The Lark was Southern Pacific’s overnight counterpart to the Coast Daylight, leaving San Francisco and Los Angeles at 9 pm each evening for a 9 am arrival in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Most people have eaten dinner by 9 pm, but this 1944 menu offered “suppers” that had a greater variety than the dinners described in yesterday’s 1944 menu for an unspecified (and presumably secondary) train.
Click image to download a 528-KB PDF of this menu from Bill Hough’s collection.
Among other things, the menu offers a sirloin steak dinner for $2.25 (nearly $32 in today’s money) with tomato soup or clam nector and all the usual trimmings. Other full dinner entrées include ham, broiled or fried chicken, and fresh fish for $1.20 (for the fish) to $1.40 (for the chicken). The a la carte menu is also more extensive, including steak, lamb chops, fish, and various egg dishes along with four sandwiches and a wide variety of side dishes.
Although the front cover of this menu is pretty plain, the back cover has a small drawing of the Mission San Buenaventura and a short description of its history in what is now Ventura. This includes the now politically incorrect comment that the mission fathers used “indolent pagen workmen” to build a seven mile aqueduct to provide irrigation water for their farms.