"route 66" news and stories

Along Route 66 lies a quite piece of American history: the first drive-thru restaurant. Red's Giant Hamburg is located in Springfield, Missouri and has been there since 1947. Sheldon “Red” Chaney decided that it would be easier for the customers to place their orders through a window to the kitchen, rather than repeating them to waitresses. Just like that, the car hop service was replaced with the first drive-thru window.  Legend has it that the name of the restaurant was originally meant to be "Red's Giant Hamburger", but due to some poor planning, the sign was not large enough and the "er" had to be dropped.

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Alton Brown is hitting the highway in 2006 to bring the food network a new show, Feasting on Asphalt. The show will chronicle Alton’s road trip across the US on Route 66. According to the Food Network, he will be riding his motorcycle and stopping by “secret hamburger hideaways” and “delicious truck stop diners.” By adding Alton as the headlining food celebrity on yet another non-cooking travel show, perhaps the Food Network is trying to convert some of his Good Eats fans to the new network format. Personally, while the food at some of these places might be good, I don’t think that the “culinary heritage of America” will be found there. With a good dictionary, the network might discover that “heritage” means an inheritance or tradition passed down through the generations. It seems unlikely that the country, having been around far longer than biker bars, would have gotten the bulk of its “good eats” from them.