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What is a Garbage Plate?

A Garbage Plate is Rochester, NY's signature dish: two sides, usually macaroni salad and home fries, topped with two hot dogs or burgers, a spiced meat hot sauce, mustard and raw onions, with buttered Italian bread on the side. It comes from Nick Tahou Hots, which owns the name.

Find a plate: 52 places around Rochester, NY

It is also the dish this channel is named after. Everything on this page names where it came from, the way this site handles a price, and where something could not be sourced it says so. Looking for somewhere to eat one? All 52 places around Rochester, NY that serve a plate are in the directory.

The Garbage Plate in 30 seconds

What it is
Two sides, usually macaroni salad and home fries, under two hot dogs or two burgers, with a spiced meat sauce poured over everything, then mustard and raw onions. Buttered Italian bread on the side.
Where it is from
Nick Tahou Hots, 320 West Main Street, Rochester, NY, a business that dates itself to 1918.
Why the name
Customers named it by pointing at a plate with all that garbage on it. The family registered GARBAGE PLATE as a federal trademark on August 18, 1992.
Why it has other names
Because of that trademark. Everywhere else sells a trash plate, a junkyard plate, a sloppy plate, a Genny plate or just a plate.
How to order
Pick a meat and two sides and ask for everything, which means hot sauce, mustard and onions.
Where to get one
52 places around Rochester, NY, by area, with hours and prices.
A Garbage Plate at Nick Tahou Hots: two split white hot dogs lying across home fries and macaroni salad, buried under a layer of crumbled brown meat sauce with chopped raw onion and a line of yellow mustard through it. Two slices of white Italian bread lie on the rim of the plate and a fork rests on the right.
This is the thing itself, photographed at Nick Tahou Hots on June 28, 2025. Two white hots on home fries and macaroni salad, hot sauce poured over the lot, raw onion and mustard on top, bread and butter on the side. Photograph by Paul Lowry, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What is actually on one

There is no fixed recipe, which is the first thing to understand about it. A plate is assembled to order out of a short list of parts, and the list below is Nick Tahou Hots' own: every item on it is a box you tick on the order form the restaurant publishes for phone and fax orders.

1 2 3 4 5 6

  1. Sides, on the bottom

    Macaroni salad, home fries, french fries or baked beans. Those four are the whole list on Nick Tahou Hots' order form and you tick the ones you want. Their own 2007 menu said "any combination" of them, and in 1995 it was any two or three. Everywhere else two is the number: Steve T. Hots & Potatoes prints "Choice of 2 with plates", and Bill Gray's serves its plates over 2 side orders. Macaroni salad and home fries is the pair most people mean when they say a plate.

  2. The meat, on top of the sides

    Cheeseburger, hamburger, red hot dog, white hot dog, Italian sausage, chicken tender, fried ham, fish fry, grilled cheese, or the veggie plate. Ten choices on the order form, and the red and white hots are a Rochester, NY distinction rather than a typo: a white hot is a pale pork, beef and veal dog that is a local thing in its own right.

  3. Hot sauce, poured over the lot

    The order form calls it Nick's Hot Sauce and it is the thing that makes the plate a plate rather than a tray of sides. It is a loose spiced ground meat sauce, and it goes over the whole plate rather than on one part of it. Fairport Hots is famous, in its own words, for its "Homemade Meat Hot Sauce", which tells you where the argument is around here.

  4. Chopped raw onions

    A checkbox on Nick Tahou Hots' order form, and standard unless you say otherwise. Steve T. Hots & Potatoes puts it beyond doubt on its own menu: "On plates, everything includes: Hot Sauce, Mustard, Onions".

  5. Mustard

    The other checkbox, and the other third of that same Steve T. line. Nick Tahou's own menu calls it spicy mustard, striped over the top.

  6. Bread and butter, on the side

    Italian bread, buttered. Steve T. Hots & Potatoes says its plates are "Served with Italian Bread or Rolls", and Visit Rochester says a plate is usually served with a side of buttered bread. Alex Tahou's account of the original hots and potatoes has two pieces of Italian bread and butter on it as well, so this is the part of the dish that never changed.

