Reading The Menu
June 11th, 2008 by Brian Ries in RestaurantsFor the Food Issue this week, I looked into the century-long trend towards menu description creep, from simple terms like “salad” in the early 1900s to the current florid menu at Mise En Place. In the process, I wasted a solid ten hours perusing images of menus from library archives. It’s fascinating stuff.
Here’s where you can go to waste an entire lazy Wednesday work day:
Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
Collectible Meals Historic Menu Gallery
NY Public Libraries Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection
Alice Statler Menu Collection, City College of San Francisco
University of Washington Historical Menu Collection
June 11th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
As a librarian and foodie, I love the post. While the Sarasota County Library System does not have a rare menu collection, searching the catalog
with menu as the subject returns 171 results:
http://sarac.co.sarasota.fl.us/search/dmenu/dmenu/1%2C8%2C191%2CB/exact&FF=dmenus&1%2C171%2C
Thanks for the great work.