What’s in a Name? Everything.

San Francisco, 

1900-1908 

By 1900, Chinese restaurants were beginning to attract American-born middle-class diners. This shift occurred gradually as Chinese chefs invented new dishes like chop suey and chow mein to suit American tastes. Over time, the menus were expanded to also include a large number of so-called “American dishes.” Two early menus from a well-known Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, printed during the first years of the twentieth century, capture a pivotal moment in this transition. The restaurant changed a single letter in its name, signaling that it was now targeting a broader clientele.

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.

 

Inimitable Menus

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, attempting to imitate Theodore Roosevelt’s style, though not his substance. Ironically, the ideals of the new administration differed greatly from those of the Progressive Era ushered in by Roosevelt. Still, it was understandable why the politicos wanted to recreate the aura of a time when American confidence was running high. Their efforts proved futile—printed menus were not used at the White House back then. Nevertheless, Theodore Roosevelt was enthusiastically fêted by the citizenry whenever he was away from Washington. His popularity is evident in the size, complexity, and sheer exuberance of the menus from these occasions, as shown by four examples spanning his presidency.

Music on the Menu

1878-1978

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist,” observed English writer G. K. Chesterton. Nevertheless, music has become an inescapable part of eating outside the home. While menus almost never reveal what was played in the background of restaurants and hotel dining rooms, they reflect the world of music in a myriad of other ways. 

President Harrison’s Great Railroad Journey

The South and West 

April 14 – May 15, 1891 

In the spring of 1891, two years after being in office, President Benjamin Harrison embarked on a month-long political tour by rail through the South to the West Coast.1, 2 He was accompanied by First Lady Caroline Harrison, their daughter Mrs. Mary McKee, Postmaster General John Wanamaker, Secretary of Agriculture Jeremiah Rusk, and eleven other close officials and family members.3 Thirty-one menus from the train convey the length and rhythm of this unprecedented journey through numerous states, some of which had only recently entered the Union.4 

No There There

Oakland, 
ca. 1880

Novelist Gertrude Stein returned to the United States in 1934 after a 30-year absence. While crisscrossing the country on a speaking tour, the celebrated Parisian expatriate visited Oakland to see the farm she grew up on and the house where she once lived. After learning that her childhood home had been razed and the farmland developed, Stein famously wrote “there is no there there.” The significant places in California that helped define her no longer existed. The Stein family had moved to Oakland in 1880, when she was six, and lived for the first year at the Tubbs Hotel. Situated just east of Lake Merritt, the 200-room hostelry had some prominent guests in its day.1 Former president Ulysses S. Grant and his wife dined there in 1879 while on the final leg of their trip around the world. And author Robert Louis Stevenson stayed at the Tubbs Hotel from March to April 1880, the same year the Stein family was in residence. Nevertheless, a table d’hôte menu from the period reveals that it was a middling establishment where the meals were basically the same as those at other hotels in its class. Indeed, there was “no there” in the dining rooms of American hotels where the standardized cuisine reflected few regional influences. 

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.

The Heroic Age of Aviation

1924-1938

“The American seaplanes are in Calcutta,” the papers in India reported on June 27, 1924. Four U.S. Army planes had arrived at intervals the previous day, each flying low over the Hooghly River crowded with shipping, before making a graceful turn and alighting on an empty stretch of water opposite Prinsep Ghat where people lined the banks to witness their arrival. The aviators were making the first aerial circumnavigation of the world with the help of the U.S. Navy which was providing logistical support. Twelve weeks after taking off from Seattle, they had not yet reached the half way point of their mission. 

A Touch of Irony

San Francisco, 
1918 

This gathering in San Francisco in 1918 celebrated the 6oth birthday of Jean Baptiste Pon, one of the founders of Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog where the party was held. Sitting in the foreground, his principal partner, Camille Mailhebuau, casually peruses the menu while everyone else poses for the photograph. (He seemingly took it with him from his seat at the head of the table where there is no menu.) One can imagine why he was interested in reading it—in addition to the French cuisine and vintage wines, the dinner concludes on a oddly prescient note, adding a touch of irony to the affair. 