Drawn rather than photographed, because a drawing can be cut open and labeled and a photograph cannot. The order is bottom to top and it matters: the sauce goes over everything, which is what makes it a plate and not a tray of sides. Read off Nick Tahou Hots' own printable order form on August 20, 2026, plus Visit Rochester's description of what a traditional plate is.
A Garbage Plate seen from above on a plate whose blue rim reads NICK TAHOU and, along the bottom, HOME OF THE GARBAGE PLATE. Baked beans, macaroni salad and chunky home fries are arranged around the edge; a mound of crumbled meat sauce and chopped onion sits in the middle over a split red hot dog.
Three of the four sides in one frame, photographed in 2007: home fries, macaroni salad and baked beans. The order form lists those three and french fries, and you tick the ones you want. Photograph by Eugene Peretz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Two Garbage Plates on a red cafeteria tray, one behind the other. The plate at the back carries split red hot dogs under the meat sauce; the one at the front carries pale white hots. Both sit on the same home fries and macaroni salad. A slice of Italian bread on its own plate and a cup of water stand beside them.
Two plates on one tray, which is the quickest way to see that the meat is a choice and not part of the recipe: red hots at the back, white hots at the front, everything underneath them the same. Photograph by Paul Lowry, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How to order one

There is no menu language to learn beyond a handful of words, and every one of them is on a real menu somewhere in Rochester, NY. This is what they mean.

Plate
The dish, said on its own. Eater calls it the regional abbreviation, and most menus in town file the whole section under Plates.

Source: Eater, 2017.

Everything
Hot sauce, mustard and onions. Steve T. prints it on the menu, dogTown defines it twice, and Visit Rochester used the same three words to explain it to Fox News. Nobody in any source says "all the way".

Sources: Steve T. menu; dogTown menu; Fox News, 2023.

Hots
Hot dogs. The word is about the dog, not the heat.

Source: Zweigle's FAQ.

Red hot, or Texas hot
An ordinary pork and beef frankfurter. Zweigle's says outright that its red hots are not spicy and that Texas hots is another name for them. On Nick Tahou's menu, Texas means the red.

Sources: Zweigle's FAQ; Tasting Table, 2024.

White hot
Uncured and unsmoked pork, beef and veal, which is why it is pale. It is the Rochester, NY one, and some people here call it a porker.

Source: Zweigle's FAQ.

Hot sauce
A meat sauce, not a bottle of pepper sauce. Some menus just say meat sauce or meat hot sauce.

Sources: Visit Rochester; Tasting Table, 2024.

Half plate, split plate
One meat instead of two, or one of each. Nick Tahou's 2007 menu sold a half plate for a dollar less, and dogTown sells a split plate of one cheeseburger and one dog.

Sources: Nick Tahou menu, 2007; dogTown menu.

On rolls
Buns on the side instead of bread. Nick Tahou's charged a dollar more for it in 2007.

Source: Nick Tahou menu, 2007.

The owner's own order

The owner's own pick, first hand: a cheeseburger plate with all the fixings, because a plain plate misses the point. If you want the part of it you cannot get anywhere else, make it white hots.

Source: Tasting Table, 2024.

What people actually ordered, on the record: Jim Gaffigan had white hots with meat sauce over macaroni salad and home fries, and held the mustard. A Rochester, NY pizza owner told Scripps he gets red hots over mac and potatoes with mustard, onions and Nick's sauce.

Sources: Spectrum News, 2020; Scripps News, 2023.

Where to get one

Only one kitchen can sell you a Garbage Plate by that name, and it is on West Main Street. 51 more around Rochester, NY sell their own version under their own name, and every one of them is in the directory, by area, with prices, the hours they publish and a filter for what is open right now.

  1. Nick Tahou Hots

    The original

    West Main Street, downtown

    Calls it Garbage Plate

    Where it comes from and the only kitchen on earth entitled to those two words. It is in the old Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh railroad terminal, a block from Frontier Field, and it has been on this street since 1918.

    • Meatless plate
    Where
    320 W. Main St., Rochester, NY 14608
    Phone
    585-436-0184
    Open
    Not confirmed. Their own site publishes none, and it has not been updated since 2021. Call before you go.

    The Henrietta branch opened on August 3, 2010 and closed in 2014, and the Lyell Avenue shop became Steve T. in 2007. Their own site lists West Main and nothing else.

    garbageplate.com Order form

See all 52 places

A place goes on this list only if its OWN site, its OWN online menu or an ordering page it runs says it serves a plate. A food blog or a directory saying so is not evidence that a kitchen still makes one.

The hot sauce

The hot sauce is the part that makes it a plate, and it is the part nobody publishes a recipe for. Here is what the people who make it say it is.

Where it came from

Told in the order it happened, with the source for every claim on the claim itself. Two of these are primary: a federal trademark file, and the restaurant's own order form.

