5k Restaurant Menus, Years 1880-1920

134

xxbryanx about 2 hours ago 31 commentsRead Article on pudding.cool

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Discussion (31 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

ricardobayes•about 1 hour ago

Anyone interested in this might also like the tidbit that in Germany, they used to, and still count beer consumed as pencil strikes on the beer paper mat. Altering the number by the guest is legally considered forgery and the disappearance of the beer mat is also punishable by law.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierdeckel#Urkundencharakter (in German, English wiki doesn't have this info)

rconti•about 1 hour ago

Beer mat = "coaster" for the curious. I was originally thinking a paper tablecloth. It was pretty straightforward to understand via browser translation of the wikipedia article, thanks!

iterateoften•about 1 hour ago

In Brazil they have a little pad they leave on the table next to the napkins

al_borland•22 minutes ago

> In some breweries and countries, the beer mat placed on the glass signals to the waiter that the guest does not want to drink any more beer.

Interesting. I’ve always seen this as a signal that a person was stepping away, but coming back. The person would cover it while going to the bathroom, in part so it isn’t as trivial for someone to slip something in their drink. Implying that they intend to keep drinking it once they return.

I’d be interested to know where it means that the guest doesn’t want any more beer.

wxw•about 1 hour ago

If you’re ever in NYC, many of the hole-in-the-wall takeout Chinese restaurants have awesome 2000s era menu aesthetics.

Word art, clip art Lamborghinis next to the takeout number, all kinds of coloring. I love them.

temporallobe•about 1 hour ago

As a foodie, I love this. In many respects, menus don’t seem to have drastically changed over the past 175ish years but it looks like a “Boiled” category was common early on, which I assume was because boiled foods were popular and/or easy for restaurants to make in bulk.

BashiBazouk•about 2 hours ago

Really cool. I have A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price and it is similar. It has recipes from all the restaurants that they went to all over the world but every section has a menu from one of the restaurants that gave a recipe for that section, which is the real charm of the book. Interesting to see how little has changed except the prices...

zdc1•about 1 hour ago

Interesting how little some things have changed.

The prices, on the other hand, seem quite cheap--even after converting to 2026 dollars.

longos•about 1 hour ago

For those seeking another, historically oriented commentary I would recommend https://www.theamericanmenu.com/. The author makes note of significant, famous restaurants like Delmonico's in NYC, current events of the time, and also culinary trends and menu images.

codazoda•about 2 hours ago

Many of these, from the mid 1800’s, would have been printed on a press with metal letters.

A modern open font that might match the style is Old Standard TT.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Old%2BStandard%2BTT

I was curious how these were made back then and what modern fonts might look best.

cs702•about 2 hours ago

Interesting, these really old menus would not look too out of place at a restaurant today.

com2kid•40 minutes ago

The first menu I opened had tongue sandwiches and hot beef tea.

So some things have definitely changed!

apical_dendrite•10 minutes ago

A tongue sandwich is still pretty popular in some cultures. My parents and some of their friends served it sometimes when I was growing up.

9dev•about 2 hours ago

And the other way around too - it sounds like you could have had a very similar dining experience as today. It always amazes me how very little difference there is between past people's lifestyles and ours. I know this on a factual level, but being presented with a tiny peek into the past like this is always very humbling to me.

ricardobayes•about 1 hour ago

Unfortunately in Europe printed menus almost entirely disappeared after COVID. Before, leather-clad, elegant, printed menus were commonplace, but nowadays every place just has a QR code.

shermantanktop•21 minutes ago

You apparently go to a different type of restaurant than I do. The typical Roman pizza joint or Florentine trattoria or Berlin beer hall rarely had leather-clad menus. And I haven’t seen that many QR codes.

But QR codes are not awesome, I agree. They are more hygienic, less wasteful of paper, and easier to update. But I don’t want to use my phone when I am out with others.

_puk•about 1 hour ago

Quite the sweeping statement that contradicts my recent time across a few European countries.

If the primary purpose is a bar that also serves food, yes.

If it's proper dining. No

haunter•about 1 hour ago

I'm in Europe and never seen a "just has a QR code" menu

dinarphatak•42 minutes ago

This is such an interesting site. And is exactly the kind of curious content which I love seeing.

mgkimsal•about 2 hours ago

would be nice to be able to link to an individual menu.

cool collection, just harder to share some specific ones with friends.

daemonologist•about 2 hours ago

Interesting that many of them lead with clams or oysters. (Perhaps this is still a thing at high-end restaurants, but to have them listed so frequently and prominently is completely foreign to me.)

anarticle•about 1 hour ago

I would have guessed nutrition, we live an in age of vitamins and fortified foods. You can get a lot of zinc and other metals from clams and oysters.

npinsker•6 minutes ago

Yes, oysters used to be extremely cheap and popular (and nutritious); that's probably the main reason.

manbash•about 2 hours ago

I am curious which of these places still exist today, as some menus depict the building. It would've be nice to have additional historical information.

jll29•34 minutes ago

...or are even in the hands of the same family?

kaneda26•41 minutes ago

I'd be curious to know what software they are using to display the graph.

jonahx•about 2 hours ago

Very cool site, but I had to leave when my mac laptop started burning my thighs...

okutan•about 1 hour ago

It was very slow; I struggled with it.

fhdkweig•about 2 hours ago

dupe (kinda), Yesterday, 9 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674244

codetiger•about 2 hours ago

The ice cream flavors are more meaningful those days. Nowadays they have every possible combinations like the weird "green chilly ice creams"

pwillia7•about 2 hours ago

I see everything is CENTS! I was like what on earth who is paying $250 for a ham sandwich???