The back of this menu claims that San Francisco is the “flower capital of the world.” Union Pacific featured photos of two different flower stands, including one from the 1950s and one from the 1960s. This 1948 menu shows that Western Pacific beat UP to it with a stylish illustration of a man selling flowers to an elegantly dressed woman.
Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.
According to the back cover, most of the flowers sold in San Francisco were grown in San Mateo and Alameda counties. The menu says that the region ships 1,000 carloads of flowers a year and that the total value of flowers grown in the region is $8 million (about $80 million today). Frankly, this doesn’t sound like much considering that flowers today earn California farmers more than $1 billion a year.
The menu itself had the wide selection typical of menus of that era. Entrées with the table d’hôte meals include sea bass, pork chops, roast duckling, lamb steak, prime rib, and charcoal-broiled sirloin steak. The a la carte side has many of these entrées plus fried chicken, omelettes, and ham & eggs. It also offers a variety of salads including lobster, crab, and shrimp salad, while desserts include orange fritters, pineapple sundae, and green apple pie.
A la carte entrées range from $1.25 for the pork chops to $2.75 for the sirloin steak. Upgrading to table d’hôte adds soup or fruit cocktail, potatoes and vegetables, bread, salad, dessert, and beverage for 75 more cents. Multiply prices by ten to approximate today’s dollars.