The Garbage Plate: How Rochester’s Messiest Dish Became a Trademark

Photo: Paul Lowry, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (file photo of a Garbage Plate at Nick Tahou Hots, 2025)

The Garbage Plate, Rochester, New York’s best-known dish, is a heap of home fries, macaroni salad and grilled meat under a meat-based hot sauce, and it comes from Nick Tahou Hots at 320 West Main Street. The name is a federally registered trademark, so other Rochester kitchens that serve the dish have to call it something else.

What is on a Rochester Garbage Plate

The classic version starts with two sides, most often home fries and macaroni salad, though baked beans and French fries are also options. Diners then choose the meat on top, such as hamburger patties or hot dogs, and the plate is finished with mustard, chopped raw onions and the restaurant’s meat hot sauce. The Democrat and Chronicle has described the standard plate as arriving with slices of Italian bread on the side.

The “hots” in the restaurant’s name are Rochester-style sausages. Eater reported that the region’s white hot is a pale, unsmoked sausage, that the red hot gets its name from its color rather than its spice level, and that the hots used at Tahou’s have long come from Zweigle’s, a Rochester sausage maker that opened in 1880.

From “hots and potatoes” to Garbage Plate

According to Eater’s history of the dish, Alexander Tahou, a Greek immigrant, opened the restaurant in 1918 as West Main Texas Hots, a name taken from its two staples, hots and potatoes. His son Nick took over the business in the 1940s and put his own name on it. Eater reported that many Rochester residents got by on cheap hots and potatoes during the Great Depression.

The current name arrived decades later. Both Eater and the Democrat and Chronicle trace it to the 1980s, when college students began asking for, in the words of the often-repeated story, “that plate with all the garbage on it.” Eater called that origin a legend, and no contemporaneous record of the first order is cited in either account.

The trademark behind the name

Records at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show that Nick Tahou Hots, Inc. applied for the “GARBAGE PLATE” mark on July 29, 1991, and that it was registered on the Principal Register on Aug. 18, 1992, as Registration No. 1708448. The filing lists 1975 as the year of first use. The registration was renewed in 2002, 2012 and 2022, and the office’s status page lists it as live. The file also shows routine attorney and correspondence changes recorded on Oct. 26, 2026.

The registration does not cover a recipe. It covers “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 Democrat and Chronicle noted that a name can be trademarked but a dish cannot be patented or copyrighted, which is why similar plates are sold across the city under other names.

The plate’s many cousins

Because the name is protected, competitors use variations. The Democrat and Chronicle has listed the trash plate, sloppy plate, hot plate, varsity plate, hummer plate and dumpster platter among them, and reported that many locals simply order “a plate.” Eater cited the junkyard dog plate, the compost plate and a “home plate” served at the Rochester Red Wings’ ballpark. Wikimedia Commons hosts photos of a Junkyard Plate from Dogtown and a Compost Plate from The Red Fern, both in Rochester.

The dish has also stirred hometown reactions when it travels. In 2018, the Rochester Business Journal reported that a “Smash Plate” sold at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena during the Predators’ playoff run drew complaints from Rochester residents, partly because it used chili instead of hot meat sauce and did not credit Rochester or Nick Tahou’s.

Red Wings, TV and a centennial

For the dish’s 100th anniversary, the Rochester Red Wings played one 2017 game as the “Rochester Plates.” The Democrat and Chronicle reported that about 7,500 tickets had been sold for Plates Night two days before the game against Norfolk, and that the founder’s grandson, also named Alex Tahou, was to receive a Plates jersey with the No. 100.

National television has visited too. Nick Tahou Hots appeared on the Food Network’s “Unwrapped” and “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” and on a Rochester episode of the Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food Nation” in 2011, according to the restaurant’s Wikipedia entry, which also notes the plate’s mention in the 2012 film “The Place Beyond the Pines.”

Where the original stands today

The original restaurant still operates from the West Main Street building, a former Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway station, at the address listed on the trademark file. A second family-run location on Lyell Avenue in Gates was renamed Steve T. Hots and Potatoes in 2007 after relatives took full ownership, and a Henrietta outpost opened in 2010 and closed in 2014, according to the Wikipedia entry. Hours and prices change, so check with the restaurant before visiting.

Boston diners curious about regional icons closer to home can read our guide to Kelly’s Roast Beef on Revere Beach. Our recent Rochester coverage includes the Hyatt Regency Rochester renovation, and for restaurant news, see the closing of Wahlburgers Fenway.

Sources

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, TSDR record for GARBAGE PLATE, Serial No. 74189085
• Eater: How the Garbage Plate Became a Western New York Icon (2017)
• Democrat and Chronicle: Garbage plates history (2016)
• Democrat and Chronicle: Red Wings’ Plates Night (2017)
• Rochester Business Journal: How the ‘Smash Plate’ ended up in Nashville (2018)

Additional sources

• Wikipedia: Nick Tahou Hots
• Justia Trademarks: GARBAGE PLATE, Registration No. 1708448
• Wikimedia Commons: The Garbage Plate, Nick Tahou Hots 2025