My mother will be happy to hear—or maybe she’s already read about it in the Times—that Chock Full ‘O Nuts (CFON) is returning to Manhattan with a single location on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.
CFON used to occupy a space in our hearts and our neighborhood on the Upper West Side. Broadway between 86th and 87th Street is where she sat for years and years. A large yellow and black restaurant with counter space and revolving stools.
It was a place to get a quick cup of coffee and delicious whole-wheat doughnuts, nut-and-cream-cheese sandwiches, grilled hot dogs and split pea soups.
And the clientele: it was something out of a Edward Hopper painting combined with the 1960’s and ’70s residents of the Upper West Side.
What Starbucks is now, CFON was then. Sort of. A place for some to linger over a cup of coffee.
And now CFON is back. One question: will they be serving wifi with their date nut bread? I for one can’t wait to revisit this gastro-temple of my youth with the unforgettable theme song: Chock full ‘o nuts is a heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee…
Back when we were kids, we could afford to spend a dollar at the counter and get a cream cheese sandwich from the uniformed waitress. The service was good, it was clean, the donuts and sandwiches were tasty.
And the coffee? Better a coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy.
But will they smell the same? A warm matrix of coffee and pea soup. My mother always got the cream cheese and olive sandwich, which struck me as appalling. I loved the date-nut slice, which came on a piece of waxed paper. The cups were thick dull-white porcelain. The only smell more evocative of a lost NYC for me would be an old Woolworths lunch counter–popcorn, plastic, hot dogs, and mothballs of old ladies’ cloth coats…
omg! date-nut bread and cream cheese sandwiches..and those whole wheat donuts! nothing better!
Hey, Leon, I LOVED Chock Full O Nuts. So much more down to earth than Starbucks. Their dark dought (?) powdered donuts were to die for. There was one on FIfth Avenue, I forget which block, near the Swissair ticket store, with those incredible electric trains in the window. My favorite Fifth Avenue memory: Swissair toy trains followed by a Chock Full o Nuts powdered donut.
Almost as much fun as the Horn and Hardarts on Sixth Avenue, with the old ladies at the counter.
Starbucks it wasn’t. The stools were the size of Frisbees, guaranteed to have customers squirming in discomfort within a quarter-hour. This accounted for high customer turnover. Which was Chock’s aim.
Still, good to have those greasy doughnuts back. Useful for squeezing the oil onto your rusty rollerskate wheels.
Will Page Black, the owner’s wife, be back to serenade his product?