# How were you meant to order off this kind of 19th century menu?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** food-cooking\
**Created:** [July 7, 2022, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536 "2022-07-07T07:24:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 6

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![salinqmind1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2022, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536/101 "2022-07-09T15:52:17Z")

</div>

I daresay women of the day strapped into corsets would probably take a few tiny bites, mostly playing at eating while being attractive sparkling conversationalists.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2022, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536/102 "2022-07-09T16:17:08Z")

</div>

> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#):
>
> Unescorted ladies not allowed in a restaurant was a common rule. Poop.

Hold the poop! In 1868, a group of women held a lunch without men at Delmonico’s, and it became a meeting place for a women’s club called Sorosis (meaning sister)

> [@](#):
>
> Before the groundbreaking event could happen, Croly had to ask the restaurant’s proprietor, Lorenzo Delmonico, to break social expectations and permit the ladies to lunch. “The [Delmonico] brothers were progressive in their thinking from the start,” the restaurant’s special events director Carin Sarafian said in a phone interview. Beyond hosting the first public meal where women were permitted to dine without men, Delmonico’s was one of the first restaurant’s to employ a female cashier, Sarafian said.

They also had their own farm to provide fresh produce.

> [@](#):
>
> The restaurant was among the first to introduce farm-to-table dining in the United States. Originally from Switzerland, the Delmonico family was used to an accessible array of fresh produce. The fruit and vegetable scene in New York was not up to snuff, so they purchased a plot of land now located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they started their own farm. “They were able to serve things that weren’t yet available in the U.S. — like avocados and eggplant,” Sarafian said.

The same cite includes another early Delmonico menu (I can only manage to post a thumbnail picture)  
[![](https://pasteboard.co/rEz1VyahVVjw.webp) ](https://pasteboard.co/rEz1VyahVVjw.webp)

> **[150 years ago, a group of women fought the patriarchy by eating lunch at this...](https://www.mic.com/articles/188958/150-years-ago-a-group-of-women-fought-the-patriarchy-by-eating-lunch-at-this-nyc-restaurant-delmonicos)**
>
> Before one fateful day in the spring of 1868, the kind of woman who’d dare to dine in public without the accompaniment of a man was widely assumed to be a sex worker. But on April 20, 1868, journalist Jane Cunningham Croly, who was tired of being…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536/103 "2022-07-10T04:17:28Z")

</div>

Avocados? They weren’t growing thoseIn Brooklyn.

(Eggplants grow nicely in that climate, though.)

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-you-meant-to-order-off-this-kind-of-19th-century-menu/967536.md?page=5)