Old restaurant "PARIS CAFE 1959" food menu in window

[green papaya]

look at the prices , this was back when you could buy a meal for less than a dollar, but the wages were also probably pretty low.

the menu on the left has Chinese food, and menu on the right has standard American dishes.

 

[belfastboy]

look at the prices , this was back when you could buy a meal for less than a dollar, but the wages were also probably pretty low.

the menu on the left has Chinese food, and menu on the right has standard American dishes.

View attachment 52963

I have a favourite greasy spoon Chineese spot that still has lunch plates for $5.....chow mein etc. My wages are 25 times what they were even in 1969, low level but still in the union.

 

[green papaya]

Haircuts for a dollar in 1967

 

[Fading Fast]

Great pictures.

As each poster has noted, while dramatic on the surface, it is all relative - how did wages / income compare to those costs? While wages have, by many measures, stagnated nationally since about '00, from WWII until then - despite rising prices - living standards across income classes increased.

Now, before fire and brimstone is rained down on me, I know there are many, many, many examples (and some in my family and friends) of individuals and communities that did not experience those relative improvements and, in fact, went backwards. But, as a country as a whole (which is a measure not a opinion), living standards rose in the time period referenced.

That said, when I see those old prices, I too get sucked into the "life was cheaper / better / easier / fairer" reverie until I remind myself of the facts not the emotions. Even my father, who fully understood the "relative" measure logic, went to his grave in '90 grumbling about there no longer being "a 5 cent candy bar."

 

[emigran]

Great pictures.

As each poster has noted, while dramatic on the surface, it is all relative - how did wages / income compare to those costs? While wages have, by many measures, stagnated nationally since about '00, from WWII until then - despite rising prices - living standards across income classes increased.

Now, before fire and brimstone is rained down on me, I know there are many, many, many examples (and some in my family and friends) of individuals and communities that did not experience those relative improvements and, in fact, went backwards. But, as a country as a whole (which is a measure not a opinion), living standards rose in the time period referenced.

That said, when I see those old prices, I too get sucked into the "life was cheaper / better / easier / fairer" reverie until I remind myself of the facts not the emotions. Even my father, who fully understood the "relative" measure logic, went to his grave in '90 grumbling about there no longer being "a 5 cent candy bar."

One of my Dad's ( he would be 99 today) favorite sayings was..."That... and 5cents will get you a pack of gum..."

 

[LizzieMaine]

This thread reminds me of an old menu I came across recently, from "The Brass Rail," a popular New York middlebrow restaurant of the Era. It's dated Saturday, September 11, 1943, and carries the following important notice at the top:

"ALL PRICES ARE OUR CEILING PROCES OR BELOW. BY OPA REGULATION OUR CEILINGS ARE BASED ON OUR HIGHEST PRICES FROM APRIL 4-10, 1943. OUR MENUS OR PRICE LISTS FOR THAT WEEK ARE AVAILABLE FOR YOUR INSPECTION."

That note is followed by this one, printed in red:

"MEAT AND OTHER RATIONED ITEMS ON THIS MENU ARE SERVED WHENEVER AVAILABLE within the limitations imposed by our full cooperation with Government regulations. We endeavor to have a representative selection at all times, but if we are temporarily out of your choice please accept an alternate in the same spirit in which it is offered."

The menu itself is a good look at what mainstream American food was like in the Era. The "Brass Rail Specialities" include sauteed calf's liver with fresh garden peas and Lyonnaise potatoes (sort of like home fries, to us proles) at $1.25, Maryland Fried Chicken with corn fritter, peas and carrots, and candied sweet potato at $1.24, a milk-fed breaded veal cutlet with tomato sauce and spaghetti at $1.45, "Our Famous Corned Beef" with new green cabbage and boiled potato at $1.35, baked Virginia Ham steak Southern Style with Hawaiian pineapple and candied sweet potato, at $1.45, and "Our Famous Roast Prime Ribs of Beef" with natural beef pan gravy and baked Idaho potato at $1.50. Special for the day is the Seafood combination, featuring a half-cold Boiled Portland Lobster with jumbo shrimps, crabmeat, celery, and Russian dressing, at $1.35.

If those don't appeal, you can get a whole broiled Long Island flounder with string beans and mashed potatoes at 75 cents, a grilled young Jersey pork chop with peas and candied sweet potato at ninety cents, a breaded milk-fed veal chop with french fries at $1, Chopped Sirloin Steak (Hamburger, Brass Rail Quality) smothered in onions with French Fries at $1.10, a charcoal broiled tenderloin steak with fresh broiled mushrooms and minute potatoes at $2.25, a whole broiled Live Maine Lobster with french fries and drawn butter for $1.50, or if you're ready to shoot the works, filet mignon on toast "en casserole," served with fresh mushrooms, french fries, and assorted fresh vegetables at $2.45.

