Ho-Ho-Haute Cuisine, 14th Street, New York, 1959

The cheerful diners you see here are celebrating Christmastide in the Teutonic way — with heroic feats of Epicureanism. The scene is not Germany, however, but 14th Street in New York City, a cosmopolis where one may be served meals in the native style of almost any country on Earth. This particular eating place was founded by August Lüchow, a rotund Hanoverian with a huge, beer-straining mustache, who has long since gone to Valhalla. His dining hall is now operated by Jan Mitchell, a Swede, who feeds about 2,500 guests daily and offers them a choice of 65 separate dishes. For the Christmas season, he puts up a tree which he asserts is the city’s largest (indoor division), and the customers, in an atmosphere of Gemütlichkeit and sentiment, may gorge on roast goose while listening to Lüchow’s string orchestra playing Silent Night.

—Face of America, December 19, 1959