Here’s the dinner menu Rock Island used at the 1948-1949 Chicago Rail Fair. Dinner was $3, or about $30 in today’s money.
Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.
The entrées included breast of guinea hen (the same hens that donated legs to the lunch menu?), beef mignon, chop grill, and braised veal. These came with soup or fruit cup, appetizer, lobster Newburg, potatoes and vegetables, salad, a choice of seven desserts, and beverage. I suspect this was a more elaborate meal than Rock Island planned to serve on the ill-fated Golden State Rocket.
No, I don’t think the Rock was going to serve this menu in its regular diners. I’ve never seen breast (or legs) of Guinea hen on any regular diner menu before, or Nesselrode pudding, a dish that was time consuming and expensive to make. Of course, the Rock Island doesn’t say that this is a typical diner menu, but they certainly want to leave you with that impression. $3.00 in 1948 is about the same as $31.00 today. We’d sure pay a lot more than that for a complete menu like this today, so this is a pretty good deal.
Regards, Jim