works, these are sensitive matters. Some excessively sensitive types might mistake our appreciation as somehow being unwarranted criticism... aw sum'n like dat.

As one of the local constabulary once announced loudly -- with stentorian voice and stately cadence -- as I was being hounded by a flock of hawkers and all but scalped by would-be scalpers whilst I made my way down Madison to a Hawks-Devils game at the United Center...

Leef de peepel alone.

The warning was heeded and the street folk backed off, at least for a moment or two, allowing me, 'de peepel', to proceed.

***

Anyway, my GHR nomination is...

The Palace Grill, northwest corner of Loomis and Madison, not far from where 'de peepel' had been saved from being scalped or fleeced.

Antonius

P.S. I too thought at first that Attila was somehow going to figure centrally in this thread. Beware of women named Ildico.

Hon bedh broddi
gaf blódh at drekka,
hendi helfússi,
ok hvelpa leysti...

EliasS wrote:I'd be interested in hearing from LTH'ers which restaurants are their favorite "hun" restaurants. "Hun" restaurants, simply, are those places where waitresses (always waitresses) invariably call patrons "hun" (or perhaps "sweetie"). Generally, we're talking about sandwich/pancake/coffee places, but sometimes bar/grills qualify. Table service is a requirement.

Here are a couple:

On the near south side, I nominate White Palace Grill, a tiny place on the corner of Canal and Roosevelt (a corner which will shortly be taken over by Whole Foods and Panera Bread, though WPG should survive). While the food at White Palace is good-not-great, the decor is about the most authentic (read: old) of any place around the south loop, prices are dirt-cheap and the waitresses always call you 'hun'.

I eat at WP fairly regularly and can't recall ever having been called "hun". That may be more a reflection on me, perhaps, than it is a refutation of your classification of it as a "hun" place.

I don't eat at Lou Mitchell's as frequently as I once did but, back in the day, there was fairly regular "hun" usage there.

Another former regular haunt was the Marquette Inn at Adams/Franklin with a solid foundation of hun/sweetie references.

I don't typically get out as early as Rebbe and Antonius, but back in the day, when heading to my yurt after many, many koumisses, I'd stop at either the Hollywood (North Ave and Ashland: heinous) or the Crew Bar at 4804 N. Broadway. Not recommendin', just sayin'.

Choey "The Scourge of Europe" Bukowski

The last time a server called me "hon," I was having a solo dinner at The Grillroom, a steakhouse on Randolph Street. I don't mind being addressed that way by a motherly waitress at a diner, but I didn't find it amusing from a 20-something waiter at a white-tablecloth restaurant.

LTH,

Had a beer and Frikadellen sandwich at Laschet’s this evening. The friendly bartenderess Jackie, who is about half my age, called me hun when she took my drink order.

I think, but am not 100% sure, the Cubs game was on, the waitress called me hun as well.

It's funny, but 'hun' is not something I ever noticed before, now everywhere you look.

Enjoy,
Gary

Laschet's
2119 W Irving Park Road
Chicago, IL 60618
773-478-7915

If WPG is full up and you're not up to Manny's corned beef (altho I've never been called 'hon' there; some other things, tho), equidistant between the two is Eppel's where you can get both your 'hon/sugar/doll' fix as well as some good biscuits, too (altho I can't speak to the biscuits and gravy, a dish this Yankee has never quite cotton'd on to).

Eppel's Restaurant
554 W. Roosevelt Rd.
312-922-2206

Vito & Nick's

Nick's, in Schenectady (something about the name Nick?)

Quincy's counter, in N'ville.

There's a diner on the Strip in Pittsburgh, can't remember the name.

A lot of good neighborhood bars, all over the world.

It really is not even necessary to say hun, there is just a certain mothering style that says hun, without words: the perfect way to be served eggs, or a good drink in a simple place by a lady who has seen a lot.

Did I ever say that part of what I look for when being fed is a sense of being nurtured? Maybe I am unique in this, but...