  1. 1918

    A hot dog stand on West Main Street

    Nick Tahou Hots dates itself to 1918, and it is the restaurant itself saying so: the front page of its own site carries the line "A Rochester tradition since 1918!" and not much else. The first shop stood a block away, at 296 West Main Street, and the family says it began as a pushcart. What it was called first is reported two ways: West Main Texas Hots in most accounts, and Hots and Potatoes in the Democrat and Chronicle's 2020 piece. Alex Tahou's own 2017 words use Hots and Potatoes, but it is not clear from them whether he meant the shop or the dish.

    A large painted sign on the brick wall inside Nick Tahou Hots. It reads NICK TAHOU HOTS in blue over a drawing of a steaming plate of hot dogs, beans and bread, then in script "Home of the Garbage Plate", then Established 1918 in red. A red LED display on the left reads 5 MILLION.
    The 1918 date, on the restaurant's own wall in 2007. This page dates the shop and not the dish, and this is one of the two places the business states the shop's date about itself. Photograph by Eugene Peretz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    Sources: garbageplate.com; Rochester Business Journal, 1995; Tasting Table, 2024; Democrat and Chronicle, 2020; Red Wings, 2017.

  2. Who founded it

    Nick's father founded it, and who invented the plate is still open

    This page used to print this as a coin toss. It is not one anymore. Nick Tahou Hots' own site quotes Wikipedia saying the restaurant "was founded by its namesake, Nick Tahou", but every first-hand family source this page could read says otherwise. Nick told the Rochester Business Journal in 1995 that his father came from Greece shortly after 1900, started the business with a pushcart and died in 1942, which is when Nick took over and put his own name on it. Saveur in 2012, Eater in 2017, the Democrat and Chronicle in 2020 and Tasting Table in 2024 all name that father as Alexander, or Alex, Tahou. So the founder was Alexander, and the site's line is best read as a garbled account of Nick's decades running it. WHO INVENTED THE PLATE is the part that stays open: the 1995 piece credits Nick, and Nick's son Alex credits his grandfather Alexander with what became it. The dish grew over decades, so it probably does not have a single inventor to find.

    Sources: garbageplate.com; Rochester Business Journal, 1995; Saveur, 2012; Eater, 2017; Democrat and Chronicle, 2020; Tasting Table, 2024.

  3. 1942

    Nick takes over and his name goes on the sign

    Nick Tahou followed his father from Greece in the 1930s and took the business over when his father died in 1942. The shop went from West Main Texas Hots to Nick Tahou's Texas Hots, and by the late 1970s to Nick Tahou Hots, Inc. Nick retired around 1990 and handed the counter to his son, also Alex, who still runs it.

    Sources: Rochester Business Journal, 1995; Tasting Table, 2024.

  4. The original

    It was hots and potatoes, and the beans were cold

    The dish did not start as a Garbage Plate and did not start with most of what is on one now. Alex Tahou, the founder's grandson, described the original to Tasting Table in 2024.

    The original plate was hot dogs called hots and potatoes. It was hot dogs, home fries, cold beans, not hot, and two pieces of Italian bread and butter

    Alex Tahou

    Source: Tasting Table, 2024.

  5. 1963 and 1968

    The restaurant moved into a railroad station

    The building at 320 West Main Street was never built to be a restaurant. The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum records that its oldest part went up in 1877 as offices for the Pitkin Building and Monumental Steam Stone Works, that the railroad bought it in 1881 and expanded it into a passenger terminal, and that the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh became part of the Baltimore & Ohio system in 1932. Tahou bought the station in September 1963 for $43,000, and the move down the block waited until the original shop was demolished in 1968.

    Looking east along West Main Street in Rochester, NY on an overcast day. On the left stands a long red brick building with steep gables and tall arched windows, a hanging sign on it reading NICK TAHOU. A green railroad bridge crosses the road ahead and downtown towers stand behind it.
    The building from the street in 2008. The brick block on the left is the old passenger terminal the restaurant moved into, gables and arched windows and all, and the railroad bridge beyond it is the rest of the reason it is there. Photograph by Doug Kerr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    Source: Railroad museum, 2021.

  6. 1979 to 2014

    The other Nick Tahou's

    West Main Street was not always the only one. A Nick Tahou Hots II opened on Lyell Avenue in 1979 and became Steve T. Hots & Potatoes in 2007, run by Nick's nephew, which is why that counter still sells the dish under its first name. A third shop opened next to SUNY Oswego in September 1995. And a Henrietta branch at 3070 West Henrietta Road opened on August 3, 2010 and closed in 2014. Today the restaurant's own site lists West Main Street and nothing else.

