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.
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 2 hours ago [-]
In Brazil they have a little pad they leave on the table next to the napkins
al_borland 2 hours 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.
gnatolf 25 minutes ago [-]
All over Germany, and it's been around much much longer than the fear of having something slipped in your drink.
retired 1 hours ago [-]
In the Netherlands that person would be considered an eetpiraat (food pirate) or flessentrekker (bottle puller). Those are terms used in court.
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.
zer00eyz 7 minutes ago [-]
> menus don’t seem to have drastically changed over the past 175ish
After looking at a dozen of the ones from the Boston area I have to say that my sampling disagrees with yours.
Turtle, Sweetbreads, Venison, Mutton are all things that would get a foodie OUT to eat today and seem to have been much more common then.
Also much of what I am seeing as "boiled" is going to range from "poached" (salmon) to "braised" (some of the tougher organ meats). Stumbling across a "boiled" chicken, served with rice and cucumbers in an 1800's menu made me jump to "Hainanese chicken rice". That preparation seems exotic to the modern American style but might not be as alien 100 years ago (Flavoring aside).
apical_dendrite 1 hours ago [-]
One massive change is that there is almost no ethnic food on these menus (unless you include French). I looked at some of the LA menus and there were zero Asian, Mexican, or Italian dishes. It's impossible to imagine today that you could look at a bunch of hotel restaurant menus in LA and not find at least some dishes that were inspired by those cultures.
ArchieScrivener 48 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
wxw 3 hours 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.
NooneAtAll3 19 minutes ago [-]
5k Restaurant Menus, Years 2020-2026: [qr code][qr code][qr code][qr code]
onionisafruit 1 hours ago [-]
Tapping doesn't work on a macbook with tap to click. To see a menu I have to do a full click instead of a tap. In the several years I've had tap to click set I don't think I've ever run across a web page where tapping doesn't work like a click.
cheema33 34 minutes ago [-]
Navigation was quiet confusing to me on my Macbook as well. If the topic was not so interesting I would have left in complete frustration instead of deciding to fight the interface.
akamaka 21 minutes ago [-]
It crashed my browser twice on mobile, so I just gave up.
BashiBazouk 3 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...
codazoda 3 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.
I was curious how these were made back then and what modern fonts might look best.
kdawag 16 minutes ago [-]
I absolutely love the data viz on this website, so freaking cool
cs702 3 hours ago [-]
Interesting, these really old menus would not look too out of place at a restaurant today.
9dev 3 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.
com2kid 2 hours ago [-]
The first menu I opened had tongue sandwiches and hot beef tea.
So some things have definitely changed!
apical_dendrite 1 hours 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.
kibwen 29 minutes ago [-]
Any respectable city will have a burrito joint somewhere with lengua on the menu.
ricardobayes 2 hours 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.
haunter 2 hours ago [-]
I'm in Europe and never seen a "just has a QR code" menu
shermantanktop 2 hours 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 2 hours 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
zdc1 2 hours ago [-]
Interesting how little some things have changed.
The prices, on the other hand, seem quite cheap--even after converting to 2026 dollars.
longos 3 hours 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.
bflesch 7 minutes ago [-]
Does anybody have a direct link about the archive they are talking about? I'm having trouble navigating the site tbh.
XCSme 32 minutes ago [-]
Not loading for me, empty page (Brave/Windows)
dinarphatak 2 hours ago [-]
This is such an interesting site. And is exactly the kind of curious content which I love seeing.
manbash 3 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 2 hours ago [-]
...or are even in the hands of the same family?
mgkimsal 3 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 3 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.)
macNchz 1 hours ago [-]
Still pretty common at least in places near where oysters are grown, I think. My guess would be also that tastes changed over time as oyster fisheries were overfished and/or polluted by growing cities. There have been numerous waves of oyster collapse on the US east coast over hundreds of years, and places that once had them in incredible abundance now have none (though efforts to restore them have emerged).
There are a variety of parallels in the history of overfishing where a given seafood that was once abundant was then seen as undesirable and served to servants or prisoners (lobster, salmon), but today is somewhat of an expensive delicacy.
BashiBazouk 47 minutes ago [-]
The other interesting one is celery. I read an article a bit ago about how salted celery stalks were popular around the early 1900's with all kinds of heirloom varieties being served. Quite a few of the menus I have clicked on have celery listed as an appetizer...
anarticle 2 hours 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 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, oysters used to be extremely cheap and popular (and nutritious); that's probably the main reason.
jonahx 3 hours ago [-]
Very cool site, but I had to leave when my mac laptop started burning my thighs...
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierdeckel#Urkundencharakter (in German, English wiki doesn't have this info)
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.
https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/resultaat?zoekterm=Flessen...
https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/resultaat?zoekterm=Eetpira...
After looking at a dozen of the ones from the Boston area I have to say that my sampling disagrees with yours.
Turtle, Sweetbreads, Venison, Mutton are all things that would get a foodie OUT to eat today and seem to have been much more common then.
Also much of what I am seeing as "boiled" is going to range from "poached" (salmon) to "braised" (some of the tougher organ meats). Stumbling across a "boiled" chicken, served with rice and cucumbers in an 1800's menu made me jump to "Hainanese chicken rice". That preparation seems exotic to the modern American style but might not be as alien 100 years ago (Flavoring aside).
Word art, clip art Lamborghinis next to the takeout number, all kinds of coloring. I love them.
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.
So some things have definitely changed!
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.
If the primary purpose is a bar that also serves food, yes.
If it's proper dining. No
The prices, on the other hand, seem quite cheap--even after converting to 2026 dollars.
cool collection, just harder to share some specific ones with friends.
There are a variety of parallels in the history of overfishing where a given seafood that was once abundant was then seen as undesirable and served to servants or prisoners (lobster, salmon), but today is somewhat of an expensive delicacy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674244
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677110