The cover of a 1924 menu for the Fountain Room at the Hotel Pennsylvania, in New York, the largest hotel in the world when it opened across the street from Penn Station in 1919. When Prohibition went into effect the following year, its bar, and many others across the country, were turned into soda fountains.

A menu card from an event catered by Louis Sherry in New York in 1884, a few months after he opened his confectionery-and-catering business. Sherry opened his first restaurant in a refurbished mansion in 1889, before relocating to a Stanford White–designed building across from rival Delmonico’s.

The cover of a 1933 menu for the Blackhawk, which opened in the Chicago Loop in 1920. Six years later, the sedate 600-seat restaurant replaced its string quartet with a dance orchestra, and soon a program called *Live! From the Blackhawk!* was broadcast, first on local radio and then nationwide.

The cover of a 1930 menu for the Boston News Bureau’s Dinner & Dance event at Hugo’s Log Cabin. Crabmeat cocktail, clam chowder, steamed clams, baked stuffed lobster, combination salad, and fresh blueberry pie were served.

The cover of a 1917 menu for Maxim’s, a New York cabaret known as a “lobster palace” and designed in the Louis XIV style. Before becoming a silent-film star, Rudolph Valentino worked at Maxim’s as a “taxi dancer”—a paid dance partner for single women.

A menu card for an 1852 Hasty Pudding Club dinner at Winthrop House, in Boston, featuring seven varieties of game bird.

The cover of a 1926 menu for the Cathay Tea Garden, in Philadelphia, which had a large dance floor and hosted a regular radio program.

The cover of an 1882 menu for the West Brighton Beach Hotel, in Coney Island. Prices range from 30 cents for a serving of raw oysters to $1.50 for a whole broiled chicken or a large Porterhouse steak for two.

An 1854 menu for La Pierre House, in Philadelphia, celebrating the 172nd anniversary of the landing of William Penn in America.

The cover of an 1881 menu for the Great Western Railway’s Niagara Falls Route. The fixed price for breakfast is 75 cents, and the beverage list offers more than three dozen champagnes, clarets, and ales.

The cover of a 1938 menu for Steinberg’s Dairy Restaurant, in New York. Opened in 1931, Steinberg’s was one of several beloved dairy restaurants on the Upper West Side, serving Eastern European Jewish foods including salmon, borscht, vegetarian (mock) chopped liver, chopped herring, cabbage soup, potato latkes, cheese blintzes, and kreplach.

The cover of a circa-1917 menu for Rector’s, a lobster palace in New York. Earl Fuller’s Famous Jazz Band played at Rector’s in 1916.

The menu for Mark Twain’s 70th-birthday celebration at Delmonico’s, in New York, in 1905, hosted by George Harvey, the owner and editor of *Harper’s Weekly.* The menu features sketches by the cartoonist Leon Barritt.

The cover of a circa-1913 menu for Gem, which operated variously as a coffeehouse, a saloon, an oyster house, a café, and a restaurant on New Orleans’s Royal Street.

The cover of a 1919 menu for a 165th U.S. Infantry Victory Dinner at the Commodore Hotel, in New York, illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg. The 165th Infantry Regiment, originally the 69th New York Infantry in the Civil War, was still called the “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” at its welcome-home banquet.

The cover of a menu (circa 1861–62) for Taylor’s Saloon, the foremost women’s restaurant in midcentury New York. This 56-page menu is one of only two known copies from the saloon’s early location in the International Hotel, on Broadway at Franklin Street.

America, à la Carte

An exhibition of vintage menus at New York’s Grolier Club celebrates the first 100 years of dining out in America

New Yorkers are good at many things, but they’re especially good at eating out. Look at the number of New York ovens that are used for storage and it’s quite clear that the home-cooked meal is not a high priority. Restaurant culture is urban culture. It’s about society and ceremony and fun as much as it’s about the food. A new exhibition of vintage menus at New York’s Grolier Club celebrates the first 100 years of dining out in America, starting in 1841.

A menu from President Lincoln’s 1865 second inaugural ball at the White House, where food was served at midnight, showcases a wide selection of ornamental pyramids as well as jellies and creams. A candy-colored 1886 dinner menu from Chicago’s Palmer Hotel, which reopened after the Great Fire of 1871 burned it to the ground, advertises itself as being “thoroughly fire proof.” With a total of 225 menus from all kinds of eating establishments—Mississippi riverboats, military encampments, you name it—the show offers a dazzling decade-by-decade visual evolution of one of America’s favorite pastimes. —Clara Molot

“A Century of Dining Out: The American Story in Menus, 1841–1941” is on view at the Grolier Club, in New York, until July 29

Clara Molot is an Associate Editor for AIR MAIL

Menus: Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus

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America, à la Carte