There was an episode of Downton Abbey in which there was a problem with the formal suit owned by Robert Crawley, the earl who owned the title house, so that he instead wore a tuxedo to dinner. His mother the Dowager Countess, practically fainted and said something about coming to dinner in his pajamas. And this was for a regular dinner at home with just family present. That’s how formally people dressed at the time.
Sorry about that. I was able to read the whole thing for some reason, but not a second time.
Basically, what we’ve read about him for years is neither substantiated by documentation nor supported by medical fact:
“No one came close to Diamond Jim. A typical feeding would be two or three dozen large oysters, half a dozen crabs, two bowls of turtle soup, six or seven lobsters, two whole ducks, a steak and half a dozen venison chops. Dessert was a pound or two of chocolates. Everything was washed down with gallons of orange juice.”
Here is a gift link to that article about Diamond Jim Brady.
Thanks!
Well, rich people, or people keeping up the appearance of rich. Your coal miners, textile workers, domestic servants, agricultural labourers, etc., not so much
No, that’s right. You wouldn’t wear the same type of suit you wore during the day.
Fast forward 68 years to Baltimore, and peruse these two pages from the menu of Haussner’s, the greatest restaurant of my youth. These are the seafood and entree pages for one day in February 1967.
(Click to see the full images.)
By my count, there are nearly 100 entrees on those two pages (note that they actually had to type a few entries sideways to fit them on the page), and this doesn’t include their standard offerings on the permanent printed menus glimpsed under the daily pages. Or sandwiches. Or their extensive list of pies, cakes, pastries, and other desserts.
My family went there often when I was a child, and I regret I did not go there more frequently as an adult before it closed in 1999. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Sadly, the wiki entry does not do justice to the unbelievable experience that was Haussner’s Restaurant.
You would wear the American style of formal dress. A Google Image search for Delmonico’s 1899 brings up a number of images, with the men similarly dressed.
Except for formal banquets for men’s groups, all those pictures include women. Since corsets were standard in that era, I don’t think women could physically eat 14-course dinners of full plates. Expectations were different.
An entremet or entremets (/ˈɑːntrəmeɪ/; French: [ɑ̃tʁəmɛ]; from Old French, literally meaning “between servings”) in French cuisine historically referred to small dishes served between courses but in modern times more commonly refers to a type of dessert.
The farthest back an inflation calculator that I can find will go is 1913, but at that point that $2.50 filet of beef was about $75 today.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=2.50&year1=191301&year2=202205
No, I said if I was granted a super power, so the time machine was given to me.
Type 40? I dunno, what does the manual say?
So just a little above average Las Vegas Strip steakhouse price. Interesting.
Did he order it all mixed up together in a bucket, with the eggs on top?
In 1899 New York City, would “DINNER” have meant an evening meal, or an early afternoon meal?
~Max
Unless of course it was the first night of an ocean voyage.
A good number of Chinese restaurants these days have menus that span 100+ items. And the old Greek-owner diners had menus that were probably just as close: just pages after pages of dishes you can order. This is the 80s, 90s, and about halfway into the 00s. Most of those joints, hell, maybe almost all, have since closed.
Chinese menus can be so large because there are many dishes that use the same ingredients, just a different meat. So you have eight different lo mein dishes, seven egg foo yung, etc.
So, Taco Bell, basically.
Still, looking at a local place’s menu (Lao Szechuan) I see these items:
Sliced beef & maw szechuan style
spicy beef tendon
spicy sour squid
green bean jelly szechuan style
woodear mushroom chengdu style
szechuan pork stomach
pork ribs
pig ear
pickled pig ear
pig feet
pork intestine
pig kidney
pork blood cake
chicken feet
chicken gizzard
duck feet
duck wings
duck heads
rabbit
Maine lobster
dungeness crab
sole
squid
shrimp
scallops
lamb
peapod leaves
eggplant
bok choy
american broccoli
chinese broccoli
tong cai (a type of pickled vegetable)
frog
And then the tofus, the soups, the various “usual” dishes, the noodles, the hot pots, etc.
“Formal” is white tie and tails
“Informal” is black tie and tuxedo. Note that in Britain, a tuxedo is called a “dinner jacket.” It was specifically created for dinner wear–tails being hard to manage if you were to sit down.
It’s the NYTimes, I have a subscription, don’t know if they allow a few freebies.
The article does give some credence to Brady being able to consume much larger than normal meals, perhaps able to match the legend to some degree. Assuming ordinary exaggeration in the story and using the size of the food orders instead of observations of how much he actually consumed this story could be essentially true.