How many courses the house expected you to eat, whether the price belonged to the meal or to the dish, what language the dishes were named in, and what the law of that year made the printer put at the foot of the card. This is the research behind Menu & Bill of Fare.
A menu is the most dateable piece of paper in a restaurant, and almost never for the reason an art department first reaches for. It is not the typeface. It is the shape of the meal — how many courses the house expected you to eat, whether the price belonged to the meal or to the dish, what language the dishes were named in, and what the law of that year made the printer put at the foot of the card.
This is the thing an audience reads before it reads a word. A grand card of 1880 runs to eight headings in French and carries no prices at all; a British card of 1946 runs to three because it was not allowed to run to four; a card of 2018 has headings a Victorian would not recognise as headings.
| Period | What the card is shaped like |
|---|---|
| 1860–1900 | Potages · Poissons · Relevés · Entrées · Rôts · Légumes · Entremets · Dessert. Service à la russe has replaced service à la française, so the courses come in sequence and the card lists them in order. A table d’hôte card carries one price for the whole meal, or none. |
| 1900–1938 | The hotel dinner adds Hors d’Œuvre at the head and a Savoury after the sweet — anchovies on toast, mushrooms on croute, angels on horseback. The savoury is a British habit and it dies out in the 1960s; its presence dates a card more reliably than any ornament on it. |
| 1942–1950 · UK | Three courses, one main dish. Not a fashion — the Meals in Establishments Order. See § ④. |
| 1954–1969 | Half French, half English, and the grill appears as its own heading. Hors d’Œuvres · Soups · Fish · From the Grill · Entrées · Sweets · Coffee. The language is visibly turning over. |
| 1970–1989 | Starters · Main Courses · Vegetables · Sweets · Cheese. Vegetables are still a separate heading with their own prices, which stops being true in the nineties. “Sweets” becomes “Desserts” around 1990 in Britain and much earlier in America. |
| 1990–2005 | Three courses and a side order. Vegetables are now included with the dish, and the side orders are chips, salad and onion rings. |
| 2015– | Snacks · Small plates · Large plates · Sides · Sweet. A dish description under the name becomes standard in the mid-nineties and is near-universal by 2005; before that a dish is a name and a price and nothing else. |
| Italy | Before about 1950: Antipasti · Minestre · Pesce · Arrosti · Dolci. After: the familiar Antipasti · Primi · Secondi · Contorni · Dolci. A 1930 card headed “Primi” is a modern card in costume. |
| Greece | ΟΡΕΚΤΙΚΑ · ΣΑΛΑΤΕΣ · ΘΑΛΑΣΣΙΝΑ · ΜΑΓΕΙΡΕΥΤΑ · ΤΗΣ ΩΡΑΣ · ΓΛΥΚΑ. The split between what is stewed in the morning and what is grilled to order is the organising idea, and it has been stable for a century. |
The single most useful dating fact in the whole subject happens on one Monday. Before it, a British price has no decimal point in it.
| When & where | What the price column looks like |
|---|---|
| to 14 Feb 1971 · UK | 3/6 is three shillings and sixpence. 1/- is a shilling. 10d is tenpence. Prices land on sixpences, and there is no decimal point anywhere on the card. A menu of 1965 showing “£1.25” is the commonest single mistake in the field. |
| 15 Feb 1971 · UK | Decimal Day. The transition ran to 31 August 1971, months earlier than planned, and cards of that year may show both. Early-decimal cards often spell “new pence” or set 17½p; the halfpenny is still in circulation. |
| 1 Jan 1960 · France | The nouveau franc at 100 old to one. Before it, an ordinary dinner runs to hundreds of francs. The word “nouveau” is dropped from 1 January 1963, so 1960–62 cards may print NF. |
| 1 Jan 2002 · eurozone | Euro cash. National notes stop being legal tender on 9 February (Ireland), 17 February (France) and 28 February (Italy, Greece and the rest). Dual pricing was compulsory in Greece, Austria, Belgium and Portugal and only recommended in France, Italy and Ireland — so a French card of 2001 may legitimately show one currency and a Greek one should show two. |
| 11 Nov 1944 / 1 May 1954 · Greece | The drachma is reissued twice: once at one new to fifty billion old after the occupation hyperinflation, and again at one to a thousand. A Greek card of 1943 carries figures in the millions and is meant to; one of 1950 is in the middle currency; from May 1954 the figures are the familiar ones. |
| from c. 2005 | The currency sign starts disappearing from the column altogether: a dish is 14, not £14.00. A card that drops the sign before about 2000 is early. |
Every line below is tied to an instrument and a date. This is the checkable part, and the part a continuity person can catch.