If you just want a sandwich, the Famous Brass Rail Roast Beef Sandwich and french fries will cost you fifty cents. A "Cheese Dream," which is an open-face toasted cheese sandwich with bacon is sixty-five cents, as is the "Tongue Temptation," consisting of beef tongue, tomato and "Indian relish. Eighty five cents gets you the Tavern Club sandwich, three layers made with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and Russian dressing. Ninety cents brings the Brass Rail Special, consisting of turkey, swiss cheese, ham, and cole slaw. And for a buck fifteen, you get a Hot Turkey Sandwich including mushroom gravy, compote of cranberries and candied sweet potato.

Candied sweet potatoes weren't rationed, in case you hadn't guessed.

For dessert a slab of Our Famous Coconut Custard Pie is 30 cents, your choice of Assorted French Pastry will cost you a quarter, as will a dish of Jell-O with whipped cream, a dish of ice cream, a dish of rice or tapioca pudding, or a slab of chilled watermelon.

Beverages are limited to one cup per customer, and include a cup of coffee, tea, or Postum for ten cents, Sanka, Hot Chocolate, Iced Tea, Iced Coffee, or Iced Chocolate for fifteen cents, or milk or buttermilk for a dime.

And if you just want to nibble, Welsh Rabbit with crackers will cost you 75 cents, and Roqueford, Camembert, Liederkranz cheese with crackers is 35 cents.

For a comparison, wages during the war were frozen by the War Labor Board, but in the last years before the war, an ordinary American factory worker or common white-collar clerk might expect to make about $30-$35 a week, so a meal at such a restaurant as the Brass Rail would be a special occasion treat only. More often you'd eat at a cheap lunch room, a punch-card cafeteria, or a hamburger stand.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Lizzie, except for the abundance of New England seafood, that was the menu of Middle America before Julia Child seized America by the throat and forced us to regard European (especially French) cuisine. You'd have found that menu (minus the fish) at any restaurant in Kansas City, Dallas, Los Angeles (with different fish) Tuscon or St. Louis. Americans didn't get adventurous about food until well into the postwar period. It's still our favorite. I've read that when the great chefs get together they play a game called "last supper." Each chef tells what he/she would have if they knew it was their last meal. Invariably, it's stuff like pot roast, fried chicken, hamburgers, spaghetti and meatballs, in fact, anything but the fancy-schmancy stuff they push on the public. For me it would be fried chicken, but not just any fried chicken. It would have to be fried chicken as it was served in Schensul's cafeteria in Kalamazoo, MI in 1959-63. Failing that, fried chicken from Youngblood's in Richardson (or other Texas locations) in the mid-60s. This was the Platonic fried chicken - fried chicken as it only exists in the mind of God. Fried chicken is a theological subject to me.

 

[green papaya]

Fried chicken dinners was my favorite foods growing up, my mother always made it on my birthday.

 

[Talbot]

Haircuts for a dollar in 1967

View attachment 52971

I remember getting my haircut in '67.

A few guys sitting around watching haircuts, the smell of brilliantine, and race results on the radio.
No wall art though, I'm sure I would have noticed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lizzie, except for the abundance of New England seafood, that was the menu of Middle America before Julia Child seized America by the throat and forced us to regard European (especially French) cuisine. You'd have found that menu (minus the fish) at any restaurant in Kansas City, Dallas, Los Angeles (with different fish) Tuscon or St. Louis. Americans didn't get adventurous about food until well into the postwar period. It's still our favorite. I've read that when the great chefs get together they play a game called "last supper." Each chef tells what he/she would have if they knew it was their last meal. Invariably, it's stuff like pot roast, fried chicken, hamburgers, spaghetti and meatballs, in fact, anything but the fancy-schmancy stuff they push on the public. For me it would be fried chicken, but not just any fried chicken. It would have to be fried chicken as it was served in Schensul's cafeteria in Kalamazoo, MI in 1959-63. Failing that, fried chicken from Youngblood's in Richardson (or other Texas locations) in the mid-60s. This was the Platonic fried chicken - fried chicken as it only exists in the mind of God. Fried chicken is a theological subject to me.

