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Before restaurants had printed menus, dishes and prices were written on chalkboards or recited by waiters. It is believed that in 1834, Delmonico’s in New York became the first restaurant in the United States to hand out printed menus. Over the...
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Before restaurants had printed menus, dishes and prices were written on chalkboards or recited by waiters. It is believed that in 1834, Delmonico’s in New York became the first restaurant in the United States to hand out printed menus. Over the course of the 19th century, restaurants began to add more and more options to their menus, making the old chalkboards insufficient and the offerings too numerous to recite. Thus, printed menus became more common. The first menus had direct, uncomplicated, and unadorned designs. However, special events and commemorative celebrations required more extravagant menu design to set the occasion apart. By the turn of the century, everyday menus adopted this full-on frilly Victorian treatment, with fancy fonts, gold-leaf embossing, ribbons, hand-painted imagery, and delicate die-cuts. The rise of Art Nouveau, and particularly the poster as a means of art and advertising, also influenced the look of menus. At the time, dining out was still the domain of the wealthy elite, who could afford to eat at a restaurant instead of making all their meals at home. Around the start of World War I, though, Americans were beginning to move away from farms to urban centers for industrial jobs, and laborers would eat near their place of work. As more and more Americans purchased automobiles, dining at restaurants became more common. Menus grew more important in the 1920s, as printing became more technologically advanced and restaurateurs saw the potential of the menu as a marketing tool. That said, menu covers were so low-budget that well-known poster artists rarely designed them. Menus never created or defined trends in art or design, they simply followed them. Instead, they became a cottage industry for printers. The artwork was either provided by the restaurant (a high-end restaurant might even have its own in-house art department), created by the printer’s art department, or designed collaboratively by the restaurant and the...
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