looking for a translation

[ratcreature]

I'm looking for the English word for "Kaffeeklappe", i.e. an establishment where workers can buy cheap meals (and as the name implies coffee) but which is not serving alcohol like pubs are. Traditionally they were located in or near the industrial areas, like in the harbor. These first opened in the 19th century as part of the anti-alcoholism movement. The official German term was "Volkskaffeehalle" (public coffee hall?) but the informal term is much more common. It comes from the food being served from the kitchen into the dining area through a serving hatch. They are not very common anymore, having been replaced by various fast food options, I guess. Is there an English equivalent? I thought maybe "greasy spoon" might fit, except that the dictionary tells me that term dates only to the 1920s, and I'm looking for the 19th century thing.

Comments

[melannen]

Wandering in from Network: For an establishment that mostly provides the mid-day meal to working-class people on their lunch break, the most common late-19th century equivalent would probably be "Lunch counter" or "free lunch counter". Free lunch counters did in fact serve alcohol - you got free lunch (usually a quite elaborate one) in exchange for buying overpriced drinks. But this was the stereotypical working man's lunch pretty much until Prohibition. Lunch counters, serving the same clientele but more likely to have respectable women in them and mostly non-alcoholic, also appeared in dimestores and low-end department stores around the same time.

"Diner", "Cafeteria" and "Cafe" also showed up in the late 19th century with pretty much the same meanings they currently have in English.

Earlier in the 19th century I'm not sure! There would have been pubs/saloons/taverns/pubs/bars that served meals; and also coffeehouses going back to the Colonial period, though they would have been more middle-class; higher-class restaurants in hotels; and street carts selling food.

In cities along the East Coast there would have been lots of oyster bars or raw bars, usually serving mostly cheap beer and fresh shellfish (and maybe a few other seafood-y dishes). That was also a very working-class thing. (Apparently "Oyster bar" only came in about 1870 and they were "oyster houses" before that.)

[laurajv]

"lunch counter" was going to be my suggestion, as well.

[ratcreature]

Thank you for the suggestions.

[melannen]

...eep, and I could have sworn your OP specified "America". Please add "in America" to all of that; sorry for letting out my tunnel vision!

[ratcreature]

Heh, no. Maybe it was me mentioning "greasy spoon" (which I think is a term that originated in America?) as too new in the post that created the impression? I'm really just looking for what best to call the German thing in English.

[maire]

I think 'lunch counter' is American. Ditto diner. Sorry.

[derryderrydown]

Are you looking for British English or American English?

[ratcreature]

Mostly I'm wondering what best to call it when talking about the German thing in English. I mean, the German wikipedia page claims these existed in several European countries. So I guess with England being in Europe (despite its denials, heh), British English might be a better bet?

[busaikko]

The direct translation is coffee klatch in English. It's very hard to Google for that, though!

[ratcreature]

Er, I don't think so. As I know that, and as that link explains, that is the equivalent of "Kaffeeklatsch" which is something very different, as it means chatting with others over a cup of coffee.

[zing_och]

Heh, I didn't know the German word at all. (Or the concept, in fact.)

*is unhelpful*

[ratcreature]

Interesting. Maybe how common they were differed regionally? There were a lot of them in Hamburg in the late 19th to early 20th century for dock workers. And the term lives on, for example the museum cafeteria of the harbor museum also calls itself Kaffeeklappe and such.

[acari]

Around here (Brandenburg) we call them simply Kantine, doesn't matter if they're public or not.

[cathexys]

Same here. I'd never heard the term (or really the concept much) Maybe we're too used to have liquor with EVERYTHING?

I wonder if it's a North/south or a Catholic/Protestant thing (Northern and Protestant being vested in anti-liquor???)

[ratcreature]

I don't think the temperance movement really took here either. At the same time the Kaffeeklappen started to serve meals with no alcohol for dock workers, the hiring of dock day labor (i.e. those not in regular work gangs) was often organized through the pubs, in which naturally the innkeepers placed laborers based on how much alcohol they consumed. (Eventually labor laws changed that, but in the 1890s that was still common in Hamburg.) That was good for the ship owners on several levels, because they only had to deal with the innkeeper instead of individual workers, plus obviously the innkeepers only leased the pubs from property owners, i.e. the rich shipowners and merchants who also invested in houses and such, so since the day labor had to drink a lot to get work again a lot of the wages paid went back into their pockets, or rather never left it when they deducted the rent owed from the wages paid through the innkeepers.

