West Meets East

Chinese-American Restaurants
1896-1926

Chinese restaurants first opened in the United States during the California Gold Rush. In the early years, these modest eateries fell into two basic categories, serving Chinese food for Chinese immigrants or typical American fare for non-Chinese patrons. However, by the 1890s, a new style had emerged that we now call Chinese-American cuisine in which traditional Cantonese dishes were modified for the dominant American palate. Compared to traditional native dishes, this version of Chinese food utilized fewer ingredients and expressed a narrower range of textures. The most prominent adaptation was chop suey, comprising assorted pieces of meat or seafood, quickly stir fried with vegetables like bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery, and bound in a starch-thickened sauce.1 Even though this inexpensive dish quickly became popular, it wasn’t long before Chinese restaurateurs began putting a few Western-style dishes on their menus in order to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Eleven menus from the early twentieth century show how the culinary traditions of the two cultures slowly came together.

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. 

Easter Sunday, 1865

Springfield, Mass.

This menu comes from the Massasoit House in Springfield, Massachusetts on April 16, 1865. It was Easter Sunday—150 years ago today. The dinner was served in the early afternoon and featured a typical selection of nineteenth-century dishes, such as prairie chickens (usually from Illinois), apple fritters, and squash pies. There were also a few springtime specialties like Connecticut River shad and cowslips, a flowering herb traditionally used for medicinal purposes. What is unusual about this menu is not the cuisine, but the design; the border seems slightly too thick for its overall proportions. 

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Ball

Washington, D.C. 
1865 

During the first week of March 1865, the celebratory mood in Washington contrasted sharply with that in Richmond, where remnants of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia clung grimly to its intricate network of earthworks guarding the city. Union forces had been pressing the Rebel lines since the summer, when Grant began this siege. Although fighting slowed during the unusually cold winter, it had never stopped. Farther south, Sherman’s army was moving into North Carolina, having completed its victorious march through Georgia and South Carolina. And in the final days leading up to the inauguration, the Confederate cavalry was driven out of the Shenandoah Valley for the last time. It was against this backdrop that the president was sworn in on March 4, followed two days later by a great ball. 

Just One Word: Plastics

Iowa & New York,
1889 

In the 1967 movie The Graduate, Mr. McGuire gives young Benjamin some unsolicited career advice: 

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. 

Benjamin: Yes, sir. 

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? 

 Benjamin: Yes, I am. 

Mr. McGuire: Plastics. 

Perhaps the irony of this scene escaped me, for it wasn’t long after seeing this film that I entered the plastics industry. And yet, despite many years of experience in this field, it came as a surprise when I discovered that nineteenth-century menus were occasionally made of celluloid which is regarded as the first thermoplastic. Two menus from 1889 demonstrate how this synthetic material was once employed for special menus, symbolically denoting prosperity, technical progress, and civic pride. 

Nathaniel White’s Birthday Party

Henry County, Iowa
1878 

Menus from small dinners in private venues during the nineteenth century are few and far between. They seem to have first appeared in the late-1860s, when women’s groups began to occasionally engage the services of local printers to produce menus for church fundraisers and other social gatherings, becoming one of the ways they could make their events a little more special. Since much of the information about these get-togethers was already known by the participants, such menus often lack essential details about time and place, making them difficult to decipher. Therefore, I had low expectations when I started to research a menu from a birthday party in 1878 for a farmer named Nathaniel White. Nevertheless, with a little bit of luck, I was able to determine the identity of the celebrant, the location, and possibly even the reason why menus were printed for this occasion. One of the most interesting things that I learned about this pioneer was something that happened many years earlier. 

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. 

The White Mountains

1865-1903 

The Presidential Range comprises seven mountains—all named for U.S. presidents—situated within the picturesque White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mount Washington is the highest peak in this contiguous, twenty-five-mile line of granite summits, precisely positioned where high altitude systems from the Great Lakes and Canada collide with warmer air from the southern states and eastern Atlantic. As a result, the unpredictable weather can turn deadly in winter, renowned for sub-zero temperatures and the fastest wind gusts on earth. In summer, the conditions are much calmer, affording spectacular views in all directions on a clear day. A small stone hotel was built atop the mountain in 1853, followed sixteen years later by a cog railroad, the first in the world. In the early 1870s, the old hotel was replaced by a cushier one, as tourism began to take root throughout the United States.

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...