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Don’t Do It, Doodle!
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Business New Haven
2/7/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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A beacon of good cheer and cheap cholesterol for generations of New Haveners as well as legions of Yalies spanning the globe, the Yankee Doodle restaurant on Broadway in New Haven is about to go through the change in life. But the family that operates the half-century-old lunch counter says they don't plan to leave hungry diners in the lurch.
On July 1 Lew Beckwith, who has owned the Doodle for nearly three decades, will begin a two-stage “retirement” when his son, Rick, takes over day-to-day operations and bookkeeping. In September, as Yale students return to the Doodle's venerable counter stools, Lew Beckwith will switch to night hours, allowing him to take extended vacations during summer months, when the restaurant closes nights and Sundays.
Rick Beckwith told the Yale Daily News he plans few if any changes to the ancient eatery, although he hopes during the Doodle's 50th anniversary celebration in April to offer 1950s prices on some items, such as a 20-cent hamburger, to say thank-you to patrons.
The Beckwiths have been at the forefront of some major culinary innovations, or at least oddities. Among these are a glazed doughnut slathered with butter and then grilled, the product of an odd request by a customer in the 1970s which then rocketed to popularity. That led to the bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato sandwich on a grilled doughnut. The eager-to-please Beckwiths have also served such acquired fancies as a bran muffin with mayonnaise.
At the core of the Doodle mystique, however, remains the buttered hamburger with onions, a Beckwith tradition from the beginning, and raison d'etre of the “Doodle Challenge,” a Sisyphean ordeal pitting man against burger.
This quest to set a record for most burgers consumed in two and a half hours has been a gut-busting arena of town-vs.-gown combat for decades. The current record is 28 of the sandwiches, a feat accomplished by William Stobiersky, 46, on October 21, 1999, thus earning the Seymour resident immortality in the “Doodle Burger Hall of Fame.”
More information about the Yankee Doodle is found on the Web at www.thedoodle.com.
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