Nostalgia Cooked
October 20, 2026
No. 18

“Hands, please”

“Perhaps the next generation of restaurant reservation apps should go back to where we started, the brief history of why we chip and dip, plus the bounty of new restaurants featured on this year’s Washington Post fall dining guide."

Coffee, then read on.

- Chef Tim

The restaurant regular is becoming few and far between these days, largely because of the cost of everything. Going out to eat has become an occasion rather than a weekly habit, and restaurants have fewer opportunities to develop relationships with the people who dine there.

That's where platforms like OpenTable and Resy have actually done something great. Restaurants can learn about their guests before they've ever had a conversation with them. Birthdays, anniversaries, dietary restrictions, favorite tables, previous visits. All that information is sitting in a profile before someone even walks through the door. But do you really know them?

Someone used to answer the phone at a restaurant and have a conversation with a person who was excited about coming in for dinner. That sounds refreshing to me now. Because what's happened is that scrolling through Resy or OpenTable has started to feel like scrolling through Instagram or TikTok. It's intriguing, and there are endless possibilities, but somehow it doesn't feel real.

You could book four different reservations for the same night if you wanted to. Some platforms have policies against this, but it's still remarkably easy to make plans without ever speaking to someone or considering the restaurant on the other end.

A phone call, a physical conversation, holds you to that reservation in a different way. Someone has taken the time to speak with you, and you've made a commitment to them.

I don't necessarily want to go all the way back to that, but when I was traveling in Japan last year, about half the restaurants I visited required me to call to make a reservation. There was a human touch to it that made eating at those restaurants even more exciting. Something that used to be completely ordinary had become one of the more memorable parts of planning dinner.

I think we're beginning to resist some of the technology we've spent the last twenty years embracing. Even as ChatGPT and Claude become capable of making reservations, planning date nights, and telling us where we should eat, I think deep down we still want to interact with people. We want to have conversations, get recommendations from someone who actually knows us, and go out and do something exciting.

I'd even love to walk into a Blockbuster again and rent a movie from someone behind the counter who has a recommendation. Someone who watched the movie, loved it, and wants to tell me about it. That sounds a lot more interesting than scrolling through Netflix for forty minutes before giving up and watching The Office again.

But we're probably fifty years away from returning to anything like that, if we ever do.

In the meantime, I think the bare minimum we can do is pick up the phone every once in a while. The next time you're ordering takeout, call the restaurant directly instead of going through DoorDash or Grubhub. You may save yourself some money, and you'll give the restaurant an opportunity to avoid some of those third-party fees.

It's a small start, but at least there's another human being on the other end of the phone.

I'm curious what you think. Would you call a restaurant to make a reservation, or do you prefer the convenience of the apps that are increasingly making these decisions for us?

Before service, the whole crew huddles up and someone tells the story behind the food. Pull up a crate, you’re on the line tonight.

At some point in American history, someone decided a potato chip wasn't good enough on its own. It needed something to dip into. May I suggest french onion dip. My Aunt Rose always used to serve the dip at her Christmas parties with Wavy Lay’s, which was my favorite combo.

Potato chips had been around for decades before dipping them became a national pastime. Herman Lay started selling chips in 1932, and by 1944, Lay's was advertising with a cartoon mascot named Oscar the Happy Potato. The chips themselves were the attraction. The dip craze would come later.

Around 1954, an unidentified home cook in California reportedly mixed a packet of Lipton dehydrated onion soup with sour cream. Lipton recognized an opportunity. They began promoting it in advertisements and on their soup packages. Originally called California Dip, it eventually became known as French onion dip, due to the fact that you could also make French onion soup with just the seasoning packet. This dip helped turn the combination of potato chips and dip into an American entertaining staple.

Guacamole was also finding a larger audience. California avocado growers had been promoting guacamole recipes since the 1930s, but the growing popularity of corn chips and Mexican-American food helped bring it into more American households during the 1960s. Guacamole and salsa became natural companions to the increasingly popular corn chip. By then, chips and dip had become so common that manufacturers were selling specially designed serving dishes with a large compartment for chips and a smaller bowl for dip.

My favorite growing up was always Heluva Good! French Onion Dip. Even though I grew up in Upstate New York, I had no idea the company started in Sodus, New York, back in 1925. Founder Perry Messinger originally made cheese, and according to company legend, a traveling salesman tasted a piece and declared it a "hell of a good cheese." The name stuck.

A hundred years later, the company is still around, and a cold container of that sour cream and onion dip still takes me right back to being a kid.

This week, Dad asked me to pair potato chips. I thought this was finally my big moment. A whole article about Potato. Turns out he meant the ones in the bag.

Anyway, I recommend Champagne, preferably a Blanc de Blancs. The acidity cuts through the grease, the bubbles balance the salt, and the whole thing makes eating chips on the couch feel a little more sophisticated.

The Nostalgia Table

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