The “Reed Birds” of San Francisco

San Francisco, 
1881 

The Occidental in San Francisco was “Heaven on the half shell,” according to Mark Twain who described the daily routine at the luxury hotel in terms of its food service.1 “Here you are expected to breakfast on salmon, fried oysters and other substantials from 6 till half-past 12; you are required to lunch on cold fowl and so forth, from half-past 12 until 3; you are obliged to skirmish through a dinner comprising such edibles as the world produces, and keep it up, from 3 until half-past 7; you are then compelled to lay siege to the tea-table from half-past 7 until 9 o’clock, at which hour…(you) move upon the supper works and destroy oysters gotten up in all kinds of seductive styles until 12 o’clock.” Indeed, a menu from about 1881 shows the restaurant at the hotel served three types of oysters.2 The price for a plate of California oysters was 25 cents, those from the East Coast were 50 cents, and the ones “transplanted” for growth and conditioning cost 37½ cents, precisely positioned in the middle. Another interesting item on this menu is a game dish called reed birds. Unlike the oysters, they are not indigenous to the region, nor were they transported across the country by rail. 

Early Regional Influences

San Francisco,
1862

Christmas in San Francisco in 1862 was “a most lovely day,” according to botanist William Brewer.1 “The city seemed alive, all seemed happy…The customs of Europe and of the East are transplanted here—churches are decked with evergreens, Christmas trees are the fashion—yet to me, as a botanist, it looks exotic…Churches are decked with redwood, which has foliage very like our hemlock—it is called evergreen, but it is hard for the people to remember that nearly all Californian trees are evergreen. While at Christmas time at home the oaks and other trees stretch leafless branches to the wintry winds, here the oaks of the hills are as green as they were in August…”

Culinary Interfoliata

San Francisco, 
1908 

Interfoliata is the technical term for items found between the pages of a book. These unexpected discoveries can add a fascinating dimension to a volume, such as this reservation book from Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog in 1908, the year it opened in San Francisco. Interesting in its own right, the book was found to contain eighteen pieces of paper randomly scattered between its pages, revealing small details about the operation of this restaurant and its clientele. 

Longing for the Past

San Francisco, 
1923 

When menus are printed for a small get-together, they often reflect the underlying values of an individual or group, such as this charming menu from a dinner in June 1923 hosted by Camille Mailhebuau, Jr., eldest son of the famed restaurateur. His father had recently returned to San Francisco, opening his eponymous eatery on Pine Street, shown in the previous essay “A Moment in Time.” Although Camille Jr. describes this event as the “first dinner given to my friends,” as if he were marking a rite of passage in his epicurean family, the party was probably organized by his parents to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. It appears that his father planned this bill of fare and arranged to have the menus printed; the illustration is surprisingly old-fashioned for a youthful gathering during the Jazz Age. The image suggests a longing for the past, harkening back to the joyful time before Prohibition, when Champagne could be legally served in American restaurants, or perhaps even sipped while flying your “aeroplane.”

A Moment in Time

San Francisco, 
1920-1923

When I first saw this photograph, there was something intriguing about the scene that I couldn’t put my finger on. The inscription in the lower right-hand corner provided some information about the event—Camille and Eugenie Mailhebuau celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary at this dinner party on February 9, 1920. Camille was a French-born restaurateur who operated the venerable Old Poodle Dog in San Francisco. Camille and Eugenie can be seen at the middle of the long table, just behind the pretty cake. While the couple appears to be happy, some of guests look as if something is bothering them. Of course, it was entirely possible that the underlying anxiety that I perceived was a figment of my imagination. However, when a menu surfaced a few years later, showing where the dinner had been held and who was there, I realized what may have been on their minds that day, for the photograph marked a pivotal moment in the history of American restaurants.

Fresh Eggs in California

San Francisco, 
1853

In late 1852, the clipper Golden Eagle embarked on her maiden voyage from Boston to California.1 While rounding Cape Horn during the typically calm Antarctic summer, the ship encountered rough seas that damaged her bow, necessitating a month of repairs in Rio before continuing. By the time she reached the Golden Gate in the spring of 1853, she sailed past the newly built lighthouse on Alcatraz Island, still awaiting its revolving lantern from France. Finally, the great clipper docked in a bustling multinational city of 40,000 inhabitants, all seeking their fortunes.

The Great American Delicacies

Washington, D.C. & San Francisco
Christmas, 1890

Two menus from Christmas Day in 1890 reflect regional differences in cuisine at a time when local styles of cooking were not always evident. Despite being held on opposite ends of the country, the dinners also featured some of the same dishes, such as Diamondback terrapin and Canvasback duck. Described as “the great American delicacies” by British novelist Frederick Marryat in his 1839 Diary in America, these lavish game dishes were served in traditional ways that transcended regional variations and foreign influences.

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.