10 February 2009

A Full Meal at Foltis-Fischer's


I never noticed this building on Park Avenue South near 28th Street before. Foltis-Fischer? Interesting name. What gives?

OK, this gives. Foltis-Fischer was the unlikely moniker of a restaurant chain. Sounds like a design house in the Garment District to me. It was owned by Constantine Foltis, a Russian immigrant who got his training at Childs. He bought out the Fischer chain of restaurants and attached his name (putting it first, of course). His ambition didn't take him far, however. The chain was out of business by the 1940s. The building on Park was built in 1930.

In Daniel Fuchs' novel "A Summer in Willaimsburg," a character named Tessie would rather have a "milkshake are Sherry's than a full meal at Foltis-Fischer's." I think I know what she means.

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