Mementos from India During World War II

1943-1945 

The U.S. military presence in India expanded rapidly during World War II, growing from virtually zero in early 1942 to over 160,000 troops by August 1945.1 Their mission was to defend the subcontinent against a Japanese invasion, secure vital supply lines, and airlift military aid over the Himalayas to the Chinese Nationalist Army along the perilous route known as “The Hump.” Beyond the base gates, local Chinese restaurateurs offered servicemen affordable places to eat. On occasion, soldiers kept menus from these establishments as souvenirs—artifacts that today offer a glimpse into a largely forgotten chapter of the American wartime experience in India.2

How Italian Food Became an American Staple

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 Italy’s unification in 1861, the country remained divided in the kitchen, with each of its twenty distinctive regions clinging to their own deeply-rooted culinary traditions. The first Italian cookbook, published in Florence in 1891, included only a couple of recipes for tomato sauce, a staple in the southern provinces.1 By the early 20th century, Italian restaurants were emerging more broadly in the United States, introducing a hybrid style that became known as Italian-American cuisine. While the classic dishes of this style remain popular, Italian food in America evolved in a myriad of ways, eventually challenging French cuisine at the top tier. Over fifty menus highlight some of the people and places behind this remarkable ascent.

 

The Sheik

New York City, 

1924-1954 

 

In 1913, Elias and Joseph Kirdahy opened the Kirdahy Brothers’ Oriental Restaurant on Washington Street in Lower Manhattan. The neighborhood, known as Little Syria, was the first Arab enclave in the United States. In the mid-1920s, the brothers renamed their restaurant The Sheik after Rudolph Valentino’s wildly popular silent film. According to legend, actor John Barrymore, a frequent guest, suggested the new name. The decision proved pivotal, sparking a trend among Arab American restaurateurs to adopt names drawn from Hollywood’s romanticized visions of the Arab world. The business card shown above and three menus recall this restaurant that, through the choice of a new name, rebranded itself in a way that helped shape American food culture.

Schwab’s Pharmacy

Los Angeles, 1941

Schwab’s Pharmacy holds a lasting place in America’s cultural memory, especially in Hollywood history. A surviving menu from the Golden Age of film offers a glimpse into this once-iconic hangout where movie stars, hopeful newcomers, and studio insiders crossed paths.

Om Shanti

Los Angeles, 

1971 

The front of this large menu from 1971 features the word “om” in Devanagari script. Underneath is a description of this sacred sound in Indian religions that ends with the mantra “om shanti,” meaning peace. Since the name of the restaurant is not shown on the cover, the menu is sometimes thought to have originated from a place called Om Shanti. It actually comes from a Los Angeles vegetarian restaurant named H.E.L.P., an acronym for health, education, love, and peace. The menu marks the moment in culinary history when vegetarianism began to enter into the mainstream of American life.

What is this, Gluckstern’s?

New York City, 

1948 

The Dairy Restaurant is a fascinating new book by writer and cartoonist Ben Katchor. Jewish dairy restaurants attracted patrons who followed the dietary laws that forbid the mingling of meat and any milk-based product, and those who simply yearned for the comforting dishes of Eastern European Jewish cuisine, such as borscht, salmon, potato latkes, blintzes, and kreplach (small dumplings filled with cheese).1 These eateries have now almost completely vanished, barely leaving a trace. The lack of primary source material prompted me to take a fresh look at menus in my collection from Jewish restaurants of all kinds. Two in particular caught my attention. The menus came from Gluckstern’s and Isaac Gellis, kosher meat restaurants located on opposite ends of Manhattan. They were saved in 1948 by an anonymous couple who marked the dishes they ordered with X’s or O’s. The simple notations evoked a reminiscent feeling similar to what one reviewer described as Katchor’s “melancholy yiddishkeit,” recalling bygone eating places that were once a part of everyday life.

The Hump

Kunming, China
Christmas 1943 

The eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains was called “The Hump” by pilots who flew transport aircraft between India and China during the Second World War. The military airlift over the treacherous Himalayas supplied the Allies in China, including advance units of the U.S. Army. The missions were dangerous.1 In addition to the notable absence of airfields, there were no reliable navigation charts or radio aids and the weather was often  bad. The logistical challenge of operating this aerial pipeline is reflected by a non-traditional dinner at Army headquarters in Kunming, China on Christmas in 1943, where the highlight of the night was a beverage omitted from the official menu.

A Vermont Breakfast Party

New York City,
1949 

The Limited Editions Club awarded its fifth gold metal at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in November 1949. According to the rules, the award was given to an American author of a book published during the last five years that the judges believed “most likely to attain the stature of a classic.” The previous two winners were Ernest Hemingway for “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in 1941 and E. B. White for “One Man’s Meat” in 1944. While the eight-page booklet from the presentation ceremony in 1949 does not reveal who won that year, it does contain an interesting menu from a talented writer in his own right. 

The Halcyon Days of San Quentin

Marin County, California
1928-1940

One of the most intriguing things about old menus from San Quentin State Prison is that they were saved as mementos. The legendary prison, situated on the north side of San Francisco Bay, was established to hold miscreants during the Gold Rush. Over the years, it has grown large enough to warrant two ZIP codes—one for inmates (94974) and one for Point San Quentin Village (94964), an adjacent community originally built to house the prison’s employees and their families. The menus mostly come from the period between 1928, shortly after the East Block opened (now described as a crumbling, leaky maze) and 1940. A dozen menus and related ephemera take us back to this bygone era when the guards enjoyed the gustatory pleasures of the table.