| When & where | What has to be on the card |
|---|---|
| 1 Jun 1942–1950 · UK | The Meals in Establishments Order 1942. A maximum of five shillings a meal; three courses, only one of which may be a main dish — defined as one in which meat, fish, game or poultry is a quarter or more by weight. Licensed houses could add a house charge on top, and Lord Woolton told the Lords on 12 May 1942 that its amount “will be shown compulsorily on the menu”. By 1946 the permitted house charge ran from 6d to 3s 6d at lunch and to 6s at dinner. Still in force, and still “under review”, in April 1950. |
| 17 Jan 1920–5 Dec 1933 · USA | Prohibition. No wine list at all. The drinks page is Near Beer, cereal beverage, mineral waters and an elaborate soda fountain. From 7 April 1933 the Cullen–Harrison Act allows beer and wine to about 4% — a narrow eight-month window in which a card can list beer and no spirits. |
| 1943–1946 · USA | OPA ceiling prices. Ceilings were set from the meal counts restaurants recorded in December 1942; the certification had to be posted in plain sight and printed on the revised menu. War-bond solicitations were printed straight onto the card, and paper shortage shows as fewer pages and hand-typed paste-in slips. |
| 8 Jun 1967– · France | The arrêtés of 8 June 1967 establish the modern display regime. Still in force: bread, the couvert and a carafe of water are free and may not be charged separately or built into the price. A modern French card carrying a “couvert” line is wrong. |
| 27 Mar 1987 · France | Menus must be legible from outside from 11.30 for lunch and 18.00 for dinner, and identical to the documents used inside. Every document the customer sees carries either “Prix service compris” — with the percentage in brackets where staff are paid on turnover — or “Prix nets”. The two may never both appear. A drinks list must show at least five wines with price, type, vintage and volume. |
| 2 Mar 2004 · UK | The Price Marking (Food and Drink Services) Order 2003 replaces the 1979 order. A price list at or near the entrance, visible before entering; all prices if the card has thirty items or fewer, otherwise at least thirty plus five soft drinks; sterling, VAT included; and any service, cover or minimum charge shown at least as prominently as the food prices. |
| 13 Dec 2014 · EU & UK | Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 applies to non-prepacked food. Fourteen allergens; the information must be written, at the point of presentation, sale or supply — telling a customer is not sufficient on its own. France’s décret 2015-447 (1 July 2015) allows a notice saying where it can be consulted instead of a table on every card. |
| 7 May 2018 · USA | FDA menu labeling (21 CFR 101.11), chains of twenty or more locations. Two sentences of prescribed wording: “2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice, but calorie needs vary.” and “Additional nutrition information available upon request.” |
| 6 Apr 2022 · England | Calorie labelling for businesses with 250 or more employees. The kcal figure, the portion it relates to, and “adults need around 2000 kcal a day” — at the point of choice, in the same size, font and colour as the dish. Alcohol above 1.2% is exempt. Not in force in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, so a 2023 Cardiff card should carry no calories at all. |
| 1989 → 2017 · Greece | Α.Δ. 14/1989, consolidated as άρθρο 192: a single column of totals with every surcharge already inside them, and the surcharges itemised with their percentages at the upper right of the list. ΥΑ 91354/2017 (in force 19 September 2017) adds that the list must be in Greek, posted at the entrance, VAT-inclusive, and must state the type of oil used and mark frozen or pre-fried items κατεψυγμένο / προτηγανισμένο. The δημοτικός φόρος of 0.5% (ν. 339/1976) must be written on the price list — which is why Greek cards say that VAT and the municipal levy are included. |
| Italy | R.D. 635/1940 requires a price list inside the premises. Italy never acquired the French duty to display it outside, which is why an Italian menu of any period is an interior object. The coperto is lawful anywhere if disclosed before ordering — but banned outright in Lazio, and therefore in Rome, by regional law 21/2006 of 29 November 2006. |
| 15 Jul 2014 · France | Fait maison: a saucepan with a roof over it, at least 5 mm high, against dishes made on the premises from raw products. Décret 2014-797, relaxed in 2015. |
| 17 Dec 2002 → 2025 · France | Origine des viandes. Beef from décret 2002-1465; extended 1 March 2022 (2022-65) and again in 2025 to pork, sheep and poultry. One country where born, reared and slaughtered prints as “Origine : …”; otherwise “Né / Élevé / Abattu”. |
| 2020– | QR codes. Essentially impossible before 2019 and characteristic of 2020–2022. In France the DGCCRF holds that a QR code alone does not discharge the display duty — a paper card must remain available. |
An English hotel wrote its menu in French from the 1860s until the 1960s, and then stopped. Filets de Sole Véronique and Grilled Dover sole are not translations of each other; they are two different decades. A few of the dishes that date a card on their own:
| From | Dish |
|---|---|
| 1893 | Pêche Melba — created for Nellie Melba at the Savoy. Not before. |
| 1903 | Sole Véronique. |
| 1922 | Vichyssoise — invented in New York, not France. |
| 1930s | Caesar salad (c. 1930), Cobb salad (1938), Bœuf Stroganoff reaching Western cards. |
| 1961 | Prawn cocktail in Britain. It is everywhere by 1975 and a period joke by 1992. |
| 1966 / 1972 | Beef Wellington; Chicken Kiev, which reaches the British high street as a supermarket line in 1979. |
| 1970s | Black Forest gâteau; chicken tikka masala; the Berni-style steak, prawn cocktail and Black Forest gâteau in the same three courses. |
| 1982 | Tiramisù. Its presence on a 1975 Italian card is a decade early. |
| 2005–2013 | Burrata, padrón peppers, triple-cooked chips, quinoa, cauliflower steak. |
A menu is a printed object with a trade size, and the size is part of the dating. Sizes here are the ones the stationer cut.
