I like food! I like wine! When I travel where I am eating is my main concern (museums and art is the second) and it’s the first thing I research—usually an amalgam of polling friends who know the area + ny times travel guides + social media etc. I chose this text because it seemed like the  kind of reference I wish I had for this century. Obviously, much of the information in this guide is outdated but I imagined it as a sort of toss in your luggage one-stop-shop for all of that research (and pre-internet, perhaps it was).

I had originally imagined this in a tiny trim for easy toting around on your European tour, but it’s LONG. Even when I upped the trim size to 6x9 it’s still massive. (The chapter on Paris alone could be it’s own book, perhaps it should have been.)

I wanted the text block to be long and narrow, speaking to the proportions of a menu. The callouts of restaurant name and address were directly inspired by the original text I found on the Internet Archive, those were inset into the body copy in a kind of awkward way. I wanted mine to function mostly as a way finding tool, to be quickly referenceable and so set them in the margins. Paper was the only choice for the cover keeping in mind weight considerations, with French flaps (again, referencing menus).

In addition to being a long text there are many, many hierarchical elements and at least three different categories of menus and all have inconsistent formatting and information—wine pairings, courses etc. our good friend Lt.-Col. Newham-Davis did not edit this as well as he could have (too close to the work to see the flaws, it happens to the best of us). I was excited for the challenge, but was a bit overzealous in my choice of project, this is a long game which I hope to finish at some point.