I Hear a Rhapsody

Long Beach,
ca. 1941 

This elegant, scallop-edged menu comes from the fabled Sky Room in the old Hilton Hotel in Long Beach, California. Based on a variety of factors, I guessed that it was from the early 1940s, but pinpointing a more exact date proved to be difficult. Trying to determine the year of an undated menu is never easy, and I was about to give up on this one, when the word “rhapsody” came into focus. This was the clue that I had been looking for—this menu probably originated in 1941. 

Freedom from Want

Thanksgiving, 
1943 

Norman Rockwell painted this iconic scene in 1943. Depicting a family dinner on Thanksgiving, the painting “Freedom from Want” was the third of his Four Freedoms series that was inspired by President Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address two years earlier. Unlike the freedoms of speech and worship, and the freedom from fear, the concept behind freedom from want was not commonly understood, or accepted, as a universal freedom. Perhaps for this reason, this picture was also called “The Thanksgiving Painting.” Five menus from Thanksgiving 1943 show us what was happening elsewhere, as the world remained engulfed in the largest war in history. 

To the Lighthouse

When I look at this menu from the late 1960s, I can’t help but imagine what it would’ve been like if the English writer Virginia Woolf, and her husband Leonard, had lived in Miami at that time...

Tempest on the High Seas

S.S. Liberté, 
1959 

The great luxury liners were never more glamorous and exciting than on the day of departure. As passengers arrived and the final provisions were loaded on board, scarlet-jacketed bellboys scurried back and forth to the cabins, delivering flowers, telegrams, and Champagne. And when the tugboats finally began to nudge the leviathan from her berth, brightly-colored streamers rained down on friends and relatives who shouted “bon voyage” from the pier. I witnessed this spectacle firsthand in the spring of 1959 when I sailed to Europe with my parents. At the time, it was not unusual to travel by ship. Half of the people who crossed the Atlantic still did so by sea, and there was perhaps no better way than to book passage on the French Line’s Liberté which was renowned for its palatial Art Deco interiors and fine cuisine.1 My week aboard this steamship provided me with many memories, such as having the meal of my dreams and catching glimpses of one of our fellow passengers, a stripper named Tempest Storm.

Cafeteria America

Havana, 
ca. 1955 

During a recent visit to Havana, I hailed a taxi (a 1958 Ford) and rumbled over to the Plaza de Armas to look for some old menus. Every day dozens of private booksellers set up their stalls in this leafy square, selling used books, ephemera, and souvenir photographs taken in famous nightclubs like the Tropicana during its heyday. Some of the books date back to the nineteenth century. One such rarity that caught my eye was a finely-bound volume containing copies of Frank’s Illustrated Weekly for the month of July 1870. As tempting as it was, I decided to forgo this treasure and stay focused on my mission to find historical evidence of Cuban influence on the food customs of the United States, or conversely, the spread of American culture abroad. And as luck would have it, I soon discovered a menu from the Cafeteria America. Coming from the period just before the revolution in 1959, it illustrated the simple pleasures of everyday life once enjoyed by the middle- and upper-classes in Cuba.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Beverly Hills, 
1948 

Sitting Pretty (1948)

With his attitude of thinly-veiled disdain, actor Clifton Webb was “a blast of asexual sophistication during Hollywood’s testosterone-fueled postwar epoch,” according to Turner Classics. It could also be said that he was an integral part of the social scene. Although Webb was often cast as a family man, he lived in Beverley Hills with his mother Maybelle, an uninhibited Auntie-Mame type. Together, they threw some of Tinseltown’s most memorable parties. One such affair was held on July 1, 1948, a few months after the release of the film Sitting Pretty, a comedy for which Webb would receive his second Oscar nomination.  Although the guest list is a “Who’s Who” of the movie industry at the apex of its golden age, there is one important name that is missing.

What Jackie Liked to Eat

The White House
1961-1963
 

Flashbulbs popped on the night of the Pre-Inaugural Gala as Jacqueline Kennedy emerged from a townhouse in Georgetown into the swirling snow. She was dressed in a shimmering, winter-white satin gown designed by Oleg Cassini, marking the country’s first glimpse of Jackie in her role as First Lady. Her appearance revealed the grace, elegance, and unique style that she would bring to the White House.

Thanksgiving Confusion

1939-41 

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be held on the third Thursday of November, instead of the fourth, in order to extend the Christmas shopping season. The polls showed that sixty percent of Americans were opposed to idea since company holidays, school vacations, and college football games were already scheduled. Since the presidential declaration was not legally binding, twenty-three states refused to change the date. Colorado and Texas decided to officially celebrate on both days. A store owner in Kokomo, Indiana hung a sign in his window that read: “Do your shopping now. Who knows, tomorrow may be Christmas.” Menus from the period show that the conflict continued until 1941. 

Come Fly with Me

American Airlines
1946

Restaurant critic Bryan Miller once observed, “The quality of food is in inverse proportion to a dining room’s altitude, especially atop bank and hotel buildings (airplanes are an extreme example).” It is not as if the airlines never tried. In the years following the Second World War, American Airlines had famous restaurants cater the inaugural meals on its new transatlantic routes, as shown by a large menu from its first flight to Copenhagen and Stockholm on February 1, 1946.1

Hopper’s Places

San Francisco, 
1940

Working from drawings of ordinary restaurants in New York, Edward Hopper painted Tables for Ladies in his studio near Washington Square in 1930. The photo on the menu below from Chris’s Grill and Coffee Shop in San Francisco is reminiscent of the eatery shown on this large canvas (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), with the grapefruits lined up in the front of the window display.

Liberty Enlightening the World

New York City, 
1885-1986

The 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 2011 was celebrated with the issuance of a “forever” stamp. The new stamp turned out to be an embarrassment when it was later discovered that it was based on the half-size replica that stands in front of the New York-New York Casino in Las Vegas. Despite the mistake, the U.S. Post Office decided to stick with the design, explaining, “We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway…Our track record is excellent for this as far as we’re concerned.”