Quayle).
But a lot has changed in the '80s.
That's not to say the Union League will soon start looking like the local chapter of the ACLU, but it does mean younger members are actively recruited, women can now eat in the main dining facilities unescorted, and blacks can be seen in suits instead of kitchen whites.
According to Center City lawyer John Morris, a member of the Racquet and Vesper clubs, private clubs were used much more when Philadelphia had fewer restaurants. "Everyone in Center City went to lunch at 12:30," Morris said, "so rather than standing in line at McGillin's, I'd eat at the Yale Club almost every day."
To find out what it's like to lunch in the rarefied surroundings of the rich and powerful, I enlisted members of some of Philadelphia's finest clubs - the Union League, the Racquet Club, the Locust Club, the Vesper Club and the Downtown Club - to dine with me.
Do the movers and shakers eat better than the rest of us? Not necessarily. Many items on club lunch menus look as if they haven't changed since the Eisenhower administration, from the ubiquitous chef's salad to chopped sirloin. To be sure, the ingredients are invariably high-quality - the Vesper Club uses only prime meats, and the crab meat at the Locust Club is top drawer.
But people don't come to their club to dine, as they would in a three-star restaurant. They want a good meal, but they don't particularly want to sample the latest trendy Caribbean dish or savor Pierre's legendary chocolate souffle. The most popular dish at the Locust Club, for example, is broiled salmon. At the Vesper Club, it's broiled or sauteed flounder, eclipsing the filet mignon sandwich in recent years. The sandwich shop at the Racquet Club is so busy during lunch that sandwiches have to be made ahead of time.
