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!
In Málaga, Andalusia, Spain there is churinguito (a seafood place next to the beach) that doesn't really have a menu after 9pm. Waiters just walk in the dining area with a plate in hand and yell the name of the fish/seafood for peoole to ask for it. Each fish has a different kind of plate with a different price. When you ask for the bill, they just do the sum according to the plates left on the table.
They had to cement the dining area because people used to bury the plates in the beach sand.
> 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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it depends on which you look at. Some of them seemed cheep, others seemed pricey, which was likely correlated with other aspects (how posh/swank the restaurant, how "captured" the clientele, etc.)
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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...
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.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierdeckel#Urkundencharakter (in German, English wiki doesn't have this info)
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!
In Brazil they have a little pad they leave on the table next to the napkins
In Málaga, Andalusia, Spain there is churinguito (a seafood place next to the beach) that doesn't really have a menu after 9pm. Waiters just walk in the dining area with a plate in hand and yell the name of the fish/seafood for peoole to ask for it. Each fish has a different kind of plate with a different price. When you ask for the bill, they just do the sum according to the plates left on the table.
They had to cement the dining area because people used to bury the plates in the beach sand.
Also in Spain, specially in the Basque country, you pick pintxos from the counter and at the end they just count the "skewers" left on the plate.
> 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.
All over Germany, and it's been around much much longer than the fear of having something slipped in your drink.
To be fair, in the summer you need to make sure the wasps don’t slip themselves into your drink.
In the Netherlands that person would be considered an eetpiraat (food pirate) or flessentrekker (bottle puller). Those are terms used in court.
https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/resultaat?zoekterm=Flessen...
https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/resultaat?zoekterm=Eetpira...
Very cool. Recommend walking through the curated story here
https://pudding.cool/2026/06/menu-story/
Related, in a sense: "Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26210774
Old menus are weirdly fascinating. They feel like tiny snapshots of daily life.
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.
> 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).
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.
5k Restaurant Menus, Years 2020-2026: [qr code][qr code][qr code][qr code]
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.
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...
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.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Old%2BStandard%2BTT
I was curious how these were made back then and what modern fonts might look best.
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.
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.
It crashed my browser twice on mobile, so I just gave up.
Interesting, these really old menus would not look too out of place at a restaurant today.
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.
The first menu I opened had tongue sandwiches and hot beef tea.
So some things have definitely changed!
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.
Any respectable city will have a burrito joint somewhere with lengua on the menu.
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.
I'm in Europe and never seen a "just has a QR code" menu
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.
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
What nonsense. QR codes exist but seem quite rare around here, it's definitely almost all proper menus.
Interesting how little some things have changed.
The prices, on the other hand, seem quite cheap--even after converting to 2026 dollars.
I think it depends on which you look at. Some of them seemed cheep, others seemed pricey, which was likely correlated with other aspects (how posh/swank the restaurant, how "captured" the clientele, etc.)
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.
I absolutely love the data viz on this website, so freaking cool
would be nice to be able to link to an individual menu.
cool collection, just harder to share some specific ones with friends.
This is such an interesting site. And is exactly the kind of curious content which I love seeing.
Does anybody have a direct link about the archive they are talking about? I'm having trouble navigating the site tbh.
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.
...or are even in the hands of the same family?
Not loading for me, empty page (Brave/Windows)
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.)
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.
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...
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.
Yes, oysters used to be extremely cheap and popular (and nutritious); that's probably the main reason.
It was very slow; I struggled with it.
Very cool site, but I had to leave when my mac laptop started burning my thighs...
dupe (kinda), Yesterday, 9 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674244
I'd be curious to know what software they are using to display the graph.
So cool
The ice cream flavors are more meaningful those days. Nowadays they have every possible combinations like the weird "green chilly ice creams"
I see everything is CENTS! I was like what on earth who is paying $250 for a ham sandwich???
Did you have to submit the title changing 5000 to “5k” ? Saving two characters is that important?
HN has an 80 character title max length.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677110