[yvi]

Same here (grew up in NRW, specifically the Ruhrpott)

[ratcreature]

Huh. How odd.

London/UK tuppence worth

[buddleia]

I'm guessing bakeries, cafes, Lyon's Tea Shops. In Dickens there are 'Eating Houses', which I think is closest to what you want. I can't find the reference now but I think there is a history, in the East End of London, of stalls of food where you ate fast and gave back the bowl for the next person.

Separately, and much later, a lot of companies instituted canteens with free or cheap lunches for staff. In the 19C, though, I don't think so.

'Greasy spoon' is a slang term for a type of cafe that is not part of a chain and often has a counter and some nod toward Deli-type sandwhich service these days. There are still a fair few cheap caffs around(run by Italian-cockneys, often) serving mainly cab drivers, builders, road workers. I don't recollect ever seeing references to large hall-type and presumably social eating houses in the UK. Miserable lot, we are! I don't think there is a an equivalent, TBH.

[cathexys]

I'm not sure you'll get the no liquor emphasis in the US at least, given that that's more or less the default. We have bunches of restaurants even around here that don't have a liquor license, not to mention the dry counties, blue laws, etc....

[ratcreature]

And that started even before the prohibition?

[cathexys]

The temperance movement was huge in the 19th c. But I'm not sure about the laws. Let me research a bit :)

[brownbetty]

Canada never had the prohibition, and the liquor license thing is true here, too. Restaurants will advertise themselves as “fully licensed” to point out that they *do* have liquor on the premise.

[brownbetty]

I would suggest that a "diner" is pretty close to what you are thinking of. It suggests a working-class eating establishment that is not part of a chain. Edward Hopper's Night Hawks is from 1942, but there are still establishments up and down North America that look pretty much like that except that the people inside are dressed differently.

(Also, greasy spoon is totally still in use as a term, although it means, basically, "diner where the floor doesn't get mopped as often as it ought.")

[ratcreature]

My problem with the "greasy spoon" was that the term came into existence too late, not too early (what I'm looking for is a thing that started to take off as a concept here in the second half of the 19th century). But "diner" seem to be an older term so that might work.

[saraht]

Cafeteria dates from the 1890s...

[ratcreature]

Thanks!

[lilacsigil]

There's more of a "bring your own lunch" tradition in the UK and Australia, at least, but "canteen" was definitely used for places like this, whether it was on-site and owned by the company, or nearby. They didn't have alcohol licenses.

[ratcreature]

Thanks!

[maire]

Eating house sounds most plausible for Britain, to me.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

A coffee house (or coffee-house, the hyphenation wasn't consistent in the Victorian era).

[ratcreature]

So the English term coffee house was not the equivalent to what in German is called "Kaffeehaus", like the famous ones in Vienna, that is more known for the cultural associations, like Bohemian poets meeting and such?

[penknife.livejournal.com]

It was in its earliest form. By the mid-19th century, though, coffee houses had become less fashionable in England as a cultural/political institution (replaced in large part by the club), and there was a push to create working men's coffee houses as part of the temperance movement. So I think if you're specifically talking about the 19th century, it's your best bet as a term for "a cheap restaurant that doesn't serve alcohol."

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

When you say English, do you mean UK or US English? Here in the western US, "diner" would be the term. Coffee house out here is more an evening place, specializing in coffee and people playing guitars. Places like Denny's, though that's a national chain, but there are thousands of local diners. They usually open early, sometimes only through lunch, and aren't too expensive.

[ratcreature]

I'm mostly interested in what best to call the German thing in English when talking about such an eating place, especially when I want to evoke that time period they started (late 19th century), and with a single term rather than two sentences describing what I mean. I don't really care about the variant of English, more about the time frame match.

[teneagles.livejournal.com]

Though mostly now only found in institutions such as schools and hospitals, cafeterias were very popular in late 19th century America. Though not part of the temperance movement, they were often run by socially active organisations in the interest of providing cheap food to the working poor.

Automats were also popular in the late nineteenth century, and into the first half of the twentieth.

Diners, mentioned in the comment above, didn't become popular until the first decade of the 20th century.

[ratcreature]

Thanks, it's good to know that diners started later.