As we get ready to say goodbye to our special exhibition Coffee: A Connecticut Story, we invite you to a talk by food historian Sarah Lohman to uncover the origins — and uncertain future — of that most American of eateries, the diner.
From the painting NightHawks to the sitcom Seinfeld, diners are an intrinsic part of American pop culture. And it’s likely you have a diner that’s special to you: whether it’s a 24-hour spot where you drank coffee and smoked cigarettes as a teen, or a corner diner where you stopped for breakfast at the end of long night shift. But where did these chrome and neon, 24-hour establishments originate? We’re going to trace diner dining from the “Nite Owl” wagons to “Have a Nice Day” take out cups – and talk about how diner culture might disappear.
Tickets
$15 General Admission
$10 for Connecticut Museum Member levels under $150
Free for Connecticut Museum Member levels $150 and above
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About Our Speaker: Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling books Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods and Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Endangered Eating was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon’s Editors, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. It was a finalist for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship and winner of the Ohioana Library Book Prize for Nonfiction. Lohman’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Lohman has lectured across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California. She is a columnist for Gastro Obscura and writes about rare foods.
Image: The iconic blue and white to-go coffee cup was designed and made in Connecticut! Employed by the Sherri Cup Company located in Berlin, CT, Czechoslovakian immigrant Leslie Buck created the design in 1963 to appeal to Greek-American coffee vendors. The Connecticut factory manufactured hundreds of millions of these cups, which have become a New York City icon. Today these cups are manufactured by the Solo Cup Company in New York. CMCH collection 2024.72.0a-b.
