News
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Apr 11, 2013
Cool Culinaria's New Photo Souvenir Collection
Read more →It’s easy these days to capture a good night out with friends. All you have to do is use the camera on your smartphone and click! you have a picture that you can keep or post to Facebook. Sixty or seventy years ago, many couples and groups of friends relied on official photographers to record their nights out in restaurants and nightclubs These were not celebrity photographers or paparazzi – they were hired by agencies and their brief was to take photographs of ordinary customers for a dollar or so a time. Armed with a camera and a flash that...
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Apr 10, 2013
The Optimist's Creed 2013
Read more →We’re proud to play our part in keeping The Optimist’s Creed, in the public eye with posters, giclee prints and t-shirts. This cheerful message, created more than 100 years ago, was first published in the New York Sun newspaper in 1904 as 'Twixt optimist and pessimist The difference is droll; The optimist the doughnut sees - The pessimist the hole. In 1929, a restaurant in Charleston, West Virginia, revitalized The Optimist's Creed's wording and message. The Optimist's Creed was displayed in the restaurant's window and written in more contemporary language for the patrons. The targeted audience was customers who drank...
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Mar 04, 2013
In Praise Of Breakfast
Read more →We are big fans of breakfast and we're always on the lookout for really great breakfast menus. The Breakfast Autocrat and The Bismarck Hotel menu covers, both of which feature anthropomorphized eggs, are among our best sellers. The boldly colored Martin Bros. with its egg-yolk yellow background and cock-a-doodling chicken also regularly features in our top ten list list. It’s so cheerful. It makes you want to get going and start the day. Author Seb Emina, who writes a blog about our first meal of the day under his alter ego Malcolm Eggs, has written a great history of...
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Feb 28, 2013
Latest Additions: Alamo Plaza, Shrimp in Shorts and Marine Bar
Read more →Three great new 'creatures' have been added to the always expanding Cool Culinaria collection. A gun-totin' cockerel from Chattanooga's Alamo Plaza; a five-handed 'shrimp in shorts' from a St Regis Restaurant in New Orleans and a fantastic fish from Santa Catalina's Marine Bar. All fantastic examples of great illustration and timeless design. Alamo Plaza Shrimp in Shorts Marine Bar
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Feb 20, 2013
48 Gallons of Coffee per person per year in 1946 to $47.50 Frappuccinos in 2013
Read more →There are a lot of coffee stories in the news today and our favorite is Beau Chevassus’s great video of going into a Starbucks in Washington and ordering the world’s most expensive frappuccino. It costs $47.50. Watch the video here at Boing Boing There’s also an interesting report on MarketWatch which claims that we’re only drinking half the amount of coffee that we did 50 or 60 years ago. In 1946, when America’s thirst for coffee peaked, each of us swallowed about 48 gallons a year on average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture - more than twice current...
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Feb 01, 2013
A Brew, Some Heat, and Maybe a Fish
Read more →In Minnesota, where the winter is long and frozen lakes are everywhere, ice fishing is a hugely popular sport. Anglers have always built their own fish shacks to provide protection from the elements. However, on North Lida Lake, in Otter Tail County, there is a better way. An entrepreneur has constructed The Ice Hole, a fully stocked and heated indoor bar. Here you can hang with your buddies, have a beer with some chili, or even a cocktail while you drop your line through any one of the six fishing holes provided by the host. There are even two additional...
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Jan 25, 2013
Presidents and Their Libations
Read more →Having just witnessed the second inauguration of President Obama, and anticipating the celebration of President’s Day next month, we have become curious about the wines, spirits, and cocktails our elected leaders have embraced since 1776. In no particular order or level of real or rumored sobriety or excess, here are the preferred drinks of some of our notable leaders who imbibed while relaxing, escaping, entertaining, or just maintaining a buzz. George Washington liked his wife’s Rum Punch but we also know he loved his beer and porter which he brewed at his Mt. Vernon estate where he also distilled whiskey....
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Jan 23, 2013
Boiled Withers & Horse Hoof Jelly - The "Banquet Hippophagique" At London's Langham Hotel, 1868
Read more →The Times of London has a wonderful Twitter feed @TimesArchive that digs up weird bits of history from 1785 to the present day. Recently, following the horse meat in burgers scandal that hit UK supermarkets, Rose Wild (Archive Editor of The Times) posted this great cutting from 1868 about a Horse Dinner that was held at London's Langam Hotel - with some of the menu reprinted. As was reported, the menu "was prefaced by a bit of French philosophy - Les préjugés sont des maladies de l'esprit humain." Translation: Prejudices are the human spirit's sickness. We're still trying to find out...
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Jan 22, 2013
100 Year Old Menus Hang On Walls Of Modern Chicago Restaurant
Read more →Here at Cool Culinaria, we've always known that vintage menus are works of art, decorative enough to hang on a wall like any other painting or print. So we were happy to read about Chicago restaurateur Emmanuel Nony who owns some beautiful vintage French menus that had been handed down through generations of his family but which had been languishing in storage for years. A few weeks ago, he decided to dust them off and hang them on the walls of his Michelin-starred French restaurant Sepia. Mr Nony, who was brought up in the French countryside and who had an...
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Jan 19, 2013
An Angel On A Liquor Bottle? It Must Be New Orleans : Glucks, 1938
Read more →A wonderful reminder of the old-time culinary scene in New Orleans, this vintage wine list from Gluck’s shows an angel sitting on a liquor bottle. Dated 1938, there is a comprehensive list of drinks inside from champagnes and wines to cocktails and beers. There were four Gluck's restaurants in New Orleans. This menu is from the main establishment at 124 Royal Street (just along from where the French Quarter Holiday Inn now stands). Open 24 hours, it had a counter section where you could slurp oysters and a 50 foot long bar that was always busy. Proprietor Sam Gluck was...