Today we have three more menus contributed by Streamliner Memories reader Laurie Powers. First is what looks like a breakfast menu from the “Steamer Restaurant Service” of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. I suspect “steamer” has more to do with the method of preparing foods than steam locomotives. I don’t know of any Steamer Restaurants, but I suspect this menu is from a station restaurant rather than a dining car.
Click image to download a 240-KB PDF of this menu.
The menu is undated, but all of Ms. Powers’ other menus from the the 1910s, so I presume it is from that era. At that time, the Northwestern Pacific was half owned by Southern Pacific and half by Santa Fe, but Santa Fe eventually sold out its interest to SP.
Next is a breakfast menu from the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. There’s almost no railroad content in this item except that the steamship company once owned the Pacific Coast Railway, a narrow-gauge railroad that once went from Pismo Beach (near San Luis Obispo) to Los Olivos, an agricultural area east of Santa Barbara.
Click image to download a 116-KB PDF of this menu.
Finally, a dinner menu from the same steamship line and quite possibly the same steamship trip. Both are dated 1916. Although they look the same size as shown here, the dinner menu is slightly larger than the breakfast menu.
Click image to download a 117-KB PDF of this menu.
Some of the items on the breakfast menu are “fresh barracuda” and “Chicken Jambalaya, Mexican.” I usually think of jambalaya as a Creole dish, but apparently it had a heavy Spanish influence as well. The Steamer Restaurant menu also offered enchiladas, but the Pacific Coast dinner menu consists mainly of standard American foods.
The Northwestern Pacific operated a fleet of steam-powered ferryboats across San Francisco Bay until 1941, and those were referred to as Steamers in the company’s printed material. The first menu is almost certainly from the dining room on one of those ships.
Thanks for the clarification!