    Sources: Rochester Business Journal, 1995; Eater, 2017; Democrat and Chronicle, 2010; garbageplate.com.

  7. The name

    College kids named it, and the family fought it

    Nobody at the restaurant chose the word. Students coming out of the bars would point at somebody else's dinner and order it by description, and the description stuck hard enough that the family gave up and put it on the sign. Eater and Alex Tahou himself date that to the 1980s; Tasting Table says the 1970s or 80s. The family did not like it at first, and told the Democrat and Chronicle so in six words: "It's food; it doesn't sound good."

    Guys would come in after drinking, and they'd see somebody that had a plate, have no idea what it was, and just say, give me a plate with all that garbage on it

    Alex Tahou
    Inside Nick Tahou Hots in 2025. Two customers stand with their backs to the camera at a long blue counter under strip lighting; a member of staff faces them across it. A yellow menu board hangs overhead and a sign on the left wall reads NICK TAHOU HOTS above a drawing of a plate.
    The counter, in 2025. Every order here is said out loud across it, which is how a description of somebody else's dinner ended up being the name of the dish. Photograph by Paul Lowry, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    Sources: Tasting Table, 2024; Eater, 2017; Red Wings, 2017; Democrat and Chronicle, 2020.

  8. 1991 to 1992

    GARBAGE PLATE became a federal trademark

    This is the part of the story that is written down in a government file rather than retold, and the dates in that file are worth having exactly right. Nick Tahou Hots, Inc. of 320 West Main Street filed for the mark GARBAGE PLATE on July 29, 1991. It registered on August 18, 1992 as registration number 1,708,448 on the Principal Register, in class 29, and it is still live, renewed in 2002, in 2012 and most recently on May 9, 2022. The owner on file is still Nick Tahou Hots, Inc. of 320 West Main Street. One detail the food writing never mentions: the mark covers the prepared dish, in trademark class 29, and not restaurant services.

    prepared entrees consisting primarily of one of the following, hot dogs without buns, hamburgers without buns, steak, pork chops, sausage, ham, fish or eggs and processed potatoes and processed beans

    the registration's own description of the goods
    A Garbage Plate held on somebody's lap outdoors on grass. The plate's blue rim reads NICK TAHOU HOTS along the top and, along the bottom, HOME OF THE GARBAGE PLATE. On it are a split red hot dog, home fries, macaroni salad, meat sauce, chopped onion and a heavy pour of ketchup.
    The mark, printed around the rim of the plate it belongs to, in May 2005. The photographer released this one into the public domain, so it is the only picture on this page that carries no conditions at all. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Evadb, released into the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    Source: USPTO trademark record.

  9. Ever since

    Which is why everybody else sells a trash plate

    One restaurant owns the name, so every other kitchen in Rochester, NY serving the same idea calls it something else. Trash plate, Rochester plate, sloppy plate, junkyard plate at dogTown, and at the vegan place, a compost plate. The dish is nobody's property and the two words are, which is the whole reason the menus around here read like a thesaurus. Alex Tahou put the position plainly in 2024.

    We're trademarked, and we're still the only garbage plate

    Alex Tahou

    Sources: Tasting Table, 2024; USPTO trademark record; dogTown menu.

  10. 2017

    The baseball team renamed itself after it

    For one home game on August 10, 2017 the Rochester Red Wings played as the Rochester Plates, in caps and jerseys with a Garbage Plate on them. 13WHAM carried the announcement five weeks out and Spectrum News NY1 filed from the ballpark on the night, which is how this page knows the game was played and not just planned. Their general manager Dan Mason told 13WHAM why, and it is as good a one-line summary of the dish's standing in this city as anybody has managed. It did not stay a one-off. The Plates became every Thursday home game in 2018, and in 2019 the team added a mascot, a garbage can named Mac.

    There is nothing more Rochester than the Garbage Plate. There isn't another food item that Rochesterians are more proud of or that is more celebrated in our city than the Garbage Plate and we can't wait to take the field as the Plates!

    Dan Mason, Red Wings general manager

    Sources: 13WHAM, 2017; Spectrum News, 2017; Red Wings, 2017; Democrat and Chronicle, 2019.

  11. 2021

    The time television said it was closed

    On November 11, 2021 a Today show segment by Andrew Rea, who makes Binging with Babish, said Nick Tahou Hots was closed. It was not. The restaurant said so loudly, called the segment trademark infringement and said the only Garbage Plate is one from its own kitchen. Rea apologized and donated to the restaurant's fundraiser. In 2024 Alex Tahou told Tasting Table he does not object to other kitchens selling their own version, and that the family was trying to license the name to somebody.

