The Red Rooster, Seligman and authenticity

On the left is the Red Rooster drive-in on Route 22 in Brewster, NY. It is acclaimed as one of the best of the 1950's style drive-ins still operating in the Atlantic states. Jack, a manager and part-owner, apparently has been working there for 30 odd years. The food is cook to order. It tastes great anyway, but the fact that we know it is cooked to order makes it taste just a little better still. The menu is pretty basic, the service great and it enjoys a loyal local following. We invariably stop on our way back from the Thunder Ridge ski area. It doesn't particularly trade on its heritage. It has just been around a long time, isn't part of a chain and does what it does really well.

In contrast is Dellgadillo's Snow Cap (also a drive-in) in Seligman, Arizona. The town is on the old Route 66 and its trying to re-invent itself a kind of kitsch shrine to the fifties and the romance of the route. Seligman is a fun place for a couple of hours as it is, but it could be so much more than tatty clothes shops, dummies and195os cars parked on the street (right). Route 66 is so rich in culture - in Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath" it is called 'The Mother Road', it was the route of migration West in the 1930's, the first highway to be completely paved in 1938, home to the birth of the fast food industry, of course the famous song, and most recently the film 'Cars' in which the town of Radiator Springs was in part based on Seligman - that one would have thought that Seligman could do better with its lot that it has. Dellgadillo's Snow Cap fits in perfectly with the Seligman ethic. It was opened in the 1950s by local legend Juan. Sure it's fun, and the comedy routines that you receive as a customer are entertaining (ask for a straw you get what looks like the insides of a scarecrow) but it seems to be a parody of the past and all the worse for it, rather than having a rich heritage that it draws upon.