On Thu 26 Feb 2009 06:35:53p, SteveB told us...

> We went to The Cosmopolitan in Silver Reef, Utah, last night. It was
> just okay. The site was the actual site of a restaurant there from
> about 1880 to about 1895. The recreation wasn't even close to the
> original. Although the restaurant calls itself a four star restaurant,
> I found it only passable. The lobster bisque was lacking a lobster
> taste. I had seafood risotto. The plate had some shrimp and langostino
> which were represented to be lobsters. It had some salmon, scallops, and
> sole, also. My wife had lobster ravioli, and they were skimpy on the
> lobster.
>
> Anyway, we looked at the menu, and it has some old pictures, and
> historical data on it.
>
> I was wondering what anyone here (who actually knows, that is) could
> offer about restaurants of that era. Without refrigeration, the menu
> had to be "different". I would wonder what the common fare was in
> restaurants at that time, and what the common fare would have been say,
> for a boarding house, and for the common household.
>
> This lovely place is in a historic ghost town. When driving there, we
> saw about thirty deer, so fresh deer probably would have been a staple.
> I know that in many restaurants, fresh game and fowl were common, as was
> commercial hunting without restrictions from Fish and Game Departments.
>
> Anyone care to comment?
>
> Steve

Most restaurants of that era bought and served whatever was freshly
available for the season. Out of season the average restaurant relied on
canned or preserved foods. Of course, meats and fish could still be
freshly butchered or caught. There was little long term storage. Really
top drawer places probably purchased fresh produce from greenhouse growers.
There was ice, of course, and could be used to some degree to keep things
cold and fresh, but certainly limited.

--
Wayne Boatwright

"One man's meat is another man's poison"
- Oswald Dykes, English writer, 1709.