I’ve spent some timely lately digging through the 1930 NYC Dining Guide, an invaluable document for illuminating a time period whose dining mores are now pretty hard to envision, far removed as they are from our current views of what constitutes gourmandizing. An especially archaic section is the one detailing drink recipes, which hearkens back to the rosy days of the cocktail party era, when home bars were routinely well stocked enough to support the construction of everyone’s pet cocktails. Beyond this, the very concept of a dining guide with a drinks section (labeled “What to do Until the Taxi Comes”), serves as an important reminder of Prohibition-era restrictions. While media depicting this time period is rightly obsessed with detailing the cavalier party atmosphere of speakeasies, I imagine there was also a large segment of the populace that felt marginally or less than comfortable with flouting the law, and didn’t routinely frequent these subterranean dens of iniquity. Intended perhaps for this homebody set, the primary purpose of these concoctions is clearly to get readers loaded enough to be able to enjoy a dinner without further need of alcoholic sustenance, aside from a few clandestine nips from a hip flask perhaps.
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Heroes for Sale (William Wellman, 1933)
The bill of fare at 'Dennis's Poor Man's Club', a wholesome boarding-house serving hearty meals to the down and out. Some additional decorative color below: |
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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