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Table d’hôte card 152 × 229 mm | The fixed meal at a fixed price. One column, no prices against the dishes, because the price belongs to the meal. Dies out through the 1970s. |
| Bill of fare 210 × 297 mm | À la carte. Every dish carries its own price. Wide enough to be set in two columns, and from the 1890s onward usually is. |
| Banquet card 127 × 203 mm | One dinner, one date, one occasion, printed for the table and often numbered and tasselled. No prices: nothing is being sold. |
| Wine list 105 × 297 mm | Tall and narrow so the bin numbers can run down the margin. Always separate from the food. Half-bottle prices in their own column. |
| Breakfast door card 105 × 260 mm | Ticked and hung outside the door before you sleep, die-cut for the handle. Tick boxes and a block of times: the times are what make it a door card rather than a menu. |
| Ocean-liner card 140 × 216 mm | One meal at sea, with the date on it, and a passenger kept it. Engraved house device, courses in French. |
| Dining-car card 127 × 190 mm | Narrow enough for a swaying table, served in two sittings, and the card says so. |
| Canteen card 148 × 210 mm | Works canteen, British Restaurant, school hall. Cheap paper, no ornament, prices in pence — a British Restaurant meal was around 9d against a five-shilling ceiling elsewhere. |
The other studios in this collection run to seven, nine or thirteen markets. This one has five — the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy and Greece — and the absence of Germany and Spain is a decision rather than an oversight, so it is worth saying what it rests on.
A menu is not a regulated object in the way a label or a medicine carton is. What dates it is the architecture of the meal, the currency, and the language the dishes were named in — and for most of the period this studio covers, the language of a printed bill of fare across Europe was French, whatever country the kitchen was in. A Berlin hotel dinner of 1910 and a Rome one of the same year are both set in French, in the same grand-service order, with the same course names. That is the page you get from the French plan, and adding a German one would have produced the same sheet under a different flag.
Where the markets genuinely diverge is in what the law made the printer add, and the four instruments this studio models are British, American, French and Greek: the five-shilling maximum and its compulsory house charge, Prohibition, service compris, and the Greek single-column price list with its surcharge block. A German or Spanish menu would want its own instruments researched rather than the French ones relabelled, and that research has not been done.
So the honest position: two markets are missing and this page will not pretend otherwise. A production needing a German or Spanish bill of fare can get most of the way with the French plan and its own wording, and should not expect the studio’s Checks panel to know anything about it.
Four markets added in September 2026. Two limits hold in every studio: Turkey starts in 1928, the year the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script (an earlier Turkish sheet would be Ottoman, which no studio sets), and Russian before 1918 is spelled by rule — the hard sign on every word ending in a consonant and і before a vowel are placed automatically; the yat (ѣ) cannot be derived from modern spelling and is left as е. Turkish capitals keep their dots: i goes to İ and ı to I, so İSTANBUL, never ISTANBUL.
| Country | What the studio changes, and when |
|---|---|
| Portugal | Dishes of the country with their own dates (bacalhau com natas is not a 1920s dish); the Ementa; the price-control stamp 1943–1974, IVA incluído from 1986; prices in réis before 1911 and then in escudos with the cifrão (12$50), euros from 2002. |
| Netherlands | The French hotel card with Dutch headings to 1959, then the menukaart and the eetcafé card; BTW from 1969; f 2,75 guilders; the rookvrij line from 2008. |
| Turkey | From 1928; Çorbalar, Soğuk Mezeler and, from 1980, Ara Sıcaklar; the municipal tariff stamp to 1980, KDV from 1985; lira and kuruş, whole lira through the inflation, YTL 2005, ₺ 2012. |
| Russia | Three cards: the Imperial карта кушаний (old orthography, 1 р. 20 к.); the Soviet menu of the restaurant category, ХОЛОДНЫЕ ЗАКУСКИ · ПЕРВЫЕ БЛЮДА · ВТОРЫЕ БЛЮДА, the grams column and the price as 1-20; the Federation card with НДС, the у.е. of 1993–2005 and ₽ from 2013. |
And one fix that belongs to every continental card: prices are written with the decimal comma — a French card of 1975 reads 12,50 F, never 12.50 F.
Where a date above can be checked. Anything the studio could not verify is not stated as fact in it either.
What this page is not. It documents the real history a prop has to fit inside. Every house, ship, shipping line, railway, printer and estate the studio invents is fictional, and nothing it produces is fit to be used as a real price list.
Every rule on this page is built into the studio: pick a year and a country and it applies them, and the Checks panel quotes the instrument behind each one.
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