Have you ever ordered food from hotel room service and were shocked when your clubhouse and coffee came to $30? Well, it looks like steep room service prices aren’t a recent phenomenon.
Take this 1962 menu from the historic CP Empress Hotel in Victoria. Billed as a typical winter menu for the hotel dining room, it includes contemporary delicacies such as Jellied Beef Tea and Chantilly Raisin Pie. It also lists broiled petit filet mignon with béarnaise sauce for $3.25 – according to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, the cost today would be $24.94.
The convenience of ordering a filet mignon with béarnaise sauce to be delivered to your room – perhaps while enjoying a nice martini – is tempting. According to the Empress’ room service menu from the same time period, the same filet will set you back $8.50. Or, $61.66 in today’s prices. Although the room service filet does come with sautéed mushrooms. Perhaps mushrooms were extraordinarily expensive in the 1960’s?
If we move over to the mainland, an earlier (1939) room service dinner menu from the Hotel Vancouver has filet mignon for $1.30 – that’s $20.97 in 2012 prices, 19% less than the adjusted cost of the 1962 dining room filet. Why so much cheaper – the local economy? Food costs? The fact that béarnaise sauce wasn’t offered in 1939?
But if $1.30 was still too much for you back then, never fear. Cheaper options were also available, like a tongue sandwich for 45¢ ($7.22 today). Or a salad of “avocado with shrimps” (shrimps! more than one!) for 85¢ ($13.64 today).
These menus are part of the Chung Collection‘s Canadian Pacific materials that are currently being digitized thanks to support from CP, and will soon be available online.