Drop a coin, turn a knob, open a small glass door, and lunch is yours. Lisa Hurwitz's documentary The Automat revisits Horn & Hardart, the restaurant chain that fed generations of Americans this way, through the memories of the people who ate there.
What is The Automat about?
Across a century of business, Horn & Hardart built a chain of automats where freshly cooked dishes waited behind rows of glass windows and diners carried their trays to long communal tables. Hurwitz tells that story from the customer's chair rather than the boardroom. Former regulars describe what it felt like to sit beside strangers over a cup of coffee, why the place became a kind of shared civic room, and how the routine of the automat stitched itself into ordinary city life. The film then follows the company's climb to its peak and its long struggle once fast food and a changed American landscape made the model hard to sustain. It also draws a line from the automat to Starbucks, presenting the old chain as an inspiration for the coffee giant's idea of a public gathering place.
About the cast
The interview list is unusually starry for a film about cafeterias. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mel Brooks, Colin Powell, Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould all appear as former customers, and they are joined by Wilson Goode and Howard Schultz. Because the documentary is built from recollection, these voices do much of the narrative work, and the mix of public figures with everyday diners keeps the tone affectionate without turning the subject into a museum piece.
Context & significance
Most food documentaries are about chefs; this one is about a system, and about what a city loses when a cheap, democratic place to sit disappears. That makes The Automat as much social history as nostalgia. The automat model combined machine-style vending with a working kitchen behind the wall, and Hurwitz uses that contradiction to talk about American ideas of efficiency, class and public space over the course of the twentieth century. At seventy-nine minutes the film stays brisk. It is a 2021 release from the United States.
Watching The Automat on Ktime
The Automat streams on K-Time with a free account login. This title is offered with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so viewers can choose to listen in Farsi or hear the original interviewees in English with Farsi text. The K-Time interface is in Persian throughout.