Just a few months ago, we had a Southern lunch menu with a fruit basket on the cover like this one, but the cover was printed in black and green This one has the addition of a reddish-orange color. It also specifies that it was used aboard Southern’s premiere train, the Crescent.
Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.
The other menu had text on the back referring to Southern’s 1966 accomplishments, indicating that it must have been for 1967 or later. It also had what appears to be a 1970 date code. This one has no date code, but the text on the back refers to 1965 accomplishments. So I’m dating it to 1966.
While the 1970 menu offered chopped beef steak as one of the entrées, this one has filet mignon, perhaps reflecting the status of the Crescent. But everything on this menu is a la carte while the 1970 menu gave a choice of a la carte or table d’hôte. Inflation wasn’t yet a serious problem in the late 1960s and prices for similar items were only slightly higher on the 1970 menu than on this one.