    Sources: Democrat and Chronicle, 2021; Tasting Table, 2024.

Every kind of plate

The plate is a template, and every kitchen in town has bent it. These are the versions you can actually order, with where each one is written down.

What one costs

Nick Tahou Hots publishes no price today. Its own old menu pages do, and the Internet Archive kept them, so this is the one price history of the original that can be checked.

Nick Tahou Hots, per plate.
WhenHot dog plateCheeseburger plateChicken or haddock
April 2007 to February 2009

Source: Nick Tahou menu, 2007.

$5.50$6.00$6.50
April 2009

Source: Nick Tahou menu, 2009.

$7.00$7.50$8.50
August 2023$12.50 for the original, tax included, as reported by Scripps News

Source: Scripps News, 2023.

The rest of town prints its prices, and they are on every card in the directory. As read on September 23, 2026 a full plate runs from $9.99 for a meatless one at Wimpy's, Spencerport Hots or Farmington Hots to $22 for the dressed-up versions, and a half plate is usually a few dollars less.

Making one at home

Nobody publishes Nick's recipe and this page is not going to pretend to. What it can do is give you the build and the two tips that come from the family itself.

  1. Two sides on the plate. Macaroni salad and home fries is the classic pair; french fries or baked beans are the other two.
  2. The meat on top: two burgers, or two hots split and grilled.
  3. Meat hot sauce spooned over everything, not beside it.
  4. Chopped raw onion and a line of mustard.
  5. Buttered Italian bread on the side.
From the people who make it

For the sauce, start from a hot dog chili: finely ground beef, spices and a little tomato, no beans. For the macaroni salad, Alex Tahou's advice is no salt and no vinegar, just elbows, celery, carrot and plenty of mayonnaise, because vinegar fights the sauce. And for the version his grandfather sold, serve the beans cold.

Sources: Tasting Table, 2024; Fox News, 2023.

Garbage Plate questions

What is a Garbage Plate?

A Rochester, NY dish: two sides, usually macaroni salad and home fries, under two hot dogs or burgers, covered in a spiced meat hot sauce, mustard and raw onions, with buttered bread on the side. It comes from Nick Tahou Hots, which dates itself to 1918.

Sources: Nick Tahou order form; garbageplate.com.

Where can I get a Garbage Plate?

Only Nick Tahou Hots at 320 West Main Street can call it a Garbage Plate, because it owns the trademark. Almost every hots shop, diner and bar in the area sells its own version under another name, and the directory on this site lists the ones confirmed from their own menus.

Source: USPTO trademark record.

Is a Garbage Plate spicy?

Not very, usually. Hot names the dog and the sauce rather than the heat, and Zweigle's says its red hots are not spicy. The sauce is a spiced ground meat sauce, so expect warm spice rather than a pepper burn. Saveur called Nick's mild.

Sources: Zweigle's FAQ; Saveur, 2012.

Is there a vegetarian Garbage Plate?

Yes: Nick Tahou's own order form lists a Veggie Plate. Ask about the sauce, because the hot sauce is a meat sauce. Elsewhere, dogTown uses a three-bean veggie chili on its veggie plates and The Red Fern's Compost Plate is fully vegan. The directory has a filter for meatless plates.

Sources: dogTown veggie menu; Nick Tahou order form.

Why is it called a Garbage Plate?

Customers named it. Students who did not know what the dish was called would ask for a plate with all that garbage on it. The family did not like the name, then registered it as a trademark in 1992.

Sources: Tasting Table, 2024; Democrat and Chronicle, 2020; USPTO trademark record.

When was the Garbage Plate invented?

No source dates the dish itself. The restaurant dates itself to 1918, the name dates to the 1970s or 1980s, and the trademark was registered on August 18, 1992. The dish kept changing for decades: there were no hamburgers on it until the 1950s.

Sources: garbageplate.com; Tasting Table, 2024; USPTO trademark record.

Who invented the Garbage Plate?

It is still argued. Nick Tahou Hots was founded by Alexander Tahou, and his son Nick took it over in 1942. A 1995 interview credits Nick with the plate, and Nick's son Alex credits Alexander with what became it.

Sources: Rochester Business Journal, 1995; Tasting Table, 2024.

Why does nobody else call it a Garbage Plate?

Nick Tahou Hots, Inc. owns GARBAGE PLATE as a federal trademark, registration 1,708,448, renewed most recently on May 9, 2022. So other kitchens sell trash plates, junkyard plates, sloppy plates and so on.

