Diner slang is a form of shorthand between wait staff and the kitchen, originating from African-American cooks in the 1870s. It includes hundreds of terms for menu items and their preparation, some of which have entered popular usage. Nostalgia-themed restaurants still retain some of the language.
If you’ve ever heard a waitress in a restaurant shout, “Adam and Eve on a raft, tear them down!” or, “Sweeping the kitchen with Noah’s boy!” you should know the diner lingo. Diner slang is a colorful form of shorthand between the wait staff of a roadside diner and the kitchen. Many pop culture historians trace the origins of food slang to the 1870s, when many African-Americans found work as cooks among the first generation of diners. Illiteracy was a common problem in postwar America, so waiters and cooks created their own spoken slang to remember large numbers of incoming orders.
The lingo Diner is an example of a working mnemonic device, a mental trick that aids memory. In the previous paragraph, “Adam and Eve” refers to two eggs, usually poached. The “raft” is a toast. “Wreck ’em!” it is a suggestion for the cook to scramble the eggs. “Sweep the kitchen” is slang for hashish and “Noah’s boy” means a slice of ham, referring to Noah’s second son, Ham. Experienced cooks can keep dozens of these orders in mind without using paper tickets.
There are literally hundreds of slang terms and variations, some of which are too bold to recount here. Some of these words and phrases have entered popular usage, such as mayo, blue plate special, and java. Others, like dog and maggots for crackers and cheese, mercifully didn’t survive. It has been said that the alternative rock band REM titled their album Automatic for the People after hearing the local cook’s dinner lingo.
Diner lingo covers all aspects of menu items and their preparation. Whenever a cook burns food, the result is often called Pittsburgh, after the large factory smokestacks found them. Rare cooked meat is known as hoofed. Takeout orders can be on wheels or take a walk.
In local parlance, drinks often have different names. The water could be called city juice or Adam’s Ale, while the milk is called baby, Sweet Alice or moo juice. Seltzer is burp water, while coffee can be anything from mud to Joe to Java. Coffee served with cream and sugar is a blonde with sand.
Popular food items with memorable diner slang names include hot dogs, which might be puppies, Coney Island chickens, marmots, or meadowsweet. Burgers and hash could both be rendered as sweeping the kitchen, based on their sometimes questionable content. In local parlance, the client will have the option to refer to the hash as well. Other popular dinner menu items include liver and onions, which can be called back to the kitchen to turn off the lights and make her cry.
There are many other examples of table lingo available on the internet and in cooking reference books. It’s gotten harder to hear authentic diner lingo since the decline of American diners in the 1970s, but some nostalgia-themed restaurants still retain some of the language. Some small restaurants in rural areas still use a form of diner slang, although advances in computer ordering systems have largely eliminated the need for verbal orders.
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