Take a Look at Gage & Tollner's 1964 Menu
A reader, prompted by my recent bemoaning of the state of the old Gage & Tollner building, recently sent me images of the famous restaurant's 1964 menu. He found them reprinted inside a copy of Vincent and Mary Price's famous book "A Treasury of Great Recipes."
Note the guide to the signifying emblems the waiters wore. And the incredibly rich array of seafood options. The mutton chop! The Lobster Thermidor and Lobster Newberg! A whole section devoted to toast! The Stirred Eggs Dewey! Four kinds of Welsh Rarebit! I didn't know there was more than one. Long Island Rarebit? What could it be?
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4 comments:
Four kinds of rarebit is nothing. On pre-WWI menus, you can find at least 10 variations of rarebits, bucks, and their ilk.
If I had a time machine I'd surely order the whale steak. Hey, it comes with onion rings.
Maybe of interest to you: I recently discovered via a blog post from NPR's Planet Money that the New York Public Library has an archival menu collection. There's some pretty cool stuff there, including a menu from the Brighton Beach Hotel from 1906.
My dad (Thomas L. Waters) managed the restaurant from the early 1960's till the N.Y. Worlds Fair opened when he went to manage restaurants for the Brass Rail Corporation at the fairgrounds.
We were good friends with owner Tom Dewey and his wife Helen, and they had two sons--Christopher and Scotty (Schotchipher as his dad use to call him). In fact, we all stayed at their house for several days when my mom delivered our eighth sibling in 1963. I believe Tom Dewey's brother 'Ed' was a silent partner as I never met him. I can recall a private Christmas dinner party that we all had inside the restaurant. I've still got a photo almost identical to the one shown up against the mirrored wall....gas-lights hanging from the ceilings.
The Dewey's (Tom & Helen) moved out to California probably sometime around 1965 and we lost contact with them. Our family moved to Florida in 1966. Dad died in 2003 and Mom (Rosalie) is alive and just returned from a trip to NYC. She's 88.
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