“Eighty-six strombolis!”
If you were new on the job and didn’t know anything about the restaurant business, would you know what this meant?
I heard this (or something like this) at my first restaurant job, at a pizza place inside a mall. I was tasked with serving customers slices of pizza, calzones, and stromboli. If you’ve never had stromboli, think of it as a piece of pizza rolled up inside of itself:
So, wait. There aren’t 86 of them. In fact, we just sold our last one! What’s going on?
Over time, I allowed context to be my guide, and I began to understand that this was code for “we’re out of something.” I’m not sure I ever asked a single human what this meant; I was probably terrified of looking stupid, a common symptom of a scarcity mindset.
, my cooking brother from another mother, had a very similar experience early on. Here’s Brian:I would hear the line cooks yell out, “86 rice, 86 mash, 86 prawn cock, (Prawn Cocktail). I came to find out that to “86” something, meant to temporarily take it off the menu until it could be re-stocked or if it was late enough “86” for the night.
Why is the number 86 used instead of 15 or 54? That sounds kinda of good, hey 54 rice pilaf, maybe not.
I have always wondered, why 86? Well, according to legend, a bar called Chumley's at 86 Bedford Street in the West Village of Lower Manhattan was the origin of this term.
Claims have been made that the police would call Chumley's bar during prohibition before making a raid and tell the bartender to "86" his customers, meaning that they should exit out the 86 Bedford Street, but who knows?
Brian did a delightful piece on the language used in commercial kitchens, and you can read that full article here.
Doing a 180
This memory got me thinking less about kitchen terms themselves, and more about how several numbers in English have taken on a secondary meaning that’s sometimes even more recognizable than the number itself. If you’ve worked in a restaurant, “86” is certainly one of those numbers.
Another good example of this is 180.
"Doing a 180" means making a complete change in direction, not just physically but metaphorically. It's about changing an opinion, a behavior, or a decision so drastically that it's almost its polar opposite.
We can thank geometry for this one. A circle has 360 degrees, so when you turn 180 degrees, you're facing the exact opposite direction from where you started. I’ve heard speculation that the phrase caught on in the military some time in the 20th century, and that’s not terribly surprising to me.
Ten-Four, Good Buddy!
I grew up in the American south, and I was familiar with CB radios growing up. I would sometimes overhear truckers wrapping up a conversation with “ten-four, good buddy!” And, of course, whenever we played with walkie-talkies, we would end conversations with “ten-four.”
There was also Smokey and the Bandit. This movie came out in 1977, so I know I must have seen it on TV as a kid growing up at least 800 million times. The language embedded itself into my early childhood memory:
Designed during the 1930s for clarity and brevity in radio communications, the "10" in the codes ensured a clear start to each transmission. Specifically, "10-4" became the code for "acknowledgment" or "message received." Over time, its use expanded beyond law enforcement, resonating with truckers using CB radios and eventually embedding itself in popular culture and everyday conversation.
What’s the 411?
Kids, I am here to tell you all about the days of yore, when the world wide web had yet to be invented. We made things out of paper and read the ingredients on the toothpaste tube any time we went to the bathroom.
Things were different.
Long before “Google” became a verb, there was "411" – the universal number for directory assistance.
If you wanted to look some information up—any kind of personal information—you had two options: the phone book, or dialing 411. If you didn’t have the phone book, or if the person lived outside of the area where the phone book served, you could call the operator and ask them for the person’s number or address.
Today, if we want info, we Google it (or talk to an LLM), but we still say “411” when we mean “information.” Even when the internet was up and running in my home, I still needed to get info like this—search took a few years to become any good. I’m glad this little bit of history has been preserved in our language.
Writing 101
College courses famously use a numbering system that make it so that the first course a student will take on a given subject is 101. The next class in the series might be 102, although individual universities may have their own take on this. When I want to college, the University of South Carolina offered Engineering 101 or 102 as your first class; you simply had to take both during the first year.
201 is probably a class you take during your second year.
Today, “101" has transcended its academic origins. It's used in popular culture, business, and everyday conversation to denote the basics of any topic.
It’s interesting to note that the number 101 still follows the name of the subject, both in academia and in common language use. Whether you're attending a "Yoga 101" workshop or reading a "Relationships 101" book, the implication is clear: you're about to learn the essentials.
Numbers Beyond Counting
We’ve traveled from my earliest restaurant job, to CB truckers and universities, all laced with intoxicating nostalgia for me. In every case, each of these numbers behind the stories have found their voice in common words.
The evolution of language is a very broad topic, and I’ve been fascinated by the subject for years now. 2023 has brought the topic to the forefront of my mind many times so far, and I’ve used that inspiration to write about how the word “tomorrow” has three O’s in it and all three sound different, how Hangul came to be, and how funny it is when common phrases are misused. I wrote about the Rosetta Stone, and how we might be on the cusp of similar discoveries today.
In summary, I love language and can’t get enough of it. I’m glad you came down this rabbit hole with me.
Are there any numbers that have become words you can think of? Share them with us here!
Two pop culture connections to 86 Strombolis:
Stromboli is the name of the bad guy in Walt Disney's "Pinocchio"
Fictional secret agent Maxwell Smart used the ID number 86.
Came to the comments looking for someone to mention “69,” and realized - damn, I’m that guy.