What Was the Menu? Ask Collectors

Restaurateurs interested in menu design, chefs wanting to recreate historical dinners and food buffs looking for a slice of culinary past are among those who use menu collections, according to those who collect them.

It can be tedious research, however. Because of their assorted sizes, varieties and topics, menus are hard to classify and catalogue systematically.

A few collections, like the National Restaurant Assn.’s, are documented on computer. (If you wanted to know, for example, which restaurants in its collection served Welsh rarebit in Chicago in the 1940s, just punch a few keywords into the computer and up comes a list.)

Undoubtedly, there are many private menu collections belonging to enthusiastic diners, either stashed in desk drawers or piled in basement boxes. Private cooking schools are another source, but are generally not open to the public. Here is a handful of public collections. Call in advance if you’d like to take a look:

--Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, Los Angeles. Wonder what the Jonathan club was serving in the 30’s? This collection of menus, more than half from California, will tell you that. The collection is open to everyone with a reference card for the UCLA libraries. Since the menus are in remote storage, it’s best to call ahead and have the material paged. The collection is open Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call (213) 825-4988.

--National Restaurant Assn., 1200 17th St. NW., Washington, D.C. 20036. Includes menus described in accompanying story. NRA also welcomes donations of old menus. Call 202-331-5960.

--Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Archive Center, Constitution Ave. NW., Washington D.C. 20560. Menus from the 19th and 20th centuries are part of the museum’s Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, which includes many other food and food-related pieces. The menus are stacked in boxes and are not organized by date. Call 202-357-3270.

--New York Public Library, 42nd St. and 5th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10018. With 25,000 menus in boxes and folders, this may be one of the country’s larger collections. It dates from the 1870s and includes many from hotel restaurants, steamships and trains. The collection also includes dinners honoring the country’s first astronauts. Call 212-930-0575.

--New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, N.Y. 10024. The NYHS collection dates from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s. Aside from restaurant menus, many are from private banquets. NYHS has had its menu collection on display in the past but not currently. The collection, however, is open for research by the public. Call 212-873-3400.

--Cornell School of Hotel Administration Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14854. This collection of 10,000 menus consists of two main components. About half are from the donated collection of Oscar Tschirky, the famous chef at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel around the turn of the century. It consists of menus from the 1850s to the 1930s, including one from the dinner honoring explorer Frederick Cook upon his return from the North Pole. (It was a catered affair for 1,500 at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal).

The other half of Cornell’s collection consists of menus from the 1920s to the ‘40s, gathered by the university. Cornell is currently updating its collection and is cataloguing information on computer database. Call 607-255-3673.

--Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1 Manhattan Square, Rochester, N.Y. 14607. This small collection of 100 menus dates back to the 1840s and includes menus from resort hotels along the East Coast and anniversary dinners from organizations such as the Masons and the Grange. The collection is fully catalogued on a computer database. Call 716-263-2700.