Liverpool cafe finds menu from 1913 during refurb

bbc ^

[ConservativeInPA]

Menu reads like it is straight out of Escoffier’s cookbook.

[Red Badger]

Well, nowadays it’s artificial Irishmen...........

[moehoward]

I’ll have the herring melt.

[mylife]

thanks

[bgill]

Back then, a loaf of bread in the US was something like nine cents.

See what happens when you raise the minimum wage.

[bigbob]

I’ll have a piece without too much rat in it

[mylife]

smelt melt...

[Steely Tom]

See what happens when you raise the minimum wage.

And float your currency off the gold standard.

Back then I believe that gold was $35/oz.

[hanamizu]

“d” means “pence,” I think

---

The ‘d’ still lives on with our nail sizes...
The ‘/’stands for shilling. 12 d to the /; 20/ to the £.
At the time the £ was worth close to $5 so a shilling was worth about 25¢ to get an idea of the prices back then.

[SkyDancer]

If I'm not mistaken but a lot of those dishes looked like a Pound or more which was a lot of money back then.

£1 pound in 1913 equals £118.36 pounds today.

Unless that 1/ is a shilling or less which equates to 1/20th of a £.

Then too, I could be all messed up on this.

[Steely Tom]

Kinda like nail sizes.

Interesting.

[Mariner]

It could be a successful menu today.

In Britain.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Yes, it does. It stood for denarius. “Penny” is still a standard of measure used for nails in the US, abbreviated as “d”.

[mylife]

I want chump chops!!

[Steely Tom]

Perhaps restaurant dining was much more expensive back then than it is today. Perhaps it was only an upper-class thing, and members of the lower classes simply couldn’t do it.

[SkyDancer]

True that, but a 118 pound meal where the average wage was almost that per year and only for professionals like engineers - would have needed a lot of people with salaries higher than that. I bet it was shillings not Pounds.

[Mariner]

“Perhaps it was only an upper-class thing, and members of the lower classes simply couldn’t do it.”

A sit down restaurant today is out of reach for the majority in the US. At least if it has steak on the menu.

And I’m not talking about Fridays or Dennys.

Expect to spend at least $80 for two, without wine.

I once spent $250 at Mortons for two with wine. Of course it was a very good meal.

But it was one I could have replicated at home for about $100.

[mylife]

re chump chops: I had a good source of lamb in Tx and this is the bomb, emulsify olive oil, Dijon mustard, cracked black pepper, crushed garlic and finely chopped rosemary

marinate the lamb in that and cook med rare

[Steely Tom]

So "Fried or Grilled River Sole -- 1/4" meant 1 shilling 4 pence? That would be... let's see... 0.0667 pound, which times £118.36 would be... £7.89 (decimal) of today's £.

A £ today is worth about $1.40, so that's about $11, which is actually a pretty good price for a decent fish dinner I suppose, maybe even a little low. But this menu is for something like a lunch counter, so that's pretty much comparable.

[Steely Tom]

A sit down restaurant today is out of reach for the majority in the US. At least if it has steak on the menu.

Oh yes, I agree. $80 for two would be for a restaurant just one click about Denny's, I think. There's a "nice" restaurant in a hoity-toity college town near me where its more like $120 for two.