The American Menu

1881-2023 Everybody loves Italian food. Yet the idea of a single Italian cuisine took time to coalesce, if it ever really has. Even after It...

New York City,  1924-1954    In 1913, Elias and Joseph Kirdahy opened the Kirdahy Brothers’ Oriental Restaurant on Washington Street in Lowe...

Los Angeles, 1941 Schwab’s Pharmacy holds a lasting place in America’s cultural memory, especially in Hollywood history. A surviving menu fr...

1877-1893   By the 1850s, Florida was already seen as a winter retreat, but tourism didn’t truly take off until after the Civil War. In the ...

1842-1894   New York was already a rapidly growing city by 1800, with its 60,000 residents concentrated in Lower Manhattan. By the close of ...

1937 The history of takeout food dates back to ancient times, when street vendors sold ready-to-eat meals. Archaeological evidence reveals e...

1920-1930  The Roaring Twenties are remembered in France as les Années folles , “the crazy years,” when Paris was the hub of intellectual li...

1922 After the First World War, Americans travelled to France in ever increasing numbers. Five menus from the steamship Lafayette  in 1922  ...

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and  New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”   – Tennessee Williams  In the lat...

1902-1909 A little over two decades ago, staffers for an incoming president searched for White House menus from the turn of the last century...