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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 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.

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.

My grandfather told me that it was deemed time to stop drinking when you couldn't see over the pile of coasters.

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...

The second chapter of the included tour [1] is about celery: "In fact, it's the fourth most common item among the Buttolph Collection menus, after coffee, tea, and olives."

[1] https://pudding.cool/2026/06/menu-story/

Boiled would have included braised -- but there were meats that you grilled, because they were young and tender, and meats that you "boiled" to break down the collagen because they were mature and tough. Nowadays we rarely consume animals of that age, but then they often did so for economic reasons.

> 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.

Good stuff man, thank you!

Thanks! I've made that the top link and put the collection link in the toptext. Could go either way really...

Excellent link, thank you!

Ha! I have a signed (after a talk in undergrad) copy for my mother that I gave to her. I guess my dad didn't want it after she passed away so it survived the fire at his house many years later.

Lots of classic restaurants. Many of which are no longer with us and, to be honest, many of which I wouldn't eat in 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!

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.

That's not the menu, ya silly.

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.)

Yeah I saw cognac and other spirits on a menu in New York for $3.50 in today's prices.

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.

...or are even in the hands of the same family?

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.

I was about to link to the same "What's on the Menu" site, which I remembered being an impressive site for library digitization project years ago, but it was apparently retired in January 2025.

Now [1] redirects to [2], essentially an About page with links to the data.

[1]: https://menus.nypl.org

[2]: https://www.nypl.org/research/support/whats-on-the-menu

[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20241222134751/https://menus.nyp...

Won't be long before we are at this rate.

This might explain my confusion. I went to the inflation calculator to see that $60 scallops in 1917 would be $1700 now and was a bit taken aback.

It makes API requests to api.soot.com (and the rendered page includes a div with id "soot-publication").

The soot site is a bit vague about their product: https://spiral.soot.com/

I've previously encountered a similar product with much clearer marketing and documentation pages called Zegami: https://zegami.com/

you can click through on this site, then on the menu click through to the actual resource

Yeah, god forbid we explore new things as a species.

HN has an 80 character title max length.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677110