DEPARTMENT DAYS: THE FADING INSITUTION OF THE DEPARTMENT STORE WAS ONCEA SOURCE OF CULINARY WONDER

Creamed spinach is not something you'd normally associate with Christmas. But at our house it is. It goes back several years to when our family used to journey to St. Louis on the day after Thanksgiving to kick off the holiday season by shopping downtown, a tradition for us until the kids grew up, the downtown began to decline and merchants started pushing Christmas sales the day after Halloween.

For me, food was a central part of this holiday ritual. I made sure that interspersed among inspections of store windows, sojourns through the toy department and a visit to Santa Claus were plenty of hot chocolate breaks, cookie samplings and candy counter tastings. (No wonder my favorite year was the one when Famous-Barr constructed a real candy kitchen on the eighth floor of its store and gave out fresh candy canes to all who came through.)

But the culinary highlight of the trip was always lunch, and our choice of a place to go was never lightly considered. Sometimes it was one of the fancy department store tearooms, occasionally it was the Chinese restaurant across the street from the parking garage, and often as not it was Miss Hulling's, on 8th and Olive, where creamed spinach was a specialty. To this day, my daughter vividly remembers how I raved about that dish. I fondly recall introducing it to her when she was 6 years old and just the two of us had made the outing, leaving mom and newborn brother at home in Cape Girardeau.

It doesn't seem possible that 25 years have passed since then, but they have, and holiday shopping has changed considerably. As Tom Heilman, who used to manage the Patuxent Room in a Woodward and Lothrop store near Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post, "Years ago, you spent your entire afternoon, your whole Saturday at a department store. Department stores had a self-interest in having restaurants. They wanted to keep their customers in the store, refresh them and send them out to shop some more. People don't shop like that today."

Now we shop at a hurried pace at cookie-cutter malls. If we stop to eat at all, we whisk through the food court and grab something on the run. Gone are the days when Christmas shopping was a social event, complete with full-course meal, for which you made sure to dress properly. And consequently, department store dining rooms, and department stores themselves, have had trouble surviving.

I became nostalgic about shopping and dining a few weeks ago while finishing off a Frango Mint sundae at Marshall Field's in Chicago, one place where shoppers can still experience some of the graciousness of bygone days. The store restaurant, the Walnut Room, is still going strong, and if you want to witness the annual lighting of the great tree there, you'll have to stand in a long line to make a reservation. Marshall Field's has operated a tearoom on the premises since 1890, when the food was prepared in a private home because there was not a store kitchen large enough. Though then there were only 14 tables staffed by eight waitresses and four pantry helpers (that ratio should give you some idea of the level of service you could expect), the store's famous chicken pie was already on the menu. Initially, Marshall Field himself was opposed to the idea of ladies eating in his store, but he was talked into opening the tearoom by his associate, Henry Gordon Selfridge, who would later go on to found his own great department store in London.

Sadly, not many stores have been able to carry on in the fashion of Marshall Field's. I was in Vancouver not long ago when the famed Eaton's finally declared bankruptcy, and was led to wonder about the fate of its premier restaurant on the ninth floor of the Montreal store. The restaurant, commissioned by Lady Eaton who had made numerous crossings on the legendary Ile-de-France, was a reproduction of the first class salle a manger on the ship. Fortunately, if riding French trains instead of French ocean liners is what you like, Le Train Bleu, a reproduction of a 19th-century luxury French dining car, is still open in Bloomingdale's on 59th Street in New York. So far, to my knowledge, nobody has opened a restaurant that duplicates the interior of the French Concorde, which is probably just as well.

Not surprisingly, larger stores have had better luck keeping their tearooms open. That explains why Marshall Field's, which claims to be the world's largest store (in floor space) is still in the restaurant business and so is Macy's, which also claims to be the world's largest store (in interior volume). Macy's, in fact, opened the first department store "ladies lunchroom" this side of the Atlantic back in 1878.

