Tabla's Unleavened Bread Bar

Danny Meyer's beloved Tabla closed a few months ago after twelve years in business. And although I wish the Library had more Tabla menus than the small handful from 2007, I am pleased that one of them includes Chef Floyd Cardoz's Unleavened Bread Bar menu, created for Passover week. 

I'm not sure when restaurants began to offer meals catering to the Passover crowd; most kosher restaurants close for the duration of the holiday because a thorough cleaning of any leavened bread product (biur chametz) is a serious chore, and add to that the requirement to use different pots, pans, plates, etc. and you've got a lot of work on your hands, especially for a restaurant.

Non-kosher restaurants don't have those restrictions, so they can offer seders and Passover meals to anyone interested.  In New York this year, there are quite a few seders taking place: Savoy in SoHo, Capsouto Freres in Tribeca, JoeDoe in the East Village, Sammy's Roumanian on the Lower East Side, and Julian Medina's Toloache, Yerba Buena, and Yerba Buena Perry.  And Joan Nathan writes about others joining the trend in the Times this week.

I'll be contacting the above restaurants to add their menus to our Passover collection, and if anyone is attending a seder, or simply dining, at a Passover-friendly restaurant this week, please let me know.

Doing the Dishes: Paul Freedman on 19th Century American Dining

Paul Freedman, a medieval history professor at Yale, has been not-so-secretly flirting with food history for a few years now. First there was the James Beard-nominated Food: A History of Taste which he edited in 2007. Next came Out of the East (2008), a fascinating (and very readable) history of the medieval spice trade.  And now Freedman has focused his attention on American food history by fastidiously documenting every dish found on thousands of early and mid-19th century hotel menus  (Fifth Avenue Hotel, the American Hotel and others), to understand what people -- at these tonier establishments where menus were printed daily -- were eating when they ate out. Among the surprising results: lots of macaroni.

The fruits of his labor have been published in the March, 2011 issues of both Gastronomica (short version) and the New England Quarterly (long version), and Paul has generously agreed to answer some questions about his latest project for Cooked Books.

Food for Thinkers: A Few Good Menus

When GOOD food editor, Nicola Twilley, called upon various bloggers to discuss food writing, it forced me to stop and think more about the things I choose to write about. Usually it's as simple as finding interesting materials in my day-to-day job as a librarian and wanting to share those stories and objects with others. But on deeper reflection, the books and documents I work with often tap into different way of seeing social history and material culture. For example:

Let’s say you want to try a new restaurant in New York City. There are many ways to find one to your liking.

Perhaps you’ve read about some promising places on a few restaurant blogs, and maybe you scan the Sifty Fifty iPhone application for recommendations from Sam Sifton, the New York Times restaurant critic. Yelp provides helpful user recommendations, Menu Pages allows you to look over the menu in advance, and Open Table is there to put in your reservation.

Isn’t it funny then, that when you finally sit down at the restaurant of your choosing, you’re given a piece of paper.

In a world where one could very easily go through a day reading only off a screen, the restaurant menu may well be one of the few documents regularly and preferably distributed in print. In fact, one could argue that the menu, rather quaintly, is one of the last hold-outs of a thriving print culture. Sure, you can look up the menu online, but most still expect a physical document upon seating.

Chicago Great Western, 1900, NYPL Rare Books Division

Menus are ephemeral. They are used to convey information and when that information is no longer relevant, the item is often disposed of.  The asparagus appetizer in April may not be available in August. The chocolate mousse from October 1st is not offered on October 31st.

However, like many pieces of ephemera, a menu's informational value rarely stems from its original, intended use. And that, for me, is where things get interesting.

At their most basic, menus tell us about a place or event and what was served. But dig a little deeper, and one can often find out how much a dish cost, on what date the meal was served, and who was in attendance.

Dig a little deeper still -- perhaps with the help of old newspapers or a biography -- and wider contexts and connections are made. For example, the 1908 menu below celebrates the accomplishments of Harvey Washington Wiley, the chief chemist for the Department of Agriculture, a crusader for pure food, and the "Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act" of 1906. And while on first glance, the menu resembles many other "testimonial" dinner menus, further study show annotations explaining the chemical make-up of many of the dishes, a clever way of demonstrating the very labeling Wiley campaigned for.

Dinner for H.W. Wiley, 1908, NYPL Rare Books Division

Or that the menu of Restaurant Florent, which resided in what was once a gritty New York neighborhood, advertised a separate children's menu, a gesture hinting at a fast-changing neighborhood and the need to cater to that new clientele. 

Or that when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, his fellow Ohioans at the Gifford House demonstrated their grief by printing a daily bill of fare on black paper.

Gibson House, NYPL Rare Book Division

Or that a popular, "see-and-be-seen" restaurant in New York's West Village has, at its roots, tuna fish salad with a side of potato chips.

Ye Waverly Inn, NYPL Rare Book Division

For historians, graphic designers, food enthusiasts, and chefs, menus are a sometimes overlooked source for inspiration and information, and can provide researchers with valuable insight into our social history in a way few other texts can do. I write about the food and menus and restaurants as a way of seeing the small details of history and celebrating the rich print culture they inhabit. On a very practical level, I am fortunate to have a job which not only allows but encourages exploration and research. The only thing more rewarding than that, is the charge to keep it up and share what I learn.

So, the next time you're sitting at a restaurant -- any restaurant -- look for the potential informational value in the menu. And then order some food. You must hungry by now.

Food for Thinkers is a is a week-long, distributed, online conversation looking at food-writing from as wide and unusual a variety of perspectives as possible. Check it out.