Menus are fascinating because they really don’t discriminate. No matter where we are from or who we are, we have all picked up a menu to select something to eat at one time or another. Not only are vintage menus adorned with beautiful drawings and typefaces, but they showcase the foods of former eras. Did Abe Lincoln have the oyster stew? Did John Jacob Astor IV enjoy his Pâté de foie gras before he went down with the Titanic? Menu’s weren’t historically thought of as keepsakes, so they can be hard to dig up, but we found a few.
Menu for Samuel Longhorne Clemens dinner thrown by the Lotos Club.
“Bill of Fare”, Menu for Lincoln’s 1865 Inauguration ball dinner (Library of Congress)
Commemorative dinner menu for the International Congress of Biochemistry, Paris, France. July 26, 1952.
The last dinner served on the Titanic. April 14, 1912.
Menu for the State Dinner in honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, held on May 7, 2007.
Daily menu from the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel (1938)
Lotos Club Menu, 1893
First class menu from the westbound leg of the maiden voyage of the floating Waldorf-Astoria. (July 12, 1952)
And finally, a different kind of menu… with love for Mr. Mark Twain.
Original Twain Menu (1906)
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