Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a cheap café or restaurant.

1838		Worcs. Chron. 15 Nov. 2/1: The mother was stated to be a constant frequenter of a certain Hash-house in Broad-street.
1860		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 18 Aug, 5/1: Samuel’s ‘female academy’ [...] takes up so much of his attention that he rather neglects his hashery.
1865		C. White Sausage Makers 4: Oh, if dem hash hotels in Bleecker street and Eighth street only know’d how cheap we could supply ’em.
1869		Isle of Man Times 6 Nov. 5/3: Hash-Shop Case. Esther Graham, the keeper of an eating-house in James-street was charged with selling spirits.
1873		Falkirk Herald 3 May 4/7: Having lately opened a hashery, I send you this, my rules and regulations .
1879		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 31 Oct. 4/3: Allright [...] I’ll only patronise sentimental good-natured eating-house men. Now, I’m going across the way [...] to the opposition hash-house.
1881		Belfast Morn. News 4 Apr. 4/9: Mrs Bombazine, who engineers a hashery, can be very sarcastic [...] She said ‘Young man, you come at one and eat for twelve...’.
1881		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 Jan. 10/1: [headline] a big row in a hashery.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Oct. 12/1: Gloom has settled with leaden wings on a stately hash-house in Darlinghurst.
1887		Lantern (New Orleans, LA) 9 Apr. 2: Who runs dat snide hash house.
1891		C. Roberts Adrift in America 130: A man [...] asked me if I would give him a hand to get a cook stove into a shanty where he was going to set up a ‘hash house’.
1892		Mohave County Miner (AZ) 2 July 4/1: China Jack has opened up a hashery.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 4 Nov. 5/3: The keeper of the hash-house where I dine / [...] / regards my visage with a scowl.
1895		Anaconda Standard (MT) 15 Dec. 10/1: ‘Wanter scoff? Well, Jack [...] I’ll make dat hash joint wish dey had never went inter der business’.
1905		Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA) 29 Oct. 6/2: Jerry and Johnny have taken over a hash-house, which they think will be a good spec. if they get out of work.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 Nov. 1/6: They say [...] That a Hay-street hashery would poison a legion of lepers.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 28 July 1/1: A Murray street hash joint takes the the biscuit for makeshift meals [...] The boarders’ plate-leavings come back in the next day’s pudding.
1906		‘O. Henry’ ‘An Adjustment of Nature’ in Four Million (1915) 106: He assaulted our ears and claimed the fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 30 Jan. 1st sect. 1/1: They Say [...] That the memory professor is invited to visit a swagger Hay-street hashery.
1913–14		Van Loan ‘Easy Picking’ in Taking the Count 306: That hash-house quarrel of yours was a clever stunt.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 6/1: Playing ‘sandydandy’ with a bevy of unchaperoned darlings beats going home to a seaside hash-house dinner to a frazzle.
1915		Day Book (Chicago) 18 Nov. 14/2: The Waitress in the Hashery [...] She always wore a smile.
1919		in Columbia Press Yank Talk 14: Can you put a guy wise where a bird like me would be after findin’ a hash-joint with a little grub on tap?
1919		Perrysburg Jrnl (Wood Co., OH) 22 May 2/2: No use for you to be a side-stem in this Hashery [...] Shed the apron, kid.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 90: [I] ate a T-bone steak at a hashery just like the old days on the Small Time.
1924		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 31 May [synd. col.] Gold Tooth Fannie who is the pride dealer of the arm at Beefsteak John’s hashery.
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 123: You [...] take a walk round the block to a hash joint an eat up strong.
1927		W. Edge Main Stem 22: It was near dinner time by now, and we found a hash-house called ‘The Busy Bee’.
1930		(con. 1900s–10s) Dos Passos 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 323: They just got into the hashjoint in time to order.
1930		J.T. Farrell ‘Curbstone Philosophy’ in Short Stories (1937) 215: We were in Greasy Mike’s hashery.
1934		J.M. Cain Postman Always Rings Twice (1985) 25: I was working in a hash house.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 294: He got a waiter’s job in a very nasty hash-house.
1957		Kerouac On The Road (1972) 163: I wanted to go back and leer at my strange Dickensian mother in the hash joint. [...] The fruits of my ’umble labours in the hashery.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 12: A hash-joint like this would be a perfect spot to steer a mark.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 165: They stumbled into a hash house where the waitress was a plump peasant girl.
1970		J. Conaway Big Easy 208: The juke box in the adjacent hash houses pounded.
1996		(con. 1949) G. Pelecanos Big Blowdown (1999) 286: He’s seen his future. It’s in the back room of a hash-house, with an apron tied around his waist.
2000		B. Wiprud Sleep with the Fishes 19: A giant urn brewed coffee [...] making the hashery mighty humid.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 44: Working for him – at his new hash house.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1884		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 20 July 10/3: The dear old girl is footing up / My weekly hashery bill.
1890		Dead Bird (Sydney) 1 Feb. 1/3: Nearly all of them can stab the oyster in a plate of hash house soup.
1901		Truth (Brisbane) 21 Apr. 1/4: A tough ‘proposition’ — Hash-house lamb.
1907		N.Z. Truth 26 Jan. 6/7: Sir Toby has returned to Brisbane and the hash-house business.

3. a boarding house, a cheap hotel.

1880		Sedalia Wkly Bazoo (MO) 26 Oct. 3/4: She became a saleslady in a big glove store [...] and was baording high at one of those fashionable hasheries.
1887		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 23 Oct. 4/1: A hotel is a ‘chuck mill’ or ‘hashery.’.
1893		H. Lawson ‘A Camp-Fire Yarn’ in Roderick (1972) 140: The landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me.
1894		Star-Gaz. (Elmira, NY) 15 May 4/3: Yale College Slang [...] The New Haven boarding houses are ‘grub-joints,’ or ‘hash-houses’.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 5 Aug. 5/6: [of prison] A man can’t choose his hash-house scale, / What takes what isn’t his’n.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 16: hash-joint n. Boarding-house.
1912		Sat. Eve. Post 13 July 3/1: They sure don’t call ’em hasheries when they cost you eight bones a day up! [DA].
1922		Gippsland Times (Vic.) 2 Nov. 5/2: Th’ ’ash ’ouse w’ere I’m stayin’ / Is a decent sorter joint.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1933		E. Mordaunt Mrs. Van Kleek (1949) 17: That damned silly hash-house of old Geoffrey’s.
1984		G. Casey ‘Rich Stew’ in Chatfield & Williamson Aus. Stories 19: It’s the rich gravy a man likes after livin’ on hash-house tucker for so long.