The digital Chung Collection features a lot of really fascinating material, but unfortunately the collection is so large we haven’t finished making everything in it available online. If you’re interested in any of the material in the Chung Collection (Early BC History, Immigration and Settlement, and the Canada Pacific Railway) you should try to make time to visit the collection exhibit in UBC Rare Books and Special Collections.

This week a display of various menus opened as part of the Chung Collection Exhibition room. I decided to check if we had scanned any menus, and found a few neat ones.

The first is the menu from the W.K. Oriental Gardens, and it features both awesome colour and a really cool shape! There’s a handwritten date on the cover saying it’s from 1936, and the prices inside seem to back that up: the most expensive item is a T-Bone Steak at $1.50.

Next is the menu from the Mandarin Garden Cabaret. This one is apparently from 1920, and I’m showing it off for the notice on the second page. It includes a number of rules including “Soliciting Dancing Partners from another table is absolutely forbidden.”.

We also have some menus in the R. Mathinson Printing Collection, such as this one from The Hub Dining Room in 1887. Back then a steak was only 50 cents, making the price at W.K. Oriental Gardens seem positively obscene in comparison.

Of course, one of the best things about looking at these old menus was discovering what Postum was (a coffee alternative), and the existence of their mascot: Mr. Coffee Nerves.

There are a few more menus in our online collections, but if you’re interested you should definitely check out the display in the Chung Collection!