Recreation of a Historic Deli

[Senedana]

A while back, I set out to recreate Billy's Deli & Cafe, a deli and restaurant that had been an institution in my town for 67 years (1948-2015).  I asked friends to tell me what they remembered about certain parts of it and scoured the internet for pictures and videos so I could recall the stuff I used to take for granted.  It took a while to get the layout as close as I could manage and to figure out how to make it function as a restaurant in TS4.  Since I'd never seen the back areas (kitchen, bathrooms, storage), I made them up and tried to make them useful.  I'd like to share it, since it was a labor of love and took a while to put together.  It's in the gallery under Senedana.

 

But the place didn't really come together without vintage pictures of our town, which Billy's had on the walls lo those many years.  I could only find photos that were close to what they had, but I used them for my second shot at recoloring a painting (with help from raeleesv here on lovers lab).  Two pictures are of the Grand Central Airport (built 1928, now part of the Disney Creative Campus), one is of the Glendale Hotel (1888-1924), another is of the Masonic Temple (1929-present), and the last building is El Miradero (1902-present). 3 are a panorama shot of Glendale CA in 1912.  When I put them in place and showed them to my friends, who went to Billy's for years, they all said they made the whole thing work.  I have my recolors available here.

 

I used a decent amount of CC to establish the look, but the good news is that you can pretty much use whatever restaurant and food stuff you want.  

SimDoughnut's Porkison's set is so useful if you want to build restaurants, and the Loco Llama set is also awesome.

The flooring is a TS2 conversion by Elias943, and I used the wood plank awning by ohmysims for the top of the shelving.

I used food decor objects from It's all about clutter and Pilar, cheeses from Leosims, some food from the medieval food conversion by SrslySims, and a few things from the SimSuperMarket set.

I used a ton of packs, but I own most of the game (except for like 3 stuff packs).

 

I set it up as a restaurant with uniforms that are as close to what the waitresses wore as I could find.  I also set up the menu based on the kinds of foods Billy's served (though the game is sadly lacking in deli food and sandwiches; their matzo ball soup was to die for, and they served liver and onions and gigantic pastrami sandwiches).  I haven't playtested it yet but part of the whole point was to make it look as close as I could.

 

I hope you enjoy the results.  I know it's made me all kinds of nostalgic.

 

 

 

 

[raeleesv]

This looks great! Love the room and added little details. I'm a huge fan of clutter, makes the place feel more realistic. Pictures look amazing too. Pulls it all together. Nice job.