This was all pretty much what we considered default food -- we ate lots of fish given our location, and not a lot of steak, but chops and casseroles and such things were common. One thing that strikes me whenever I look at old menus from the Era is the immense popularity of breaded veal chops or cutlets in tomato sauce. Every menu from every restaurant I've come across, whether a swanky hotel dining room or a one-arm lunch room, has featured a breaded veal chop or cutlet served with tomato sauce. This was one of my favorite suppers once upon a time, but you never see it anymore outside of maybe a higher-end Italian place, in the guise of "veal parmigiana." We never called it any kind of a fancy name, it was just a veal cutlet dredged in bread crumbs, fried in a skillet, and covered in canned tomato sauce, but it was filling and satisfying.

Another thing I find refreshing about old menus is the utter absence of marketing-driven chef-speak. None of this "fire-roasted vegetable medley drizzled with ghee" stuff.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Fried chicken dinners was my favorite foods growing up, my mother always made it on my birthday.

Our favorite birthday meals is a topic unto itself, but this was always my favorite, and my mother still makes it for me when she can. She laughs and says "if that's what you want, I'll make it":

 

[Fading Fast]

This was all pretty much what we considered default food -- we ate lots of fish given our location, and not a lot of steak, but chops and casseroles and such things were common. One thing that strikes me whenever I look at old menus from the Era is the immense popularity of breaded veal chops or cutlets in tomato sauce. Every menu from every restaurant I've come across, whether a swanky hotel dining room or a one-arm lunch room, has featured a breaded veal chop or cutlet served with tomato sauce. This was one of my favorite suppers once upon a time, but you never see it anymore outside of maybe a higher-end Italian place, in the guise of "veal parmigiana." We never called it any kind of a fancy name, it was just a veal cutlet dredged in bread crumbs, fried in a skillet, and covered in canned tomato sauce, but it was filling and satisfying.

Another thing I find refreshing about old menus is the utter absence of marketing-driven chef-speak. None of this "fire-roasted vegetable medley drizzled with ghee" stuff.

The thing that I always notice is liver is on many menus of the era (from not fancy to fancy) - now, that is not something you see much of today at all and, IMHO, thank God.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hated liver, even though I liked the smell of it cooking, but I love heart. I enjoy organ meats on the basis of function.

 

[Fading Fast]

I hated liver, even though I liked the smell of it cooking, but I love heart. I enjoy organ meats on the basis of function.

I believe everyone is entitled to have a handful of foods they not only won't eat, but don't even want to see within a three mile radius of them and organ meats are one of those for me.

 

[green papaya]

I hated liver, even though I liked the smell of it cooking, but I love heart. I enjoy organ meats on the basis of function.

I used to eat cow brains often when I was a kid, it had a unique texture and flavor , I dont see it much these days at the grocery stores, possibly because of the mad cow's disease.

we also had cow's tongue, cow's stomach [tripe] , pig's intestine [chitlins] pig's feet, pig's snouts, pig's tails, ears, blood, nothing was wasted.

I also remember having a roasted cow's head

Head Cheese lunch meat was also very popular for making sandwiches [a loaf made from the meat of a pig's head]

 

[LizzieMaine]

Head cheese was sold here under the name of "Souse Loaf," which is even more hilarious if you imagine it being ordered by W. C. Fields. "That's Sou-zay, with the accent grave over the 'e''!"

 

[dh66]

Head cheese was sold here under the name of "Souse Loaf," which is even more hilarious if you imagine it being ordered by W. C. Fields. "That's Sou-zay, with the accent grave over the 'e''!"

Down here it's referred to simply as 'souse' or 'souse meat' and is widely available and still fairly popular as a lunch meat option. It is usually fairly spicy, and..... along with some saltines and a six pack..... is a fairly standard fishing trip repast. It is generally considered an upgrade from viennas (pronounce to rhyme with hyenas) or potted meat.

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[HudsonHawk]

Down here it's referred to simply as 'souse' or 'souse meat' and is widely available and still fairly popular as a lunch meat option. It is usually fairly spicy, and..... along with some saltines and a six pack..... is a fairly standard fishing trip repast. It is generally considered an upgrade from viennas (pronounce to rhyme with hyenas) or potted meat.

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Viennas and saltines...maybe an RC and a Moon Pie...that's high cotton, right there.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Head cheese was sold here under the name of "Souse Loaf," which is even more hilarious if you imagine it being ordered by W. C. Fields. "That's Sou-zay, with the accent grave over the 'e''!"

Reminds me of the hospital security gigs that I worked to support myself through school. I'd always be reminding others that I was a security officer... not a "guard." "A guard is someone like Eggbert Souse' in The Bank Dick...," I'd lecture them. Pedantic, but it got the point across.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Evidently... a real place in Oakland, CA.