Here is a secret about great restaurant dishes: almost none of them began as a great idea. They began as a bad night. A kitchen running low. A friend showing up hungry after closing. An owner raiding the leftovers because there was nothing else to eat. 

At least, that is how the restaurants and food historians behind these nine American classics tell it. The stories stretch from 1837 to 1964, and many come with rival claimants and raised eyebrows, because food history is rarely tidy. 

So consider this a guided tour, in rough order of age. Where a restaurant is telling its own story, we will say so. Where the story is disputed, we will say that too. And where you can still order the dish at its birthplace, we will point you there. 

Our first stop: a Lower Manhattan landmark 

It is 56 Beaver Street, and it is a big one. Delmonico’s says it opened the country’s first fine dining restaurant in 1837. According to its own history page, it began as a small shop selling pastries, coffee, chocolate, wines, and cigars. Then came a triangular plot of land, private dining rooms upstairs, and a wine cellar the restaurant says held 1,000 bottles. 

The dishes came next. The restaurant credits Charles Ranhofer, named chef de cuisine in 1862, with a run of originals. Its current online menu, which it notes may change, still lists them. 

Delmonico steak  

The namesake. The restaurant says Chef Alessandro Fellippini built its early identity around this house special. Tasting Table says the cut was probably first served in the 1840s, with no precise record of how it was prepared.  

Most agree it was large, thick, marbled, and tender. What makes it stand out is simple: you can still order it where it got its name. The menu lists a Signature Delmonico Ribeye at 18 ounces and a Delmonico Eye at 12. 

Eggs Benedict  

Brunch has a famous origin story, and Delmonico’s is part of it. The restaurant credits Ranhofer and dates the dish to the 1860s. Tasting Table reports one telling in which he made it for a picky patron, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict.  

Another theory credits Wall Street broker Lemuel Benedict, who asked a Waldorf Hotel chef for it in 1894. Houstonia notes that both kitchens claim the dish, and suggests trying both. 

At Delmonico’s, the lunch menu has The Original Eggs Benedict, with poached pasture eggs, brioche, smoked ham, and béarnaise. At dinner, a Royal version swaps in butter-poached king crab. 

Lobster Newberg  

This one has a soap opera plot. Tasting Table and Houstonia date it to 1876. In a common telling, a sea captain named Ben Wenberg showed Ranhofer how to make it, and it was first called lobster a la Wenberg. Then Wenberg fell out with Charles Delmonico, and the name changed. 

Tasting Table notes that lobster was once food for poorer communities. In the late 1800s, Maine tourism and better food transport changed its image. Today it appears on Delmonico’s dinner menu at market price, with smoked trout roe and a cognac-scented lobster bisque. 

Baked Alaska  

Hot meets cold. Tasting Table says it was likely first served at Delmonico’s in 1867, and that by the 1880s Ranhofer was serving the meringue hot over ice cream. He called it Alaska, Florida, which some experts read as a wink at one cold state and one warm one. 

Similar desserts came earlier, the outlet adds, including an omelet surprise credited to physicist Benjamin Thompson Rumford in 1804. Delmonico’s lists its Original Baked Alaska with banana gelato, walnut cake and apricot jam. 

A hotel, a coastline and a border town 

Waldorf salad

Sometimes the simplest dishes last longest. Mental Floss credits Oscar Michel Tschirky, maître d’ of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, with preparing an apple, celery, walnut and mayonnaise mix for the hotel’s pre-opening party in March 1893.  

Tschirky worked there for another 50 years and became known as Oscar of the Waldorf. Houstonia adds a fun twist: he also served as maître d’ at Delmonico’s later in his career. 

Related: 6 Tiny Restaurant Touches That Are Quietly Winning Over Diners and Making Every Visit Feel Personal

Crab Louie  

If you like a good mystery, start here. Mental Floss calls this crab, avocado, tomato, and asparagus salad the king of salads. Its West Coast roots are certain. Everything else is up for debate. 

One account points to Seattle’s Olympic Club in 1904. Another points to Solari’s in San Francisco in 1914. Representatives of Spokane’s Davenport Hotel credit their founder, Louis Davenport. Three kitchens, one salad, no referee. 

Caesar salad 

Plot twist: this classic was born just across the border. Mental Floss says most historians credit Caesar Cardini, who ran a restaurant in Tijuana, just south of San Diego. The outlet says that was to avoid U.S. Prohibition laws. 

Then came a busy Fourth of July weekend in 1924, and supplies ran low. Cardini pulled together romaine, garlic, croutons, Parmesan, boiled eggs, olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. A competing claim, which Mental Floss calls unsubstantiated, places the salad in a Chicago restaurant about two decades earlier. 

Cobb salad 

Some of the best dishes start with a late-night rummage through the kitchen. Legend has it, per Mental Floss, that in 1937 Robert H. Cobb, owner of Los Angeles’s Brown Derby, went looking for a late meal.  

He chopped an avocado and tossed it with romaine, watercress, tomatoes, chicken, a hard-boiled egg, cheese, and leftover bacon, then dressed it with the restaurant’s French dressing. Hollywood promoter Sid Grauman reportedly loved it, and it soon landed on the menu. 

The late-night snack that went global 

Buffalo wings 

The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, says it happened on March 4, 1964, according to its history page. Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar when friends arrived late and hungry. His mother, Teressa, had wings on hand, a cut that usually went into the stockpot for soup. She fried them, flavored them with a secret sauce, and, according to the restaurant, they were an instant hit. 

Fox News reports, citing the National Chicken Council, that the Bellissimos put them on the menu the next day, served with celery and blue cheese sauce. 

Think about how far that traveled. Wing-festival founder Drew Cerza noted to Fox News that wings were once treated as peasant food, even trash, in the 1960s. The National Chicken Council estimates Americans now eat about 27 billion chicken wings a year, and roughly 1.4 billion on Super Bowl Sunday alone. Those figures cover wings of every style, not only Buffalo. 

To try the original, head to 1047 Main Street, at the corner of Main and North Streets. Buffalo Niagara’s wing trail guide suggests skipping the parking-lot door, walking to the Main Street entrance, and pausing at the original wooden bar.  

It says the medium sauce is closest to Teressa’s original recipe. The Boston Globe reported in 2024 that the wings come with celery and blue cheese dip. 

What the nine have in common 

Line them up, and the pattern is hard to miss. Six of the nine come with a rival theory or an earlier cousin. Three of them, Caesar, Cobb and the wing, began with a cook making do with what was on hand. And a handful carry names that double as signatures: Delmonico, Waldorf, Cobb, Buffalo. 

As for staying power, the evidence depends on the dish. Delmonico’s says its Ranhofer creations remain on the menu, and its current online menu lists them. The wing has national numbers to back it up. For the salads, the best evidence here is age: they date to 1893, 1924 and 1937, and Mental Floss still counts them among the classics. 

Here is what strikes us most. None of these dishes looked like history when they were made. Each was somebody’s best answer to a rough night. So if the next great restaurant classic is being improvised in some kitchen tonight, which dish from your own table do you think has earned a shot at a century-long run? 

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