Although the graphic on the top of this menu looks like a Hawaiian beach scene, the fine print on the bottom (not to mention the totem pole) indicates it was used in Alaska service. It is dated 9-47, but it came with the same bundle of menus that are dated June 1948, so I presume it was collected on that same trip.
Click image to download a 639-KB PDF of this menu.
Among the items on the menu are “fresh fish in season (see special slip).” The special slip offered grapefruit, prunes, smoked salmon, and fried hoolichans. I’ve never heard of hoolichans, and neither, apparently, has anyone else on the World Wide Web. If you know what they are, feel free to let us know.
Update: A Streamliner Memories reader from Japan tells me that hoolichan probably refers to small, silver fish sometimes called hooligan and sometimes eulachon, an alternate name for which is oolichan. In Japan a related fish is called wakasagi.
There is a similar fish in Oregon that the locals call smelt or candlefish, which the natives called ooligan. No one knows where the name “Oregon” came from, but one theory is that it is a variation on the word ooligan.
I think “fried hoolichans” are smelt. I’m finding recipes for “fried hooligans” that say the Native name is “eulachons”.
https://www.food.com/recipe/marinated-hooligan-fry-aka-smelt-or-eulachon-426897
Love the site.