Forgotten Blue-Plate Special Dishes That Need To Return To Restaurants

You can keep your tasting menus and your overpriced entrées: In our opinion, all you need is a good old blue-plate special. The blue-plate special (with the origin of the phrase having several different theories) was a meal style that began to appear in the early 20th century, and was designed to appeal to working people who wanted a hearty meal without spending the earth. Typically, these meals were served for lunch and dinner and would change weekly or even daily. They consisted of a protein and several sides, one of which was usually a starchy carb that would keep folks going for the rest of their working day.

Although blue-plate specials were a staple of restaurants up and down the country, today they’re rarely seen. That means that there are a lot of forgotten dishes that used to be all the rage, which are tricky to find in eateries today. Many of these dishes will be familiar to the majority of people as homestyle meals that they may have made at home themselves, but which take on a new power and appeal when cooked by a chef and served on a blue plate. If you’re ready to check out the kind of comfort food that’s missing from today’s restaurants, let’s dig in.

Beef patties with gravy is a classic blue-plate special that may seem simple but hits the spot every time. As its name suggests, this dish is an easygoing combination of beef patties with a thick, beef-flavored gravy, with the two typically served with mashed potatoes. It may also have been known as Salisbury steak or hamburgers with gravy. There’s not really a standard way to make this dish, and every blue-plate special will have likely had a different twist on the seasonings and flavors used, but you could expect the classic tastes of mustard, garlic, and horseradish to potentially make appearances.

As with so many blue-plate specials, the appeal of this dish lies in its ability to keep things unfussy. Most of us eat beef patties on the regular, but we do so in burger buns that are piled high with cheese, bacon, vegetables, and an endless array of sauces (which seem to change based on what’s trendy this very second). Doing this can obscure the beef itself, clouding its flavor with different ingredients that may taste good but can often be fussy. Instead, this dish places umami and beefiness at its very core, to great effect. It’s no wonder people still think fondly of it.

Forget your carbonara, your aglio e olio, and your puttanesca: When pasta is served on a blue plate, it’s simple and hearty. (Okay, so all of those dishes are also simple and hearty, but work with us here, people.) Tomato macaroni and cheese was a spin on a classic macaroni and tomatoes, which gave folks all of the comfort of the latter dish with added creaminess. Depending on the chef, this could be sort of a spin on a baked mac and cheese, or may have been as simple as cheese sprinkled over the top of the tomato-flavored pasta.

Although we commonly associate blue-plate specials with potatoes, which were often served next to the primary protein on display, pasta was also a common feature. Tomato macaroni and cheese offers one of the simplest but most effective ways to serve it. Sometimes, all you want for dinner is a good bowl of cheesy, tomato-y carbs, and this blue-plate special offered that but eliminated all of the work (and the baking time) required to make it. Instead, it’s a bowl of wholesomeness that focuses on easygoing flavors.

Is there any dish that’s more comforting than meatloaf? We don’t think so. This quintessential blue-plate special, which was typically served with mashed potatoes, is the kind of thing you could find at neighborhood diners across the country. It would typically come with a side like green beans, although the exact combination of things on your plate would vary depending on your chef. What was always there, though, was a heaping slab of beef infused with the sprightly flavors of Worcestershire sauce and tomato ketchup and baked in the oven.

Although American-style meatloaf has been around in various forms since the 18th century (and it existed long before that, even spanning back to Roman times), it really reached its peak in the middle of the 1900s. These days, though, it’s pretty rare to find it in menus, and we think that’s a shame — meatloaf always tastes better at a restaurant. When meatloaf is good, it’s great: full of rich flavor, with a tender texture that stops it from being just a big brick of meat. Making it at home is easy enough, but it can leave you with days of leftovers, and sometimes you just want a single piece made with loving care and served at a reasonable price. That’s what you’d get with this special.

You know those days where you’re really craving roast ham, but just don’t have it in you to do it yourself? We don’t blame you; cooking this meat can take hours. That’s why we’re imploring restaurants to bring it back as the center of their blue-plate specials. Fresh ham was a regular feature as a blue-plate special, and was particularly popular on wartime and mid-century menus. You got a slice or two of salty, rich ham, and it was paired with a pile of potato salad and some coleslaw. Well, that was if the restaurant you were in was offering these as sides. If not, you might get mashed potatoes, baked beans, or boiled green cabbage. Oh, and the ham usually came with applesauce too.

Although this dish feels rustic and somewhat outdated, it’s hard to deny the flavor dynamics that it had going on. The salty, umami notes of the ham are cut through by the creaminess of the potato salad, and the coleslaw provides a zingy pop of acidity that brightens everything up. Beyond it being a comforting meal that you know you’ll love ordering (which keeps things simple), it also covers all the flavor bases you want in a dish. Clearly, those blue-plate special chefs were onto something.

