The Automat
The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart's Masterpiece

Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart
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Answers to some Frequently Asked Questions.

       We get asked many questions during appearances and we will share some with you here in this"frequently asked questions" area. However, for the most up to date questions and answers please click through to our message board. There you will see what others are interested in or you can ask your own question.

Q. Are the recipes authentic- they are not as I remember?
       A
. You can be sure that these recipes are authentic. We have been asked specifically about the macaroni and cheese a number of times because it doesn't match people's memory of it. How understandably disconcerting! There a few reasons why the recipes may not be exactly the same as what you ate. First, for some of the recipes we used the Philadelphia company cost sheets. Philadelphia and New York had slightly different recipes to accommodate the different tastes of the two cities. Another reason is that some of the ingredients changed over time-- some of the recipes are from the 1940's and others are from the 1970's. However, all of them are from Horn and Hardart files.

Q. What about the restaurants in New Jersey?
     
A. Yes, there were restaurants in New Jersey. Unfortunately, we did not find this in our research until it was too late to include them. The New York company had a waitress restaurant and a retail store in Paramus and the Philadelphia company had several, both retail shops and cafeterias in Camden. They also had a retail store in Collingswood, NJ.

Q. What about the rest of the recipes?
     
A. Good question. We do have a number of recipes that we did not include in this book- mostly because they would have been duplicative. With the limited space we kept it to the basics. For example we didn't include both the chicken and beef pot pie recipes. However, there are many recipes that have not been found- lemon meringue pie, huckleberry pie (Lorraine's favorite), Salisbury steak, to name a few. We are still hopeful that someone- maybe who used to work there, or a family member, will dig through a closet and find these lost treasures.