For 95 years, a good many Dallas family meals started with picking up a tray. You slid it along the rail, read your way past a wall of American presidents, and tried to make up your mind before you reached the squash casserole. Highland Park Cafeteria fed this city from 1925 until the spring of 2020, and anyone who ate there can still tell you what they ordered.
Plenty of Dallas diners never stood in one of those lines, so a word about what this place was. Say cafeteria today and most people picture a school lunchroom. The old Southern cafeteria ran on its own rules. You picked up a tray and worked your way down a long counter of salads, entrées, vegetables, breads, and desserts, pointing at what you wanted while the staff behind the glass filled your plates. Everything came from scratch out of the kitchen behind the line, and you paid at the far end. At Highland Park Cafeteria, a staffer would help carry your tray to the table.
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by Steven Doyle
