November 24, 2018

Throwed rolls.

I learned about the throwed rolls at Lambert's Cafe...



... from the Oxford English Dictionary, which has this in the sidebar today:
"Throwed" — unless you're talking about "throwed silk" — is "colloq. or nonstandard," the past tense of "throw," and one of the quotations selected by the OED is:
1995 Midwest Living Apr. 185/1 Fun family restaurant and home of ‘throwed rolls’ (for laughs, owner Norm Lambert tosses warm dinner rolls around the cafe to customers).
The oldest published use of the word the OED found is:
1861 H. M. G. Smythies Daily Governess I. xiii. 113 He was a selfish brute, and she a throwed-away angel.

29 comments:

Tacitus said...

The throwing of bread rolls was a regular activity at The Drones Club of Jeeves and Wooster fame....

T

BamaBadgOR said...

Each roll is a meal in itself. Also a Lambert's in Foley, AL. A must whenever grandkids are visiting.

rhhardin said...

Catched rolls are also necessary.

Also few can refrain from joining in when salad plates are thrown.

rhhardin said...

I find I'm exceptionally good at hitting the shopping/garbage bag opening in the kitchen when I throw with my left hand.

donald said...

Kinda overrated.

tcrosse said...

As a child I throwed rolls. Now I'm all growed up.

Linda said...

To each his own but, we actually stopped there on our way to Memphis last year. Absolutely not my type of place, but we were with a group. The rolls were tossed very accurately (at least when we were there the tosser was a young man). The amount of food that they served was obscene. You could have clearly served 2 - 4 people with many of the entrees. My husband ordered ham and it was a slab of ham about 1 1/2 inches thick served in a cast iron frying pan, enough to serve 4 people. It hardly looked like he had made a dent in the ham when he was done eating. I mostly follow a vegan diet, so there was little to nothing on the menu, but I think I had an order of green beans and applesauce and the roll. The beans were from a can and way over salted and the applesauce was way to sweet - the roll was OK.
As I recall I think there was signage that stated you couldn't share/split a meal between two people. I think that every patron walked out the door with a to-go bag that likely served at least 2 more meals. Needless to say since we were headed to a hotel in Memphis we did not take any of our extra food with us.
After stopping at a place like that there is absolutely no question as to why so many "average Americans" are obese. Way too much food!

William said...

Ditto, Linda. Meals that big just don't look appetizing. I don't see much entertainment value in catching rolls either.

William said...

I make an exception for BBQ. Plates heaped high with BBQ are enviable.

Ann Althouse said...

Do they force each customer to buy a separate entree? Maybe a group of 4 could order one item.

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe a lot of people take the leftovers home, so the idea is just go here once or twice a week and you don't have to shop for stuff to make home-cooked dinners.

robother said...

It's exciting to hear Norm yell,"Go long!" But you don't want to take the crossing route over the middle.

Bob Boyd said...

She ate too much and throwed up.

Linda said...

AA "Do they force each customer to buy a separate entree? Maybe a group of 4 could order one item."

They say no sharing plates - so everyone has to order something.
Just checked their website and looked at the menu: "PLEASE, NO DOGGIE BAGS, EXTRA PLATES OR SHARING PLATES!" - ALL in CAPS! I am sure they have people tossing rolls into their purses!

I assume that locals DO go there with the idea that they will bring the leftovers home and have plenty to eat for days.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

pairs nicely with a tossed salad

tcrosse said...

Somebody once explained to me the economics of restaurants. Food itself is one of the less-expensive inputs, after labor, energy, and rent. In order to justify the price you must charge to put a plate on the table profitably, it's easiest to increase the amount of food. There's a fine calculus of how far to go with this.

stevew said...

I blame President Donald Trump for this, and I'm so outraged about it I throwed out my back.

reader said...

My mother throwed rolls down the dining room table to my dad in 1970 when SC beat Notre Dame. That is one of my earliest memories because my mother was not one to regularly fling food. I don't remember her being drunk, I just remember those rolls flying down the table and her good mood.

Ann Althouse said...

If you're wondering what's an "entremetier," it's "a chef in charge of cooking vegetables, soups, and other appetizers or side dishes."

robother said...

"Never was horse that couldn't be rode, never was a cowboy that couldn't be throwed."

William said...

Why would anyone want to eat a grotesquely large amount of salad. That's a true eating disorder.

robother said...

The North Sentinel Islanders are devoutly areligious.

rcocean said...

He throwed up.

He lied. Ungrammatically.

rcocean said...

Like Hot potato - only with rolls.

Howard said...

I use overregularization just like childrens. It help me to stay n-dimensional visualization sharp. Grammer and sprelling are for girls and houseboys
http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~goodall/119overregularization.pdf
Why do children say “breaked”?
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/marcusArticles/marcus%201996%20CDPS.pdf
https://escholarship.org/content/qt0ct354wm/qt0ct354wm.pdf

Howard said...

Hat Tip to Steven Pinker on Joes Rogan Pod

Earnest Prole said...

We say "I throwed up a little in my mouth."

Unknown said...


Real Americans love big cheap food and Lamberts in Cape is an institution people drive 100 miles for.

Linda is free to go to a place with $15 tapas size dishes.

Hey Skipper said...

Back in the day, I was in an AF fighter squadron. Periodically, we'd have dining-ins, formal dress affairs that included only the pilots.

We threw rolls. They have much better ballistics if first loaded up with, say, mashed potatoes. Far more entertaining impact, too.