Yesterday, the school's Food Service & Hospitality Education Department became the recipient of 40 pounds of menus, collected over 50 years by Harriet "Rusty" Thomas, a former Star-Bulletin food editor. KCC will preserve the menus for student reference.
Thomas isn't sure exactly how many menus are in her collection, but she knows how heavy they are, having lugged them around for so many years in shopping bags.
In that shopping bag are menus from Michel's at the Colony Surf, where Beef Stroganoff once cost $9 and Cherries Jubilee, $2.50. At a restaurant called Barefeets, Braised Oxtails with soup or salad, a choice of starch, dessert and a drink would set a person back $2.50.
The menus date from 1946, when Thomas recalls, "I had gotten off the Lurline and the very next night someone invited me to Trader Vic's."
She still names Trader Vic's, once located at the TGIFridays site, as one of her old favorites.
Ever aware of the competition between restaurants, she won't name current favorites, preferring to name the great ones that slipped away, such as the Willows and Canlis Broiler.
It was a little easier for restaurants to make an impression in the past. Thomas said, "There weren't too many back then. It's different now. Every day there are new menus, new chefs, new owners."