Brownies Recipe Fried Chicken

Who remembers Brownies Chicken? I Do! While growing up I remember Brownies Chicken restaurants being everywhere. In my mind there may have been more of them than there were Kentucky Fried Chicken locations. I see from the back of this menu that there were at least 18 locations that I could have visited on a pretty regular basis growing up! The location that I remember the most is not even listed on this menu which is from 1989. The particular location I remember was one of the last ones to close. Back then I remember thinking that the Brownies Chicken restaurants were probably closing due to the 'political corectness' that was becoming a big thing in the world at the time. I had heard about the same sort of thing happening to the Sambo's restaurants many years before and figured that was probably what was going on with Brownies. But who knows, maybe they just weren't that popular to anyone but me.
What you see here is a near mint Brownies Recipe Fried Chicken menu that my wife found while helping her mother clean out her home recently. Of all the stuff my wife brought home, this is the one item that I was really excited about. Obviously one persons trash, is MY treasure!

Denny's Celebrating 60 Years Retro Style Menu

I love collecting ephemera, and restaurant menus are a favorite of mine. They are something you see all the time, but you don't generally have the opportunity to add them to your collection which for me makes them all the more desirable. Yesterday when we visited our local Denny's I noticed they still had their very cool celebrating 60 years menu. Denny's seems to change their menu more often than other restaurants, so I figured they may be close to getting rid of these ones. I took a chance and asked our server if I could have one. She seemed very surprised that I would ask, but thought it was very cool when I told her that I collect menus. She went and asked her manager, and a few minutes later she came back and handed me this menu. It has now joined my small but very cool collection of menus. My favorite being the Disneyland Hotel's Monorail Cafe which sadly no longer exists.
Here are the photos of all the pages of the menu. It is filled with lots of great Denny's trivia such as "It began with a donut stand and a promise. Denny's made its start in Lakewood, California in 1953 as a donut stand called Denny's Donuts. The owner, Harold Butler, started his business with this commitment: "We're going to serve the best cup of coffee, make the best tasting food, offer the best value and stay open 24 hours a day." In 1959, the 20-location chain was renamed Denny's Restaurants to avoid confusion with another chain, Doughnut Dan's.
Today, with over 1,700 restaurants in 10 countries, we're committed to keeping that original promise - from our new, better-tasting coffee to our ever-expanding menu of American diner classics. We're America's diner. And we'll continue to serve our guests with the same emphasis as Harold Butler did some 60 years ago.

Monorail Cafe & Sci-Fi Dinner

Here are two more great restaurant menus in my collection.
The first is the Monorail Cafe from Disneyland (closed 1999). It was a great little sit down dinner type restaurant at the Disneyland Hotel. I loved the 50's retro look and feel of the dinner and always made a point of visiting the Monorail Cafe at least once on each Disneyland trip for a mushroom burger and a cherry Coke. Unfortunately they closed the Monorail Cafe when they did the big Disneyland Hotel redo in 2000 and it did not reopen.
The second is from the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant at the Disney-MGM Studios, Walt Disney World. This was a fun restaurant where you got to sit in a vintage convertible under a starry sky, and watch old sci-fi flicks on the big Drive In screen while you eat your meal. Thick shakes and burgers are the staple here.

Hills Bros Coffee House Menu

Another thing I love collecting is restaurant menus. Here is a great menu from the Hills Brothers Coffee House (1958-1976) at Disneyland. I love the artwork on the front. It looks a lot like the covers of the first few firehouse 5 + 2 records.
The menu is 8 x 10 inches and just 4 pages including the front cover and back cover which is a map of Disneyland. I also love the first paragraph on the inside of the menu "We certainly hope your visit to Disneyland will be an exciting moment in your life. We think it will be, so we invite you to take this Hills Bros. Coffee House menu with you as a souvenir of a happy time--maybe one of the happiest times you have had anywhere." So there you have it, they were actually telling you to take this piece of ephemera home with you!

Don't you love the small authentic coffee stain on the lower right side of the text page, down by the 'Hills Bros Coffee, Inc'. And I'll have one of those 35 cent peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on fruit and nut bread... sounds good doesn't it!
Over at Stuff from the Park you can check out a few photos of the actual coffee house.