Soon there will be just 1 Howard Johnson restaurant left in the U.S.
And then there was one.
In two weeks, the Howard Johnson restaurant in Bangor, Maine, will close its doors, leaving just one HoJo restaurant left in the entire U.S., in Lake George, New York. The eateries, founded in 1925 by Howard Deering Johnson, once dotted the landscape, and predated the hotels of the same name.
The first restaurant started as a soda fountain outside of Boston, and the restaurants that followed featured comfort foods, fried clam strips, and dozens of flavors of ice cream. Sally Patel, the owner of the Bangor restaurant, said she kept it going for several years despite business being "very slow," and its closing will not affect the attached hotel.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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