Fat Man

Hanford, Washington
1944

Hanford Engineer Works (1944)

Soon after a woman sold me an old Christmas menu online, she wrote to let me know something about it. Her father had been a machinist who rode the rails looking for work in the 1930s. He eventually landed a job at the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington State, where he worked for the Manhattan Project during World War II. In 1944, he enclosed this holiday bill of fare in a letter to his family in Chicago as a way of reassuring them that he was okay. There was a hand-written notation on the back of the menu that summarized its story. It read “atom bomb job.”

Cheeseburger Diplomacy

Camp David, Maryland
2007

President George W. Bush was anxious to form a good relationship with the newly-chosen British Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he came to United States in July 2007. Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, whom one of the backbenchers in Parliament unkindly characterized as “George Bush’s poodle,” had been a good friend and ally and would be sorely missed. Looking back at what previous administrations did in similar situations, the president decided to host a casual cookout.

Bavarian Strawberry Pudding

New York City, 
1935

In her memoir This Time Together, comedienne Carol Burnett reminisces about the summer of 1959, when the musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress was enjoying a healthy run. “A few of us in the cast decided to splurge on Saturday night after the show and treat ourselves to a sundae at the most expensive ice cream parlor in New York City: Rumpelmayer’s, in the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South,” she recalls. “I was flush with the excitement of being in a hit stage show and raking in $80 a week to boot. I could afford a Rumpelmayer’s treat.1

“Rumpelmayer’s was a pretty posh ice cream parlor. You could spot familiar faces there anytime after the bows had been taken and the lights had dimmed on Broadway for the night. Some folks went to nightclubs and bars, but those who had a sweet tooth and who also wanted to be seen went to Rumpelmayer’s. I remember having peeked in a few months earlier and spotting Marlene Dietrich in a gorgeous gray pantsuit at the counter, elegantly digging a long-handled spoon into a whipped cream goodie.”

Survival of the Fittest

New York City, 
1882

Influential Americans of the Gilded Age were comforted by philosopher Herbert Spencer’s ideas which adapted the theory of evolution to human society. Considered one of the most intelligent men of his generation, Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” a concept more related to laissez-faire capitalism than Charles Darwin’s system of biological natural selection. On November 9, 1882, two hundred distinguished gentlemen gathered at Delmonico’s in New York to honor the British philosopher before he departed for England, thereby ending his three-month visit to the United States.1 And while Spencer dreaded having to attend this banquet—he was an insomniac who became irritable and grumpy when something threatened to encroach on his privacy—the other participants were excited about an evening that promised to touch on the burning issues of the Victorian era, such as “intelligent design, the proper role of government, America’s place in the world, and God’s existence.”2 Ironically, the menu shown below unwittingly evokes the theme of this dinner. 

The Grub of 1859

Denver, 
1881

When the Society of Colorado Pioneers gathered for its first reunion in 1881 at the Windsor Hotel in Denver, the menu featured “grub.” Even so, the venue was first-class. Amidst its labyrinth of public rooms, the new 300-room Windsor boasted a Western Union office, a barber shop, and a tobacconist, along with several bars and restaurants. It was the largest and most luxurious hotel between the Palmer House in Chicago and The Palace in San Francisco.

Hot-House Tomatoes

New York City, 
1897
 

The Café Au Bon Goût on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 30th Street features an enormous buffet that is open 24/7. If you step inside and look straight up, you will see the beautifully molded ceiling that once graced the dining room of the Holland House, one of grandest hotels in New York during the 1890s. Modeled after a celebrated mansion in London, the ten-story building (which now contains offices) was built in the Italian Renaissance style, using white limestone from Indiana. Seven photographs and a menu tell its story.

Corny

Iowa, New York & Connecticut, 
1886-1888

Two corn cobs were walking along, and the first cob noticed that they were being followed by another cob. The first cob whispered to the second, “Don’t look now, but I think we are being followed by a stalker.” This was the type of corny joke that made the rounds at the corn-themed suppers that became popular in the late 1880s.1

Church suppers were commonplace occurrences during the nineteenth century, both as social gatherings and a way for women's groups to raise money. Around 1886, church groups across the country began to use corn as a theme for their suppers. The short-lived fad seemingly came out of nowhere—it was not confined to the Corn Belt in the Midwest nor related to the harvest season.

Nearly to the Jumping Off Place

El Paso, Texas
1883 

Shortly after moving to El Paso, Texas in October 1883, J. T. Stevens sent a letter, along with this hotel menu, to his parents in Connecticut, reassuring them of his safe arrival.. “I will enclose a bill of fare which I had the first day,” wrote the young store clerk,  “that you may see that I am not entirely out of this world if I have got nearly to the jumping off place.”  Enclosing a menu was a way of letting someone know that you were safe and doing well in your new surroundings—such was the symbolism of food.

Andersonville Beans

Lackawanna County,
1886-1890

It was startling to discover a dish called “Andersonville beans” on the menu from a Union Ex-Prisoners of War Association banquet in 1889. Andersonville, the largest Confederate prison during the Civil War, was a hellhole in Georgia, where nearly a third of the prisoners died of starvation or disease. A quarter of a century later, this local veteran’s group in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania had the curious idea of naming a bean dish after the infamous prison. 

Taft is Notified; Cincinnati Joyful

Cincinnati, 
1908 

This daily menu from the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati reflects the city's exuberant mood on July 28, 1908, when William Howard Taft accepted the Republican nomination for president from the portico of his Federalist mansion. Feeling the intense heat of that hot summer day, the 300-pound Taft passed over large sections of his speech, explaining to the crowd that they could read his entire oration in the newspapers.