“Dining Out: Menus, Chefs, Restaurants, Hotels & Guidebooks” opened last Thursday at the Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan.

Besides display cases with menus from every state, the exhibit’s hanging panels feature distinguished chefs and their restaurants, collections of menus and memorabilia from Ann Arbor restaurants, and documents from the California food revolution, especially Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant where Jeremiah Tower was a chef. Also there are menus from famous New York restaurants, menus from railroad dining cars and ocean liners, books about menu design, and many other fascinating themes.

Alabama (The Jefferson Davis Hotel) to Wyoming (Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone Park) — there’s a menu from every state.

The panel titled “Around America,” suggests the types of eating places represented in the collection: “Restaurants, diners, drive-ins, carts, lunch rooms, coffee houses, tea rooms, delicatessens, cafes, soda fountains, bistros, cafeterias, trattorias, fast-food, fast-casual, chains, clambakes, barbecues, department stores, dormitories, hospitals, prisons, spas, bars, taverns, saloons, and more.”

A Michelin Man from the guidebook panel: “Dining Out and Sleeping In”
Material from “Conserving Catalan Cuisine.”

Exhibit organizer is Jan Longone, adjunct curator of culinary history at the library. Documents on display include many that she had donated from her extensive collections, now in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA). Two display panels based on her donations are titled “Conserving Catalan Cuisine.” These describe Jan and her husband Dan’s experiences at El Motel Hotel and Restaurant in Figueres, Spain, and particularly photos and other items from the restaurant’s 50th anniversary gala in 2011. Jan and Dan enjoyed “local, traditional, and seasonal foods” prepared from game, fresh fish, wild mushrooms and more by three generations of a family of restaurateurs. Salvator Dali, a patron of the restaurant, designed several of the menus on display.

“Dining Out: Menus, Chefs, Restaurants, Hotels & Guidebooks,” runs from August 20 through December 17, 2015, at the Clark Library on the second floor of Hatcher Graduate library. A related lecture by Jan Longone takes place on November 12.


Panoramic view of the display case at the beginning of the exhibit.