Culinary Arts

The Culinary Institute of America’s special collection of over 40,000 historical menus includes menus from CIA restaurants and donations from major menu collectors, including George Lang, Chapman S. Root, Vinnie Oakes, and Roy Andries de Groot. Assembled over decades, the collection illustrates the history of dining in America and abroad, with menus from all of the states and over 80 countries, as well as ships, railroads and airlines.

The collection includes over 7,000 menus that will be digitized and uploaded to the ScholarsArchive@JWU over the coming years. The collection was donated to Johnson & Wales University Library by the National Restaurant Association. Many of the menus featured were part of their menu design contests in the 1980s and 1990s.

A database of menus from Los Angeles, other cities, steamships, airlines and banquets. Images of the actual menus are being added. The address and telephone number of the restaurant is given, plus the menu date, cuisine type, meal, and price range.

Approximately 45,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts. The collection now contains approximately 45,000 items, about quarter of which have so far been digitized and made available in the NYPL Digital Gallery

The Menu Collection of the Northwestern University Transportation Library currently includes more than 400 menus from 54 national and international airline carriers, cruise ships, and railroad companies, with coverage from 1929 to the present. U.S. airlines predominate, but European, Asian, African, Australasian, and South American companies are also represented, with particular strength from the 1960s to the late 1980s. This collection is multi-disciplinary in scope: it touches art, history, economics, sociology, culinary, and transportation topics. Because of its strength in mid- to late-20th century air transportation, the collection presents an invaluable picture of the history of commercial air travel. This collection would be of interest to transportation researchers and historians, culinary historians, sociologists, and travel aficionados.

This website shares a private collection of original menus from banquets hosted by Emperors, Kings and Queens throughout history. The royal menu collection contains menus from the dining tables of royal and imperial courts across the world – most of which passed into history long ago. The oldest menu in the collection is from the King of Hanover in 1845. This website, updated periodically, only contains a sample of the entire collection. The private collector, Jake Smith, retains all copyright of the menu images.

The Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) preserves extensive holdings documenting Louisiana's food and cooking culture, including several thousand menus, restaurant brochures, bar flyers, and other items essential for understanding the cuisine and food industry of our state.
This online collection comprises three parts. Currently available are restaurant menus from the 1930s to the present. LaRC also preserves menus and brochures for hotel restaurants, as well as drink lists and promotional flyers for bars.

The majority of menus selected for this digital project came from the Bohn-Bettoni Collection, which consists of approximately 2000 restaurant menus dating from 1870-1930.

This collection represents menus, placemats, and other graphic materials from many of the Puget Sound area's most famous restaurants and dining facilities in the years between 1889 and 2003. Restaurants in all styles and classes of trade are represented, from lunch counters to first class gourmet fare. Also included in the collection are travel-related menus from ships, railroads, and airplanes. Among the many historical menus in the collection are those from the Space Needle Restaurant, Ivar's Acres of Clams, the Dog House, and cruises aboard the Alaska and Pacific Steam Ship Lines.