Ortolans

Washington, D.C. & New York City

1879

Ortolan is the French common name for a finch-like bunting that is a native of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. Even though there are strict laws protecting these migratory birds, they are a great delicacy still being captured in nets in southwest France. Weighing less than an ounce, the tiny songbirds are first kept in a lightless box, prompting them to instinctively gorge on millet, grapes, and figs. Once the bird has quadrupled in size, becoming nothing more than a four-ounce lump of richly-flavored fat, it is drowned in Armagnac, plucked, roasted, and flambéed.

Café Martin

New York City
1901-1912

By the late 1890s, the neighborhood surrounding Madison Square Park had lost some of its luster. After being the center of New York’s social scene for twenty-five years, its leading hotels and restaurants began to close. Delmonico’s, which had moved there from Union Square in 1876, now relocated to Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. Despite this notable departure, Madison Square was still a stylish part of town, prompting Jean and Louis Martin to take over Delmonico’s lease on the 26th Street location, well-situated between Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The French-born brothers refurbished the old building, giving it the latest flourishes of Art Nouveau design, and renamed it the Café Martin.

The Quick & Not-So-Quick Lunch

New York City,
1903

In the nineteenth century, Europeans visiting the United States were fascinated by how quickly Americans ate their meals, particularly lunch. By the 1890s, several new options had emerged for those in a hurry. In addition to lunch wagons and cafeterias, there were small restaurants that served the so-called “quick lunch.” These establishments especially captured the European imagination, as no such eateries existed in Europe at the time. In 1892, French writer Paul de Rousiers described the scene at one of these lunch places in his travelogue La Vie Américaine:

“Lunch time, the streets fill once more. In New York nobody goes home in the middle of the day. They eat wherever they happen to be: at the office, while working, in clubs, and in cafeterias…In blue-collar restaurants, thousands of people eat standing up, with their hats on, all in a line, like horses in a stable. The food is fresh and appetizing, though, and prices are lower than ours. While lines of men dug into plates brimming with meatballs, others wait to take their place.”

Of course, not everyone who lived in the big cities had to work for a living. For those who could afford to spend more time and money on their midday meal, there were many fine restaurants that served lunch at a more leisurely pace. Two menus from New York in 1903 reveal the lunchtime experience at both ends of the social spectrum.

The Religion of Health

New York City & Chicago
1904-1911

In the early twentieth century, there was a growing awareness that exercise and diet played an important role in good health. The physical fitness movement was then aligned with vegetarianism which was then reemerging in the United States. The menu below comes from the first annual banquet of the Brooklyn Physical Culture Society in 1904. In addition to showing the connection between vegetarianism and the new physical fitness fad, the menu includes a toast to “The Religion of Health” given by Bernarr Macfadden, an early advocate of vigorous exercise and a plant-based diet.

The Laurel

New York City, 
1903-04

The Laurel was one of only a few vegetarian restaurants in New York at the turn of the last century. Technically, it was a lacto-ovo vegetarian restaurant in that it served dairy products and egg dishes. A menu from 1903 offers a wide selection of dishes, along with health tips, nutritional advice, and quotes from the Bible and the poet Oliver Goldsmith. This à la carte menu, and a banquet menu from the following year, mark the reemergence of vegetarianism in the United States after a hiatus of fifty years.

New Year’s Day, 1885

Iowa, Kansas, New Jersey & New York

The major happenings of 1885 involved large things—the Statue of Liberty arrived from France; the Washington Monument was finally completed; and the ten-story Home Insurance Building was erected in Chicago, becoming the first "skyscraper" made with structural steel. Newspapers also reported that Jumbo the Elephant was killed by a locomotive while crossing the railroad tracks, three years after showman P. T. Barnum brought the beloved circus animal to the United States amidst great fanfare. Four menus from the first day of that eventful year reveal how the holiday was once celebrated.

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.

The Many Landings of William Penn

Philadelphia, 
1854 
 

This November is the 329th anniversary of the landing of William Penn. Today, a statue of the entrepreneurial Quaker stands atop the Philadelphia City Hall, looking out over the City of Brotherly Love. (Many people think it is Benjamin Franklin.) In the early nineteenth century, Americans knew more about William Penn than they did about the Pilgrims who may have disembarked at Plymouth Rock.  A menu from 1854 reflects the importance once accorded to Penn's arrival in the New World. 

The Newsies

Chicago, 1900

“…The works of religion and charity have everywhere been manifest. Our country through all its extent has been blessed with abundant harvests. Labor and the great industries of the people have prospered beyond all precedent…”

— President William McKinley,

Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1900 

Woolf’s clothing store, situated on State Street across from the luxurious Palmer House, closed early on the day before Thanksgiving in 1900, as it had done for years, in order to get ready to serve a holiday dinner for the poor of Chicago. It was unseasonably cold that afternoon; the temperature had already dropped into the teens when the store clerks sprang into action. In what had become a well-orchestrated ritual, they stored away the goods and removed the counters from the main floor. Next, the table were brought in, covered with marbled oilcloth, and decorated with flowers, fruit, and pyramids of small cakes.1 After carefully arranging a thousand place settings, reportedly with as much precision as you would find at a fine hotel, the clerks donned white aprons and jackets just before opening the doors at 6 PM, ready to serve old-fashioned turkey dinners to the multitudes who would begin filing in from the frigid weather.