Source: USPTO trademark record.

What does 'everything' mean on a plate?

Hot sauce, mustard and onions. Some places add ketchup if you ask.

Sources: Steve T. menu; dogTown menu; Visit Rochester.

What is a white hot?

A pale Rochester, NY hot dog of uncured, unsmoked pork, beef and veal. Zweigle's is the best known maker. A red hot is an ordinary frankfurter, and on Nick Tahou's menu Texas means the red.

Sources: Zweigle's FAQ; Tasting Table, 2024.

How much does a Garbage Plate cost?

Nick Tahou's publishes no price today. Its own menu said $5.50 for a hot plate in 2007 and $7.00 in 2009, and Scripps reported $12.50 with tax in 2023. Elsewhere, a full plate runs from $9.99 to $22 on the menus read for this site.

Sources: Nick Tahou menu, 2007; Nick Tahou menu, 2009; Scripps News, 2023.

How many calories are in a Garbage Plate?

Nobody has published a real number. No restaurant prints nutrition for one, and Health.com said in 2010 that there is no official analysis before quoting outside guesses of 93 to 203 grams of fat.

Source: Health.com, 2010.

Is Nick Tahou's open late?

It used to be open all night. Its own site publishes no hours now, so call 585-436-0184 before you go. The directory's Open late filter shows the places that print their hours and stay open past 11pm.

Sources: Rochester Business Journal, 1995; garbageplate.com.

Can I buy the hot sauce?

From some kitchens. Steve T. sells 16 ounce jars and Fairport Hots sells it by the quart.

Sources: Steve T. menu; Fairport Hots menu.

What this page does not know

A short sourced history beats a long plausible one. These are the things that get repeated about the Garbage Plate that could not be sourced, so they are not stated above. They are written down here so nobody has to research them twice.

Every source on this page

All of them were read on August 20, 2026 or re-read on September 23, 2026.

Where the photographs came from

Every photograph on this page is somebody else's work under a free license, checked on that file's own page on Wikimedia Commons on August 20, 2026 and re-checked on Commons every time the photos are refreshed. Nothing here is hotlinked, cropped or taken from a restaurant, a review site or a search result. The photographer, the license and a link to the license are printed under every picture.

