The American Menu

New York City, 1890  Chauncey Depew was very busy on Monday, February 17, 1890. In addition to being the president of a railroad, De...

This article was first published in the 2010 summer issue of Gastronomica. It is posted here as a prelude to the essay titled “Chauncey Dep...

West Point, 1884-1887 When the Class of 1888 graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in June of that year, there were so few cadets t...

New York City 1863 In the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming , a Soviet submarine accidentally runs agroun...

American Airlines 1946 Restaurant critic Bryan Miller once observed, “The quality of food is in inverse proportion to a dining room’s a...

St. Petersburg, Archangel & Vladivostok 1912-1918 One of the most intriguing aspects of ephemera is that it reminds us of  long-...

New York City,  1880 When five members of a congressional subcommittee came to New York in April 1880 to inspect the new factory of...

Paris,  1842 Eight counties, ten small cities, thirty townships, and numerous streets, schools, parks, and lakes are named after...

New York City,  1904 The scene is still funny. Appearing in the Sunday comic section of the New York World in March 1899, the firs...

Washington, D.C. & New York City 1902 There was an intriguing story behind the menu that supposedly came from the state dinner ...