If you ever wanted a simplified version of Thanksgiving on a plate but didn’t want to spend all day cooking, then this blue-plate special really had your back. Roast turkey was a common choice for a blue-plate special, and typically came with all the trimmings. This specific combo was notably immortalized in the classic spy book “Our Man in Havana” by Graham Greene, in which a character outlines exactly what a blue-plate special is and points out that it’s the kind of meal where you get what’s served to you, and nothing else. Well, if this is what was served to us, we’d be pretty happy about it.

This is one of those blue-plate specials that’s way more than the sum of its parts. Sure, on the surface of things, it’s just a couple of meats with a vegetable side and some stuffing — but if you tried to make all of that for one meal, it’d cost you a load of money and take a lot of prep. Here, though, you could get a taste of everything for a small cost and not have to worry about leftovers. Plus, it feels like the holidays, and what’s more comforting than that?

A good old breaded pork chop is a thing of beauty — and something that not enough restaurants serve these days. Although there have been some efforts to bring this back as a blue-plate special by certain eateries, it’s pretty few and far between. That’s a real shame, as this combination of a crunchy, crispy pork chop and a creamy, yet zingy potato salad is pretty dynamite. This blue-plate special is kind of an Americanized version of a dish commonly served in Austria and Germany, which pairs schnitzel with a German potato salad. This potato salad is typically tart and acidic, with a vinegar-based dressing that helps to keep it dynamic.

Beyond this blue-plate special being reliably satisfying and tasty, it’s also one that really understands texture. The crispiness of the pork chops balances with the smoothness of the potato salad excellently, and the chew of the pork inside adds a further layer. Flavor-wise, it’s got everything you want on one plate, with umami, saltiness, sourness, and a touch of sweetness from the potato salad. Oh, and it’s made using affordable ingredients. Consider us sold.

Pot roast is one of those dishes that you rarely see in restaurants these days, and honestly, we get it. It’s not exactly the height of elegance, and it’s seen to be something that most people can make at home without any significant degree of skill required. However, there was a time when it was a feature on blue-plate special menus, where it was accompanied with potatoes, either mashed or boiled, and a generous spoonful of gravy. Restaurants could also rustle up a similar-style dish of roast beef and gravy.

Although pot roast is hardly difficult to make yourself, the fact of the matter is that most people in this day and age don’t have the time. It’s a dish that takes most of the afternoon to cook, after all. This slow pace is what gives it its rich flavor, but it also makes it a rarity. Ordering it as a blue-plate special, however, would give folks a taste of this comfort without having to wait all day. If that wasn’t enough to bring it back, it’s also easy to see how cost-effective this dish is from a restaurant’s perspective. Everyone wins, guys.

We’ve got a lot of time for tuna casserole, even if no one else seems to. This dish is the most retro of them all, and while restaurants these days wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, it was once a blue-plate special that could be relied upon in diners nationwide. There’s something about the pairing of creamy tuna with peas that hits the spot (even though it really shouldn’t), and the addition of crackers on top provides a textural contrast and a saltiness that makes things unexpectedly complex.

Unfortunately, though, for the last few decades restaurants have turned their noses up at this dish, which was once everywhere. It’s time for that to change. We’re in the middle of a retro explosion, and what’s more retro than tuna casserole? We think it’s high time for the culinary world to embrace the kitschiness of this dish, which is a bit of a guilty pleasure for so many people out there. It’s cheap for them to make, it’d keep costs down for customers, and people know what they’re getting. Win, win, win.

Fried chicken with gravy: Honestly, there’s nothing better. Before this timeless combo was a regular on fast food menus across the land, it was a classic blue-plate special. The fried chicken was piled high, the gravy was thick and creamy (and was often a white gravy, instead of the deep brown that a lot of fast food joints offer), and it was typically served with mashed potatoes and green beans for textural and flavor contrast.

Although the odd restaurant here and there has made an attempt to bring this blue-plate special into the modern world, it’s weirdly difficult to find these days. Instead, you’re far more likely to find rather unloved versions of it in fast food chains like KFC. These can do in a pinch, but there’s nothing special about eating them, and they take away from the nuance that cooks can put into this dish. Bringing it back in blue plate form allows folks to sit back and savor the flavor dynamics that the combo brings. Plus, pairing it with mashed potatoes and green beans makes it an actual meal, one that is reassuring and familiar (and would take a while to make at home). Take that chicken out of a cardboard box, and put it on a blue plate where it belongs.