Ken Burns’ three-part eminently interesting documentary Prohibition is currently airing on PBS. Though Prohibition was an incredibly stupid experiment that had deleterious effects on the country, it probably helped the popularity of Italian restaurants.
This is adapted from my brand new book From the Antipasto to Zabaglione – The Story of Italian Restaurants in America:
Most Italian restaurants continued to provide wine, though usually surreptitiously. Like many other places, San Francisco’s Fior d’Italia, which had been in business since the 1880s, poured it in coffee cups to deflect attention, which worked for a while. But constant harassment from authorities caused it to eventually cease serving wine. With decreased business the restaurant moved in 1929 to smaller quarters that were able to accommodate about a quarter the number of diners than before, about 200.
Though Prohibition made normal operations more difficult for Italian eateries, it killed nearly all of the fine-dining restaurants in the country. The better restaurants had always relied on selling wine and liquor to be profitable. And, people wanted to drink during the 1920s as they always had. So, they often visited the speakeasies rather than those high-end restaurants that did not serve alcohol. More so, “restaurants that stayed dry were doomed not just because of public tastes, but also by labor economics: because tips in speakeasies were so much larger, so was the earning power of their waiters and chefs; this attracted the best in the business,” according to Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, a recent work from Daniel Okrent.
The demise of top restaurants spelled the end of any culture of fine dining and a certain level of appreciation of food in general throughout America, a dearth that lasted at least a generation. The ensuing Depression and Second World War prolonged its absence.
Though an almost requisite part of the Italian meal was officially prohibited, Prohibition might have been beneficial for many Italian restaurants. Mary Grozvenor Ellsworth in a book called Much Depends on Dinner not long after the fact in 1939 opined that “Prohibition…had a great deal to do with the introduction of Italian food to the masses… The Italians who opened up speakeasies by the thousand were our main recourse in time of trial. Whole hordes of Americans thus got exposed regularly and often to Italian food....” Its affordability and quality, especially compared to that offered at other nightspots with their “lackluster speakeasy cuisine,” were big factors. And, not incidentally, even for the non-speakeasies, while wine was officially banned, it certainly was not banished from most Italian eateries.
Prohibition and the new immigration policies had slowed, but did not stop the inexorable growth in the number of Italian restaurants. By the end of the first decade of the last century, the Italian establishments in Manhattan had begun to move uptown from the downtown neighborhoods of Little Italy and Greenwich Village. More opened up in neighborhoods where Italians moved in great numbers; East Harlem in Manhattan, which became the largest Italian-American enclave in the country, Belmont in the Bronx and Bensonhurst, Williamsburg and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, plus Coney Island, which boasted a half-dozen Italian spots as early as 1905. And, many others opened throughout the country.
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