The Menu

The menu at the Hillcrest was classic Supper Club. I don't believe it changed, literally, during my entire tenure. This is hilarious, and comforting, for me to think about now. I've since worked at higher end restaurants where the menu changes daily.
-On the last day, I made sure to take a menu home. I recall stamping the date on it, and saving it. I can only hope it is "somewhere". I have looked on several occasions to no avail. God, I hope it made it.
-Before I get into specifics, allow me relish in the modus operandi of food preparation at the Hillcrest. I hate the term 'old school'. It is really fucking stupid. I hear people moronically refer to things in the mid 90's as 'old school', which is both laughable, and painful. But, it is all relative. The approach towards food prep was the old way of doing things. Farmhouse cooking. Honest to God, and I'm racking my brain here, everything was from scratch, except for the dinner rolls. All sauces. 5 salad dressings (they made their own french dressing for some unknown reason; I'm sure the Sysco stuff was far cheaper). They made their own Thousand Island, Creamy Peppercorn, Italian dressing. They made their own hot Corned Beef dressing for Spinach salads.
-A personal fav (in retrospect), that was one of the worst tasks as a dishwasher, was what was known as "Tallow". Since all the meats were carved down from larger cuts, they saved all the beef fat trimmings. These were stored in extra deep cast iron hotel pans, which were heavier than hell. The job of "Tallow" was melting all this down, letting it cool, and then straining it. The resulting rendered liquid beef fat was used for the deep fryer. Now, this stuff didn't last nearly as long as synthetic fryer oil, but you can imagine how good the cottage fries tasted that were deep fried in the first batch of tallow grease. Un-fucking believable.
-Note: The "strain", which was all the meat and bone bits from the rendered tallow, after given a good shake of salt, was one of Elroy's favorites. I'll admit to eating it as well. Good times.
-Another item that seems crazy in retrospect. The menu offered a full Turkey dinner, Thanksgiving style, all year. They roasted whole birds all year. All the trimmings. Light meat and dark meat, real gravy made from the drippings (my brother still uses this basic recipe for gravy every Thanksgiving), cranberry sauce, etc. I seem to recall some scandal with mashed potatoes. I want to say a "batch" of real mashed was made every day, but once that ran out, they pulled out the 'whips', which were boxed. Honestly, with that gravy, I don't think anyone noticed, or cared.
-Other dinner delights. Roast Leg of Lamb (yup, the real thing), Prime Rib (roasted in house, offered on certain days). Something called Swiss Steak. This, and some other items, is where I have to laugh. There were a few items that were serious fucking food cost savers. Some of these are still hilarious stories amongst my bro and I. You have to keep in mind that the average age of the Hillcrest diner was somewhere between 67 and the age of dirt. Not your most discriminating palate. Basically, if it was hot, and it stayed down, the meal could be considered a success. From memory, Swiss steak was some hybrid of minute steaks, and pot roast. I remember the 8 or 9 inch deep square hotel pans, filled with some bootleg beef jus, carrot coins, and these overcooked, pounded out, squares of meat. They looked like what we always called minute steaks. I seem to remember trying to eat one once, and quickly giving up (and I ate anything in those days). It was a common sight, out on the floor, to see some old bag just carving away at one of these doorstops, and getting no where. Yet, the plate was always empty when I went to clear the table.
-The all time leading joker of the menu, had to be the "Sirloin Steak". It was not only false advertising, it was a mind boggling concept. Well, I can't prove the false advertising. The menu description may have had the word "formed" in it. The Sirloin Steak was a giant hamburger patty, shaped kind of like a steak. It was shaped like a fat banana, that did not have the curve of a banana. What was it actually? It was ground Sirloin formed into a submarine like shape, and cooked to ordered temp. In one of my many roles at the Crest, I was actually the head cook one night, through a series of chance absences and call-ins involving jail, drugs, and domestic squabbles. One of the few things I remember that night, was cooking a Sirloin, well done. I was appalled that someone was going to eat this brick in the first place, but they sent it back! And then, they sent it back again! I believe this was the first time I heard one of my favorite waiter phrases, to be used when bringing a piece of meat back to the kitchen for more "fire". I used this line many times in the future.
"Hey, she said it still isn't done enough. Why don't you take it out to the parking lot, and back over it a few times with your car."
-One item that piques my curiosity, more than anything, was "The Whitehouse". This was a lunch only item. I'm sure I could find some historical context for this item, but I doubt it was like this one. This was also the first and last time I ever heard the phrase "toast points", which is still a bit weird for me. It started with an individual oblong shaped casserole dish. A single slice of white toast was cut on the diagonal, and placed in the bottom of the casserole dish to form a parallelogram (it fit perfectly). The next step was to ladle in a couple cups of cream soup (soup du jour, along with a broth soup). Then it was topped with a couple slices of American cheese, and sent into the salamander oven for baking. The end result, at least preparation wise, was similar to French Onion soup. The garnish was toast points, which I enjoyed for the geometry (I love math and was probably very high at the time, so making toast points was done with artistic precision). The other slice of toast that was prepared at the beginning of the order was cut the same way as the base, but then cut into smaller triangles, two more times. This gave you a total of 8 toast points, which were framed around the edge of the bubbling, oozy mixture of American cheese and cream soup. I remember an especially satisfied geezer being very complimentary of his Whitehouse when the cream soup of the day was Reuben soup. Actually, that sounds pretty damned good.
-For completion's sake, there was a half roasted chicken dinner, baby calf liver dinner (with bacon and/or onions), and other non-descript supper club classics.
-Prices. This is really amazing, when I think about it. All dinners included soup, salad, entree, choice of potato, and dessert. This is the only time I have ever seen dessert included. The desserts were homemade, too. I specifically remember the turkey dinner on the last day of the restaurant in 1994, was $8.95. I think the Prime Rib dinner topped the menu at $12.95. Ridiculously low prices by 1994 standards.
-The desserts were always a selection of a homemade pie, ice cream or sherbet, or the famous Butterscotch tart. For the pies, I seem to remember a Banana Cream, Coconut Cream, and a German Custard. All homemade pastry crusts, too. They were okay. Nothing special. The Butterscotch Tart was an entirely different story. All the old bags went apeshit for this concoction. It started with an individual pastry shell "cup". Dick baked these in the morning using these old cast iron muffin-like baking trays. The trays had semi-circular dips about the size of a fist, instead of the standard muffin shape. The shells were baked and cooled. The genius of these was the assembly. Everything else was ala minute. It was real simple: grab a plate, grab a shell, dip the bottom in the homemade butterscotch pudding (to act as glue on the plate), place the delicate shell on the plate, fill it with a scoop of Butterscotch, and give it a dollop of fresh whipped cream. Done. I probably turned out several hundreds of these during my tenure.