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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.
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.
New York City,
1882
The mislabeling of food was a conventional practice in the nineteenth century when imagination often trumped scruples in the supply chain. While menus may not provide evidence of the most egregious misdeeds, they sometimes indicate puffery, such as when a game bird appears to have been given the name of a fancier species. For example, small rails from the swampy marshes of the Mid-Atlantic might be called ortolans, the European buntings beloved by gourmets in France. Claims of this type were probably not intended to fool the diner so much as to give the occasion a more sophisticated air. However, game birds may have also been mislabeled, or simply left off the menu, when they were served out of season. For a better understanding of this illicit practice, we turn to an investigative article about one such incident. Although I have not yet found a menu to support this report, ephemera tells us something about the restaurant implicated in the story.1
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…”
1883-1908
Explorers like Lewis and Clark ventured into the vast Dakotas after the lands were obtained as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but few people settled there, even after the Homestead Act was passed in 1862, allowing any U.S. citizen or intended citizen to lay claim to 160 acres of government land. Many would-be migrants may have been discouraged by recurrent skirmishes with the Sioux. The situation changed in 1874 when gold was found in the Black Hills, the rolling dark mountains considered sacred to the tribe. The discovery set off the last Sioux War. When the conflict ended three years later, homesteaders began pouring into the region, one of the last areas of the United States to be settled. Three scarce Thanksgiving menus mark distinct periods of growth and prosperity in the years that followed.
New York City,
1907-1909
This comic postcard from about 1912 promotes an Italian restaurant named The Carlos to New Jerseyites by claiming it was “free from
mosquitoes.”1
The confusing scene shows a New York cityscape on the left and
a railroad platform in New Jersey on the right where swarms of
mosquitoes can be seen harassing commuters standing on the platform. In reality, The Carlos was located at 25 West 24th Street, near both Madison Square Park and the Hudson Tube Station shown in the distance on the card. More interestingly, it faced the drab façade of a building across the street that hid the love nest of architect Stanford White who rented the second and third floors for his trysts, fitting the rooms with mirrored walls, a canopy bed, and a red velvet swing.2 Much
of what we know about this restaurant and its bohemian spirit comes from postcards and from the
diary of one of its most famous patrons.
New York City,
1899-1919
Rector’s holds a significant place in American social history. Established on Broadway at the dawn of the twentieth century, it operated at a time of sweeping social change. This transformation was particularly evident in the theater district around Times Square, where, over the course of two decades, four distinct dining venues carried the Rector name. These venues included Rector’s restaurant, the Rector Hotel, George Rector’s restaurant, and finally an eponymous cabaret. Some of these enterprises were successful, while others disappeared barely leaving a trace. The story of Rector’s is told through its material culture, offering a tangible glimpse into its past.
Ketchikan,
2015
Our family had a wonderful time this summer traipsing through Southeast Alaska. In Ketchikan, we lunched at the Diaz Café situated a short walk from the heavily touristed area where the cruise ships dock. Despite its proximity to these modern-day leviathans, the modest restaurant evoked a bygone era. Its laminated 8½- x 14-inch menu offered typical American fare on one side and on the other, an eclectic mixture of Asian cuisines that included chop suey, chow mein, and egg foo yong. Seeing this triumvirate of old-fashioned Chinese-American dishes, I asked our server when the menu had last been updated. When she said nothing had changed since the late 1940s, I knew we had struck culinary gold.
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.
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.
