When we think about really old restaurants, we tend to gravitate toward the ones that are located in big cities and have been around seemingly forever, like Keens Steakhouse in Manhattan. Sure, Keens is one of the city鈥檚 oldest restaurants, having opened in 1885, but the oldest restaurants in the country are still not as old as something that鈥檚 entirely different: the country's oldest dining rooms, located inside taverns and inns. First, a little bit of history. Restaurants as we know them didn鈥檛 really exist in the United States until Delmonico鈥檚 opened in New York City in the 1830s. At this time, the whole concept of a "menu" was still pretty foreign, as the vast majority of people still ate at home, or at an inn or tavern, if they happened to be traveling and needed something to eat (or got hungry while out drinking). These stops didn鈥檛 have anything remotely resembling a bill of fare; if they happened to be making some beef stew in the kitchen, that鈥檚 what you鈥檇 be eating that night. And therein lies the difference between restaurants and dining rooms and bar rooms at taverns and inns. Whereas the earliest restaurants (and therefore America鈥檚 oldest) tended to be lavish affairs with gigantic menus, private dining rooms galore, and menu options like "palmettes of snipe, Osborn," dining rooms at taverns and inns were a much more modest affair, catering to the cold, weary traveler instead of the well-heeled, Diamond Jim Brady-types. It wasn鈥檛 until the later 1800s when more casual restaurants came about, in the form of delicatessens and lunch counters. In our quest to find America鈥檚 oldest taverns and inns, we tracked down lots of old Colonial-era houses that were converted into restaurants at some point in time, but many of them have only housed restaurants for less than 100 years. The taverns and inns on our list have fed the hungry for nearly as long as these buildings have been around, which in some cases is more than 300 years. And these aren鈥檛 museums, either; they鈥檙e places where you can still have a meal to this day, and they all date from before 1800. Read on for a trip back to the very earliest days of American dining.