Upscale stores also fare better in the dining department. Thus, Bloomingdale's Petrossian Restaurant in Boca Raton serves fine caviar and champagne, Nordstrom's in San Francisco has a bar on every floor (I prefer the cafe for its view), and a Bullock's store in Los Angeles lured Wolfgang Puck into trying his hand in what used to be the sock department. Curiously, the Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City did not have a restaurant until fairly recently, but now operates one of the more ambitious ones of any department store. Neiman Marcus' Zodiac cafes still do well specializing in genteel dining (my mother swears by the popovers with strawberry butter served with every meal at the Frontenac location) and even became the stuff of urban legend when a mythical story circulated about a woman supposedly charged $250 for their cookie recipe. (The story should have raised suspicions because it also claimed the lady bought a scarf at the store, whose initials some claim stand for Needless Markup, for only $20!)

Thankfully the greatest department store of them all, Harrods in London (their motto is "Omnia, Omnibus, Ubique" "everything from everywhere for everybody") shows no signs of getting out of the food business, which is fitting because it is the only department store that started out as a grocery. It operates more than a dozen restaurants and bars, including the elegant Georgian Restaurant, which seats 400 people.

But many other department store dining spots have not been so lucky. Gone, for example, is the refined Missouri Room in the St. Louis Stix, Baer and Fuller store, where my wife as a child first tasted lamb. In fact, gone is Stix itself. Even Wanamaker's, the Philadelphia institution which invented fixed pricing, a major contribution to retailing by the modern department store, has fallen on hard times. The department store, started in Paris at the Bon Marche in 1838 as the product of social and economic change, may itself become the victim of such change.

Change, of course, is inevitable. With the Internet we may some day find we don't need stores at all. But if you, like me, are just a bit wistful for the old days of gracious shopping and dining, perhaps the following recipes, all vestiges of that bygone era, can help satisfy your longing. I know we'll be eating creamed spinach at our house this year.

Famous-Barr Onion Soup

This is arguably the most famous dish ever served in any Missouri department store. The store always graciously consented to share the recipe and even had it printed for distribution. This rendition was obtained by Alice Dye, formerly of Cape Girardeau, who used to work at Famous in St. Louis.

Ingredients:

3 pounds onions

1 stick butter

1 1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons paprika

1 bay leaf

3/4 cup flour

3 quarts beef bouillon

1 cup white wine (optional)

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 pound Swiss cheese

French bread

Directions:

Slice onions 1/8-inch thick. Slowly saut onions in butter for 1 and 1/2 hours. Add all other ingredients except bouillon, wine, and salt and saut over low heat 10 more minutes. Add bouillon and wine and simmer for two hours. Season to taste with salt. Refrigerate overnight. To serve, heat soup in individual casseroles, top each with a slice of French bread and Swiss cheese and broil.

Nordy bars

Though urban legend has it that it was a Neiman Marcus cookie recipe with a $250 price tag, these cookies, reminiscent of those available at Nordstrom's, might fetch a high price, too. The recipe is adapted from a cookie recipe site on the Internet.

Ingredients:

1 stick butter

1 2/3 cup butterscotch chips

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups chocolate chips

2 cups mini marshmallows

1 cup chopped nuts

Directions:

Place butter, butterscotch chips, and brown sugar in microwave safe bowl and heat at full power until melted, about 2 and 1/2 minutes, stirring once or twice. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Let cool. Stir in chocolate chips, marshmallows and nuts. Spread batter in greased 9 x 13-inch pan and bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 28 minutes. Cut into squares when cool.

Miss Hulling's Creamed Spinach

Miss Hulling was a real person, an Illinois farm girl who came to St. Louis in 1930 looking for a job as a telephone operator and ended up presiding over a restaurant empire which included two downtown cafeterias, now closed. This creamed spinach, adapted from her cookbook, was the most popular item at her 8th and Olive location.

Ingredients:

2 boxes (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach, thawed

1 1/2 tablespoons bacon fat

1 1/2 tablespoons chopped onion

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup milk

1/2-cup water pressed from spinach

1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/16 teaspoon white pepper

Directions:

Squeeze out all water from spinach, reserving 1/2 cup. Saute onions in fat until clear but not brown. Add flour and blend. Add milk and water, stirring rapidly until sauce thickens. Simmer slowly for 5 to 7 minutes. Add seasoning and strain. Add spinach and heat until barely serving temperature. Do not overcook.

Got a culinary question you'd like to ask or an idea you'd like to see treated in this column? Send your suggestions to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.