Columbia’s Cane’s, a Harlequin Museum
Reflecting on Raising Cane’s first-year-anniversary in Morningside Heights.
By Jack Bradner
Last September, Raising Cane’s stationed their fifth New York City location at 2850 Broadway, only a handful of blocks from the University. Like the roughly 1,000 other Raising Cane’s locations scattered across the globe, Columbia’s Cane’s is a place where disco balls always glitter, and your order’s called practically before you pay. Despite the restaurant’s relatively recent appearance in New York City, the Morningside Heights location, which the Cane’s corporate team calls “The Lion’s Den,” has crafted a perplexing attachment to Columbia’s and Harlem’s histories.
From photos to flags, you can find an eclectic collection of Columbia- and Harlem-themed memorabilia framed on the brick walls of The Lion’s Den. An old vinyl of Ellington at Newport hangs beside sheet music for Ada Watterson’s, BC 1898, “Morningside, Barnard College.” Beneath a black-and-white photograph of the General Grant National Memorial, there’s a print out of the cover from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. A poster celebrating the Manhattan School of Music’s 50th anniversary is tucked in the restaurant’s back corner.
While most of the memorabilia seems straight over the plate, some of the franchise’s marketing feels slightly absurd. At Columbia’s Cane’s, you can eat your 3 Finger Combo across from J. Robert Oppenheimer, as depicted in black-and-white on the cover of LIFE in 1949. “Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb,” a Cane’s sans-serif caption reads, “grew up on the Upper West Side and his mother taught at Barnard College.” At the end of that edition of LIFE, an essay details Oppenheimer’s nuclear research and moral turbulence. In Cane’s framed portrait of Oppenheimer, his eyes don’t quite meet the camera.
A few subway stops from The Lion’s Den, the Cane’s at 125th and Malcolm X Boulevard, which the franchise calls “The Heart of Harlem,” throws some curveballs, too. On the restaurant’s far left wall, a selection of Columbia gear stands out: a vintage Columbia football jersey, a light blue pennant, vinyl records by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, CC ’65, and the sheet music for “Roar, Lion, Roar.” Firmly rooted in Harlem, this rah-rah Columbia spirit seems off key, if for no other reason than the geography.
This catalogue of Columbia’s history reads as a clever commercial move. Within the past two decades, the $20 billion, privately-held franchise has spread across the United States. Considering the recent proliferation of fried chicken chains in New York City—Zaxby’s, Chick-fil-A, Bojangles, Popeyes, and, of course, Raising Cane’s—the Baton Rouge eatery has every incentive to outperform its Southern-style competitors for a bite of the city.
But even more immediately, Columbia’s Cane’s faces stiff competition in Morningside Heights, so linking the chain to Columbia’s history makes the experience more personal, more human. From offering complimentary meal cards at Columbia’s homecoming game last fall to giving out Cane’s “Lip Sauce” (lip balm) and silicone bracelets, the franchise appears to be insinuating itself into Columbia culture.
At both The Lion’s Den and The Heart of Harlem, there’s a cherry-red mural that features the Cane’s logo behind a tromp l’oeil demolition of the restaurant’s brick wall. Painted at most of the Raising Cane’s locations, this mural pays homage to Todd Graves’ revelation when founding the first Cane’s. “Our founder uncovered this historic mural when he was renovating the first Raising Cane’s,” a golden plaque inside the restaurant reads, with a picture of the dilapidated red-and-gold mural Graves found in Baton Rouge, 1996.
This past semester, as I ate lunch at Columbia’s Cane’s, one customer steadied their iPhone camera for a picture of the restaurant’s decor. I eagerly watched, having just snapped photos of the displays for later reference. Which were they going to take a picture of? Warren Buffett, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Pat Boone? My excitement waned when they zoomed their camera past all the Columbia relics, sports merch, and magazine covers. Their camera lingered, at last, on the mural.
In July 2011, when Cane’s had roughly 100 restaurants, a regional Southern newspaper reported on local memorabilia displayed in a Mississippi Raising Cane’s. When decorating their Pascagoula, MS, location, Raising Cane’s coordinated with historians and the Pascagoula School District to display items both permanently and on loan. 15 years and about 900 new Raising Cane’s later, it’s unclear if the franchise still shows this same interest and intention when curating their restaurant displays. After I connected over email with both the Manhattan Leader of Marketing and the Restaurant Leader of The Lion’s Den, the franchise did not follow up on my interview requests.
