WAITER, I’LL HAVE THE HOILED CORNED BEEF AND BROWNED PARNIPS

I’LL DECIDE ON THE REST later. These two delicacies appear on a menu illustrated in Anne Ewbank’s “A Peek Inside America’s Dazzling Menu Collection,” Gastro Obscura, July 31, 2023. Here are tidbits of Ewbank’s interview with Henry Voigt, whose collection might well have 10,000 menus. I’ve added my usual Internet sleuthing.

Diversity. “It’s geographically very diverse,” Voight recounts, “but as Tennessee Williams once said, the United States has three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everything else is Cleveland.”

Ouch. My birthplace. And home of The Theatrical Grill.

Class Will Out. Ewbank observes there are things on these menus that she’d never seen in a modern restaurant. Voight notes, “Certain foods were symbolic of class. For example, canvasback duck or diamondback terrapins from the Chesapeake Bay were de rigueur in the upper classes for special events. Food that denote class have changed.” 

What’s Hoiled Meat? Several items called for added research (or editorial blue pencil?). I searched for “Hoiled” to no avail. Likely “Boiled.”

Likewise, Googling “Parnips” yields a more likely “Parsnips.”

The Bill of Fare certainly didn’t lack for variety. Note the 28 different choices for ending a repast (including apparently arid ones?). But, what, no cheese course?

My Groucho Menu. I’m reminded of a menu in my modest collection: “The Captain’s Table, on Restaurant Row in Los Angeles. It too doesn’t lack for variety.

Taylor’s Saloon, Antebellum New York. Voight notes, “It was called saloon, meaning just ‘large restaurant.’ Spaces were made respectable for women by going over the top with the ornamentation. And Taylor’s was no exception to that. So they had high ceilings that were frescoed and Corinthian columns painted red with gilded edges and bubbling fountains and large mirrors and black walnut tables. It was quite a place.”

“Europeans were just astounded by this,” Voight observes. “Women gallivanting on their own, meeting with friends, having lunch. ‘My God, what’s the world coming to?’ ”

Ewbank describes the Taylor’s menu: “The menu is just not like anything you’ve ever seen. It’s 58 pages. It has gutta-percha covers inlaid with mother-of-pearl chromolithographic borders around each page. And on the recto of each leaf, there’s part of the menu, and on the verso of each page, there’s an advertisement.”

A Vast Contrast. World War I over, American soldiers in Vladivostok celebrated Christmas Day.

Stylish. One of my favorite images in Voight’s collection is for the Fountain Room.

It reminds me of Billy Strayhorn’s song Lush Life: “I used to visit all the very gay places/ Those come-what-may places/ Where one relaxes on the axis/ Of the wheel of life/ To get the feel of life/ From jazz and cocktails.” ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023