Morrison's Cafeteria
While Horn & Hardart automats were an institution in the northern U.S., in the
cities of the southern U.S. we had our cafeterias: Morrison's and Piccadilly,
Luby's and Blue Boar and Wyatt's.
James A. Morrison opened the first Morrison's Cafeteria in Mobile, Alabama on
September 4, 1920. This cafeteria's success led to the opening of more Morrison's
Cafeterias in cities across the Southeast.
There were 142 Morrison's Cafeterias at the time they were bought by Piccadilly.
The entire Morrison's Cafeteria chain was bought by Piccadilly Cafeterias in
a $46 million transaction. However, Morrison's still seems to be involved in
institutional food service in some areas, at hospitals and the like.
I've had numerous requests for Morrison's recipes, and a few of those requests are
not in the Morrison's Recipe Manual. There were a few dishes that were unique to
particular Morrison's locations - these dishes were only made at those locations.
There's not much hoping of getting those except from someone who was actually
employed the specific location. In over 80 years of operation in over 150 locations,
there have to be a lot of ex-Morrison's chefs and cooks and other employees around.
Hopefully some of them will read this and help us out with the recipes that we have
been unable to locate.
I have been told by former Morrison's employees that sometimes their fruit pies
and pecan pies were made with a canned filling. These fillings would have been
made for Morrison's by a commercial producer, possibly Gumpert's, or "Baker & Baker," according to reliable information. There would be no recipe
available for these canned fillings. Over the years, Morrison's began buying premade
ingredients more and more, replacing some ingredients that were originally made in-house.
Many of the Morrison's Cafeteria recipes from the actual Morrison's kitchen manuals
call for something called "Voltex". This is an institutional food service product,
a frozen mixture of liquid eggs and margarine that appears to have been made by
Fleischmann's. It is no longer being sold. I have been told by a former Morrison's
chef that the liquid whole eggs product sold in supermarkets may be substituted
using the same weight and ratio as the amount of Voltex called for in the recipes.
No luck with these:
- Caramel Pie
- Carrot Soup
- Grape Jello Dessert
- Hamburger Soup
- Peach Cobbler
- Puddings, Chocolate, etc
- Spaghetti Salad
- Whipped Cheesecake
