1960 City of San Francisco Menu

We’ve seen this menu cover before in Lee Paper Company’s book showing off Corinthian paper by reprinting 18 Union Pacific menu covers. In this case, the cover was used as as City of San Francisco dinner menu.


Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

The menu is fairly extensive, with the table d’hôte side offering a charcoal broiled steak dinner (it doesn’t say what kind of steak, but it must be sirloin as the a la carte side has a sirloin steak), mushroom omelette, brook trout, chicken sauté financiere (meaning mushroom or truffle sauce), and prime rib. The steak, trout, and omelet are also on the a la carte side, along with lamb chops, broiled or fried chicken, shrimp sauté, “other fresh fish,” and a ham-and-chicken salad bowl (probably what earlier menus called the “chef’s special salad”).

The a la carte side also has a club sandwich, a couple of other salads, and at least seven desserts, all but one of which are different from the dessert choices on the table d’hôte side. Among the desserts are pear cardinal, which seems to be poached pears with a raspberry puree, and diplomat pudding, which seems to be a fruity bread pudding.

One curiosity is that the table d’hôte brook trout is $1.65 more than the a la carte brook trout, but the table d’hôte omelet is $2.10 more. The table d’hôte steak is $1.50 more than a la carte, but unlike the other table d’hôte entrées the steak doesn’t come with a vegetable or dessert. Multiply prices by a bit more than 6 to convert to today’s dollars.


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