Broadway Grill Restaurant | San Francisco Bay Area - Burlingame,CA | Bar and Grill

TUES   Spaghetti & Meatballs

WED   Chicken Pot Pie

THU   Meatloaf

FRI  Fish and Chips

The Broadway Grill is well aware of the dire situation of the economy and is pleased to offer another way to dine out without breaking the bank.  

The Broadway Grill selection of Blue Plate Specials are available Tuesday through Friday from 4PM - 6PM

During the 1920s and 1930s the blue plate lunch and dinner thrived. The first blue plate reference I have found is in 1917. A traveler on a railroad running between Atlanta and Birmingham tells of a “Blue Plate Special” consisting of meat and vegetables served together on a divided plate for 60 cents.

The blue plate special attained success in the 1920s because it was a workable compromise between the needs of a fast-paced postwar urban society and the legions of consumers accustomed to eating a meat-and-potatoes “dinner” at noon. Though resembling a home-style dinner, the blue plate meal was lighter and faster to serve up than its predecessors.

For one thing it was complete on one plate and could be delivered to the diner in one trip. In previous eras a “regular dinner” or “table d’hôte” restaurant meal would have arrived parceled out on many plates and side dishes. The blue plate meal, consisting of less food, also required less time for digestion and kept office workers from getting that “siesta” feeling in the afternoon.

Cutting down both on dishware use and server time, the blue plate dinner or lunch was usually offered as an economy meal typically costing about 50 cents, a moderate price in the post-WWI inflationary economy. Blue plate specials gave restaurants the opportunity to make use of a good buy or get rid of food stocks on the verge of going bad. The tradeoff was that the diner had little, if any, choice regarding the meal’s composition.

Since the meals’ components were cooked prior to lunch and dinner rushes and kept warm on steam tables, they could be served quickly, saving time for patrons and increasing turnover for the establishment. Of course steam tables took their toll. That one-plate specials were not always the finest is suggested by a 1930 guidebook which commends The Alps restaurant in NYC by noting that their blue plate dinners “are more than mere collections of edibles, served en masse.”

One-plate meals continued into the 1940s and after WWII but the term “blue plate” was beginning to sound old-fashioned and was used mainly in smaller towns. Stodgy plate meals became material for humorists. In 1952 columnist Hal Boyle lampooned the blue plate luncheon “engulfed in gravy,” characterizing it as an “all-America culinary nightmare.” “I take it to the hotel I am staying at and use it instead of soap for a shower,” he wrote. “I rub it on my head as a shampoo.”

History of the phrase
The origin and explanation of the phrase are not clear. Kevin Reed says that "during the Depression, a manufacturer started making plates with separate sections for each part of a meal-like a frozen dinner tray-it seems that for whatever reason they were only available in the color blue." Michael Quinion cites a dictionary entry indicating that the blue plates were, more specifically, inexpensive divided plates that were decorated with a "blue willow" or similar blue pattern, such as those popularized by Spode and Wedgwood. One of his correspondents says that the first known use of the term is on an October 22, 1892 Fred Harvey Company restaurant menu, and implies that blue-plate specials were regular features at Harvey Houses.

The term became common starting in the late 1920s. A May 27, 1926, advertisement in The New York Times for "The Famous Old Sea Grill Lobster and Chop House" at 141 West 45th Street promises "A La Carte All Hours", "Moderate Prices", and "Blue Plate Specials". A December 2, 1928 article, lamenting the rise in prices that has made it difficult to "dine on a dime", praises an Ann Street establishment where you can still get "a steak-and-lots-of-onion sandwich for a dime and a "big blue-plate special, with meat course and three vegetables, is purchasable for a quarter, just as it has been for the last ten years." The first book publication of Damon Runyon's story, Little Miss Marker, was in a 1934 collection entitled "Damon Runyon's Blue Plate Special". A Hollywood columnist wrote in 1940, "Every time Spencer Tracy enters the Metro commissary, executives and minor geniuses look up from their blue plate specials to look at the actor and marvel."