  • The photographer's own description names the restaurant, which is why this is on this card: "Junkyard Plate with hot dogs, macaroni salad, home fries, meat sauce, diced onions, and mustard, from Dogtown in Rochester, New York", and the file's camera position, 43.1439 by -77.5898, is Monroe Avenue at that address. The photographer's title matches the menu: dogTown files the dish under Junkyard Plates, and a second section under Junkyard Dog Plates, read on their own site on August 20, 2026. The individual items under those headings are a Dog Plate, a Cheeseburger Plate, a Split Plate and a Sausage Plate, so the word is the section and not the dish name printed on any one line.
  • The photographer's own description names the restaurant: "Compost Plate at The Red Fern in Rochester, New York", and the file's camera position, 43.1498 by -77.5864, is Oxford Street at that address.
  • WHAT SEVEN OF THE FIRST ELEVEN RESTAURANTS LOOK LIKE. Four of them are on this page in freely licensed photographs and the other seven are not. Bill Gray's joined the three on August 20, 2026, on a second search that went wider than Commons. The other seven were searched a SECOND and then a THIRD time the same day, the third by Wikidata P18, by KartaView and by a re-run of Commons and Openverse against fresh geocodes, and they still have nothing publishable. Those cards carry no picture rather than a borrowed one.
  • WHERE THE SEARCHES LOOKED, so nobody repeats them. Commons was swept four ways on August 20, 2026: a title search per business, an insource: search of every file description, the local categories (Restaurants in Rochester, Fairport, Henrietta, Chili, Gates, Webster, Monroe County) and a GEOSEARCH of a 1,500m circle around all eight addresses. Commons holds exactly two files naming any of the seven and both are Bill Gray's. Openverse was then swept across roughly forty queries with its license filter set to CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0 and public domain, which is Flickr and Commons together. Chili Hots, Empire Hots, Fairport Hots, Henrietta Hots, Jeremiah's Tavern and Steve T. Hots return NOTHING under a free license anywhere: what exists of them on Flickr is all NonCommercial or NoDerivatives, and neither is usable here. A THIRD SWEEP THE SAME DAY re-ran all of it against fresh geocodes for the seven addresses and added the queries the first two had not made: insource: on each street NUMBER as well as each name, the category tree under Restaurants in New York (state), and a Commons geosearch at 120m, 600m, 1,500m and 10km around every one of the seven. NOT ONE geotagged Commons file sits within 130m of any of them; the closest is a school 132m from Fairport Hots, and the nearest thing to a restaurant is the takeout-carton photograph already rejected below, 1,255m from Henrietta Hots.
  • THE FLICKR SWEEPS HAD A HOLE IN THEM AND IT WAS FOUND AND CLOSED ON AUGUST 20, 2026, and it is the reusable half of this whole exercise. Flickr filters a search by numeric license code, and the codes the first two sweeps passed were 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10. That set OMITS 11 and 12, which are CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0, both free and both in active use, so every earlier "nothing free exists" was measured through a filter that could not see two free licenses. All seven names, all seven street names and a 1km geographic search around all seven addresses were re-run with 11 and 12 added. It still comes back empty. The negative holds, and it now holds for the right reason. IF YOU SWEEP FLICKR AGAIN, PASS 4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12.
  • AND THE SHARPER VERSION OF THE NEGATIVE, which is worth more than "nothing exists" because it says what is actually out there. Photographs of these places DO exist on Flickr and they are not free, read off each result's own license field rather than trusted to a filter: Henrietta Hots was shot by drpep in 2024 and is ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, and Rohrbach has about nine photographs by pearwood, every one of them CC BY-NC-ND. NonCommercial and NoDerivatives both fail here. Three prolific free-license photographers who work this region were identified and cleared one by one: Warren LeMay, who shot Rochester, NY in April 2024 under CC BY-SA 2.0 and photographed downtown landmarks only; Random Retail, who shoots chain retail; and Paul Lowry, whose CC BY 4.0 Rochester, NY food photographs are four of the eleven pictures already on this page and include none of the seven. On Commons the complete upload lists of the region's two most systematic contributors were dumped and searched, 4,529 files by DanielPenfield and 5,000 by Andre Carrotflower, with zero hits. So this is not an absence of searching anymore. These are small suburban businesses that nobody has photographed under a free license.
  • MAPILLARY WAS RE-EXAMINED ON AUGUST 20, 2026 AND HALF OF THE FIRST REJECTION'S REASONING WAS WRONG. This note used to say Mapillary states "no version number anywhere". That was true of mapillary.com/terms and false as a statement about Mapillary. mapillary.com/osm, under the heading "Rights for OpenStreetMap", says in as many words "Mapillary images are available under an open license (CC BY-SA)" and links creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, and Wikimedia Commons' own Template:Mapillary, which is the template a Commons upload of a Mapillary frame is built from, hardcodes {{cc-by-sa-4.0}} and credits the photographer's USERNAME linked to their Mapillary profile rather than a logo. Both were read on August 20, 2026, the second off the template's own wikitext. So the default license is CC BY-SA 4.0, it carries a version, and a page states it. The sentence that claimed otherwise was a report on ONE page written as a statement about the source, which is the third time that shape of error has been found on this page.
