This is a painting (I think!) but this is how I remember it. As kids, we just loved the teacup with the black silhouettes moving around. It was pretty plain food even by 50's standards.
Trying to find the menu I brought up this bit of history. I had no idea this was the history of the name.
White Lunch | restaurant, racism, history | A local chain of restaurants launched in 1913 by two Scandinavian bakers, Neil and Thos Sorenson, at 124 West Hastings (across from Woodwards). With the name, the Sorensons were advertising the fact that their establishments only served white guests and hired white workers. This was at a time when white Vancouver’s nativism and racist antipathy towards the city’s ethnic Chinese and Japanese inhabitants was still very much out in the open, just six years after the so-called “Anti-Oriental Riots” of 1907. The concept proved to be very popular at the time, with “White Lunch” expanding to included prime locations on Granville and Pender, plus another on Hastings Street just one block east of the original (next door to the Lux). The company’s abhorrent policies were eventually phased out, but the racist stigma associated with it persisted until the last location closed in the early 1980s.
Usage: “When Vancouverites find out that White Lunch used to be a thing, I think they’re more embarrassed than they are surprised…”
This photo of the inside looks a lot fancier than I remember it.
