Vintage menus offer blueprint to popular dishes of yore.
This column always requires detective work, but this one took the art of deduction to a new level. Inspired by local publisher Jack Bacon’s colorful collection of menus (see sidebar), I explored them to learn about food trends and changing tastes over the years. It was a foodie stroll down memory lane and revealed an interesting evolution of restaurant dining from 1919 to the present.
Menus Take Many Forms
Famous restaurateur Joe Bastianich said, “The menu should be part of the entertainment, part of the dining experience. It’s kind of like reading the Playbill when you go to the theater.”
Similarly, the menus in Bacon’s collection do not disappoint in terms of their entertainment value. Of the menus from Reno-area restaurants, perhaps the most unusual is the Carlan’s menu, which is printed on wood. It is not dated, but the prices indicate how old it is: Complete chicken dinners were only $0.75. The Coffee Shop at Dick Graves’ Nugget in Sparks used another one-of-a-kind format: The menu could be folded up as a souvenir postcard.
A handful of elaborate — and perhaps pretentious — menus exist, such as the one from South Reno’s The Lancer Restaurant, adorned with a classic gold tassel, or the large golden menu from Headliner Room at Harrah’s Casino in Reno. While most of the restaurants represented in the collection were in the Reno-Tahoe area, it also includes examples from Elko, Tonopah, Winnemucca, and Wendover.
The cover art is designed to capture a diner’s attention, and many restaurants hired local artists to do the job. Lew Hymers, a popular Reno artist and caricaturist, was in demand. He created illustrations for the Silver Grill, with swanky 1930s characters, and an evocative seashore scene for The Palace Café, both in Reno. Hans Meyer-Kassel’s notable paintings of the Paiute graced the menu of the Downtown Reno landmark Wigwam Coffee Shop. Most artists’ names, unfortunately, are lost to history, leaving us wondering about the inventive eye behind the bold mid-century modern lettering and style of Reno’s Holiday Hotel menu or the gold-panning miner on the Golden Hotel’s bill of fare.
Continental Menus
A big shift in dining tastes is evident after World War II, perhaps influenced by returning veterans’ exposure to new foods and preparations. Menus moved away from simple “down home” cooking to fancier, gourmet dishes. The menu at the Bonanza Inn at Wally [sic] Hot Springs says, “People desiring any continental dish not on the menu please telephone in advance.” Sauces started appearing regularly on the menu, with the meunière sauce being the favorite. Just about anything was served “almondine.”
In Reno, vichyssoise arrives at Eugene’s Restaurant and French onion soup at Harolds Club, and they also appear at the French restaurant in Reno appropriately called Moulin Rouge. Flaming desserts such as crêpes Suzette, cherries jubilee, and peach flambeau also star. Meanwhile, the Riverside Hotel in Reno declares it has “Nevada’s finest gourmet restaurant.”
The post-war era also saw the rise of ethnic restaurants in Reno. The Money Tree focused on Cantonese food. The Sun Café featured Chinese and American cuisine. Even American-style restaurants featured ethnic foods: Club Primadonna served Cantonese fried shrimp and Harvey’s Top of the Wheel in Stateline presented shrimp à la Saigon and curry Oahu-style. In one of the oddest twists, several of the Lake Tahoe casinos featured Jewish-style food, including chicken broth with matzo balls, gefilte fish, chopped chicken livers, and marinated herring in cream sauce.
Yesterday’s Dishes
Food tastes have changed, and many items that were regularly on menus have all but disappeared. Frog legs, pheasant, chipped beef, relish trays, abalone, and sweetbreads top this list. Count liver among them; it seems funny now that this menu staple was offered with a choice of onions or bacon. Why not both?
Cocktails — without a whiff of booze — made frequent appearances. Tomato juice cocktails were a standard appetizer. For a time, seafood and avocado cocktails were typical, surfacing as early as 1919 at Reno’s Kane’s Café. Talking about cocktails, during Prohibition, the Riverside Hotel implored, “Please do not embarrass the management by bringing intoxicating liquor into the dining room.”
Printed menus may be one of the latest casualties in restaurant dining, their demise accelerated by the COVID pandemic. Baum+Whiteman, an international food and restaurant consulting firm, notes, “Saying bye-bye to printed menus is one of the top dining trends for 2021.” Online ordering in advance? An iPad waiting on the table? A QR code poised for scanning by a smartphone? These innovations save restaurants printing costs and get better accuracy of orders hitting the kitchen. Sadly, a treasure trove of dining history will be lost to future generations.
Sharon Honig-Bear was the longtime restaurant writer for the Reno Gazette-Journal. She is a tour leader with Historic Reno Preservation Society and contributor to Renohistorical.org. She can be reached at Sharonbear@sbcglobal.net.
SIDEBAR
Calling All Menu Mavens
Jack Bacon, well-known local art appraiser and publisher, has been collecting local menus — and is on the hunt for more. He didn’t set out to amass them, but now has more than 70 examples, ranging from 1919 to the near-present. His intention is to eventually turn them over to the Nevada Historical Society. If you have menus to donate or would like to see the link to his current listings, contact Bacon at 775-322-1901 or Jlbacon7@sbcglobal.net.
If your curiosity runs wild, other extensive menu archives are available. For a good selection from other Nevada restaurants, check out Digital.library.unlv.edu/collections/menus. Other large digital menu collections have been created by prestigious organizations such as The New York Public Library, The Los Angeles Public Library, and Cornell University.