  • WHAT STILL STOPS MAPILLARY, and both halves were checked this time rather than assumed. Section 3 of the terms grants CC BY-SA "unless we indicate otherwise" and names CC BY-NC-SA as a live alternative, and Mapillary's own API documentation lists every field an Image carries (creator, captured_at, geometry, camera_type, the thumb urls and so on) and there is NO license field among them. So the carve-out has nothing per-image to check it against, and that is a gap in what the API publishes rather than a gap in anybody's search. Section 11 then says that an image "downloaded and served from your own servers" must be attributed "by visibly displaying the Mapillary logo and linking back to the Mapillary homepage or corresponding Mapillary image page", which is a condition on top of naming the photographer rather than instead of it. Read on mapillary.com/terms and the developer documentation on August 20, 2026.
  • AND A PRACTICAL BLOCKER, WHICH COMES BEFORE ANY LICENSE QUESTION. Nothing on Mapillary can be reached without an API token, and we do not have one: every mapillary.com address answers a generic Meta error page, graph.mapillary.com answers "Invalid OAuth 2.0 Access Token", and tiles.mapillary.com answers 403. That means no frame, no photographer's username and no image page, so there is nothing to fetch and nothing to print a credit from. The coverage this note used to quote (70 frames past Bill Gray's, 50 past Fairport Hots, six each past Chili Hots and Empire Hots) could NOT be re-measured on August 20, 2026 and should not be quoted as current.
  • KARTAVIEW WAS CHECKED THE SAME DAY BECAUSE MAPILLARY COULD NOT BE, and it is the other open street-level library. Its nearby-photos API needs no token, and it does hold Rochester, NY: 101 frames within 300m of downtown. Around the seven it holds nothing that shows a building. The nearest frame to any of them is 312m from Chili Hots and 415m from Jeremiah's Tavern, and Empire Hots, Fairport Hots, Henrietta Hots, Rohrbach and Steve T. Hots have no frame within 600m at all. A frame 300m up the road is a picture of somebody else's building.
  • WIKIDATA P18 WAS THE ROUTE NOBODY HAD RUN, AND IT WAS RUN ON AUGUST 20, 2026. Only three of the eleven restaurants have a Wikidata item at all, which are Nick Tahou Hots, Bill Gray's and Rohrbach Brewing Company, and a geographic query for businesses within 25km of Rochester, NY returns 19 items and none of the other eight. Rohrbach's item carries a P18 nobody here had seen: File:RohrbachBeer1.JPG, PUBLIC DOMAIN, User:Brian Stiehler, shot September 17, 2010, 3000x4000, a red brick block with Rohrbach's own hanging ROHRBACH THE BREWERY banner on it. The license is perfect and it is the WRONG BUILDING, which was settled off the PHOTOGRAPH rather than off its caption: hanging beside the banner is a second sign reading DEEP DISCOUNT STORAGE, 127 RAILROAD ST. This page's Rohrbach card is the Buffalo Road brewpub, 14.5km from Railroad Street. That is now the second Railroad Street photograph rejected here for the same reason. The same uploader's File:RohrbachBeer2.JPG is brewing tanks indoors in 2008 and names no address at all.
  • "55/365 Rohrbach Brewing Company", CC BY-SA 2.0, RLHyde (Ryan Hyde), July 5, 2014, verified on its own Flickr page. The license is fine and the file was fetched and looked at. It is an interior door, not a storefront, and what is written across the glass is the TASTING ROOM HOURS: Wed to Fri 10am to 5pm, Saturday 9am to 4pm, tours every hour. Those are twelve years stale, this page's one hard rule is that hours come from the business and nothing else, and a card showing a reader an hours board is a card that gets read instead of the line beside it. It also cannot be placed: the card is the Buffalo Road brewpub only, and nothing in the photograph or its description says which of the two Rohrbach sites it is. Left out on the picture rather than on the license.
  • "Rohrbach's on Railroad Street", CC BY 2.0, bert_m_b. Free and usable, and it is the WRONG BUILDING: this page's Rohrbach card is the Buffalo Road brewpub, and its own note says the Railroad Street beer hall is a different menu with no plate on it. A correctly licensed photograph of the wrong address is still the wrong address.
  • File:Rochester Garbage Plate.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Douglas.flowe, November 27, 2013. The license is fine and the file was fetched and looked at. It is a dim phone photograph of a takeout carton and its own description names no restaurant, only "Variation on garbage plate with salt potatoes and bacon", so there is no card it belongs on and nothing it shows that a brighter picture on this page does not. Left out on the picture rather than on the license.
  • EVERY IMAGE SEARCH RESULT, EVERY RESTAURANT'S OWN SITE AND SOCIAL FEED, EVERY REVIEW SITE, AND STREET VIEW. None of them state a license a static site can meet, and being flattering to a restaurant is not a license from the person who took the photograph. If you want a picture of a place on this list that has none, the two honest routes are to shoot it yourself or to write to the photographer and get it in writing.
  • WHAT IS STILL GENUINELY UNCHECKED: TWO THINGS. Mapillary, which needs an API token we do not have, for the reasons three entries above. And PICRYL, which answered 403 from behind Cloudflare on August 20, 2026 to every attempt; it aggregates the Library of Congress, NARA, the Smithsonian and the NYPL, all of which are historical public-domain collections, so a 1990s suburban hot dog stand is unlikely to be in it, but unlikely is not checked. Everything else named on this page is a verified negative.

Hungry for the other local pages? The card shops around Rochester, NY are where this channel actually buys, the card show calendar has everything coming up around Rochester, NY, Buffalo and Syracuse, and about the channel explains what Garbage Rips 585 is and why it is named after dinner.

NOT SPONSORED AND NOT AFFILIATE LINKS. NOBODY PAID TO BE ON THESE PAGES. IF YOU RUN A PLACE AROUND ROCHESTER, NY THAT SERVES A PLATE AND YOU ARE NOT ON HERE, EMAIL ME.

Send the name, the address and what it is called on your menu, and attach a photo of the plate: email the channel. A place goes on once its own menu says it serves one.