New York Public Library Menu Collection

I don't know if this topic has been covered before but I searched and couldn't find anything.

A friend sent me a link to the New York Public Library's online menu collection. They have about 40,000 menus in their collection. So far they've digitized about 10,000 and are in the process of transcribing them so that the text can be searched. You can help them with the transcribing.

I entered a few search terms and found these tiki restaurant menus:

A drink menu from Trader Vic's (date unknown)

Don The Beachcomber 1965.

The Hawaiian Room at the Emerson Hotel (1967)

Moultray's Polynesian (1965)

With 10,000 menus, I'm sure there must be more if you do some digging.

That's a great resource. I'm already looking forward to going over some of the classic dishes. Thanks for posting the information.

Cool find. Here's Ports O'Call:

http://menus.nypl.org/menu_pages/48660

Here's a few more I found:

Two from the Matson S.S. Mariposa:

May 13, 1969
May 15, 1969

Pan American Airlines (to Hawaii)

Canlis'

Señor Pico (San Francisco), 1966

Beverly Hills Hotel (drink menu)

Hawaiian Room at the Emerson Hotel

Plantation Gardens

Surf Room at the Royal Hawaiian

So I'm doing my chef gig here in the Wastelands, ladling out the chicken/broccoli casserole and green chile cheeseburgers, but my mind is thinking, "Ports o' Call Chicken Manchu: how would that be with duck? Also Duck Manchu is a much more entertaining name." I had the hardest time focusing today, all because of this dang thread. It may be too much fun for me to handle.

The New York Public Library now has over 45,000 scanned menus online. Quite a few of the public libraries around the US have downloaded menus.

-Lori

[ Edited by: tikilongbeach 2014-08-12 09:39 ]