To better understand Cane’s commercialization, I want to turn to architect and urban critic Michael Sorkin, MA ’70. In the introduction to his 1992 anthology, Variations on a Theme Park, Sorkin describes how American fast-food chains operate in modern cities:
Here, locality is efficiently acknowledged by the inclusion of the croque-monsieur at the McDonald’s on the Boul’ Miche or the Cajun Martini at the airport lounge in New Orleans (and you’re welcome to keep the glass). This “place” is fully ageographic.
To Sorkin, Raising Cane’s is a double calamity. With a menu limited to Texas Toast, fries, fried chicken, and coleslaw, Cane’s serves commercialized Southern cuisine to New York City without deep historical ties to either. Cane’s marketing and interior decoration, tailored to every one of their locations, amplifies its ageographic identity. Ironically, The Heart of Harlem is just two blocks from Sylvia’s, Harlem’s legendary restaurant dubbed the ‘Queen of Soul Food.’ Having welcomed Beyoncé, former President Bill Clinton, Magic Johnson, former President Barack Obama, and more American icons to dine at 328 Malcolm X Boulevard, Sylvia’s is a New York City staple.
Near our campus, spots like Sylvia’s are few and far between. To simplify a far more nuanced issue, there are a couple reasons for the lack of small businesses. One of them is the increase in national fast-food chains. After Chipotle’s arrival in 2007, Five Guys, Starbucks, Sweetgreen, Shake Shack, Blue Bottle Coffee, Playa Bowls, Raising Cane’s, and more followed suit. Columbia’s cluster of franchises can act as a positive feedback loop. If a competitor opens a new location, companies can more confidently anchor down in that area. As retail chains cluster together, their shared market and nearby foot traffic both increase. Of course, the decrease in small businesses is also an effect of the University’s policies. Higher real estate prices—Columbia’s gentrification of Morningside Heights, that is—push out locally-owned shops for franchised businesses that can shoulder the costs.
The history of 2850 Broadway reflects that transition. Before Cane’s, 2850 Broadway was home to a procession of diverse cultural eateries: Jewish, Hungarian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and American cuisines cycled through the space going all the way back to the 1920s. It’s slightly ironic, now, that Raising Cane’s hangs local paraphernalia on walls that used to embody that history. In this sense, Cane’s operates and acts as Morningside Heights’ harlequin museum, entertaining but mimetic.
Leaving New York for the weekend, I lugged my suitcase through Penn Station’s concourse to Raising Cane’s. Unfortunately, though expected, a line of customers snaked around the corner, so I chose the next best option, Chick-fil-A. Spicy Deluxe Sandwich in hand, I put my things on a counter at the station across from another commuter.
Sporting wired headphones, she unpacked Chick-fil-A nuggets, Chick-fil-A Sauce, Raising Cane’s crinkle-cut fries, Cane’s Sauce, and a Cane’s soft drink. Awed by her mix-and-match combo, I introduced myself to Ava, a Brooklyn-native and teacher in New Jersey, and we chatted about Cane’s arrival to the city.
“I was really excited when they brought [Cane’s] here,” she said. A longtime fan of New York baseball and its history, Ava said that she enjoyed seeing the walls packed with merchandise from the Yankees, the Mets, and even the then-Brooklyn Dodgers. “I think it’s gorgeous, and I know that’s crazy because it’s a fast food restaurant. But, I’ll just look around [at] the attention to detail. I love it; it’s perfect. It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to appease the people. It’s just like, ‘No, this is Brooklyn, this is South Brooklyn history,’ and they put it all up for us.” While a more cynical observer like Sorkin might contend that Raising Cane’s put the decorations up for itself, Ava finds a thread of goodwill that links the franchise to local communities.
After wishing Ava safe travels, I boarded my train and pulled up my photos of The Lion’s Den’s memorabilia. Flipping through, I started to realize how much of the information I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t know that Oppenheimer’s mother taught at Barnard. I had never seen a copy of Amelia Earhart’s, GS 1920, pilot’s license, nor did I know she used to frequent the roof of Low Library. While I appreciated those facts, it felt absurd to learn them from a franchised chain.
As Cane’s settles into 2850 Broadway, remember what the restaurant represents: the ways that Morningside Heights’ and Harlem’s histories are understood, exhibited, and overlooked. The franchise’s appreciative-yet-commercial memorabilia show that it isn’t always easy to draw such distinctions. Cane’s curation is also an act of omission; spotlighting one thing casts a shadow over another. Raising Cane’s historical displays might have the purest intentions, but history’s a delicate process.
