Auto-matt

Last night Steph and Manda and I were out on the town eating lasagna. I'm not sure how the subject came up or why but I suddenly remembered that during the 1920's-1940's there was a form of restaurant that catered to and was very popular with factory workers called the Automat. This is also the word for machine gun in Russian. Weird. But I digress, Sadly just as factory workers in the U.S. have gone the way of the Dodo so has the Automat. Oh wait. What's an Automat you say? It was a very early form of a "fast food" type restaurant. It was essentially a bank of small coin operated windows behind which a patron would find all different foods. Automats were minimally staffed, self serve and usually open very late to accommodate late shifts. I have to wonder if the rise of the suburbs and the consequential drive thru fast food chains effectively killed the very urban Automat? I suppose I'll save that little gem of research paper subject in case I should find the need to write a paper anytime soon. As it turns out the Automat is still a very popular thing in the Netherlands. If you've ever been to Amsterdam I guess you'd probably think that makes a lot of sense. It's because the dutch are weird. My love for cooking goes deep, but not deep enough to want to do something crazy like open a restaurant. That is until we started discussing this. Steph coined the name of the new place, it'd be called "Auto-Matt." Sweet! So I did a little research on a lark and it turns out there is a new Automat chain recently opened in New York called Bamn Like I said it's a chain and $200K gets your foot in the franchise door. Anybody want to invest in one of my many dreams? Anyway the pics are in no particular order. The outdoor and across the street looking pic is from Amsterdam and no I didn't take it.