Menu exhibition serves up a slice of Adelaide’s social history

Candy and Savoury: menus from the collections of the State Library is a step again in time, with menus and different culinary memorabilia collected from Adelaide cafes and eating places throughout the many years. The exhibition showcases a few of South Australia’s most well-known meals locations, in addition to reflecting the altering meals traits and social historical past of the instances.

Photograph: SLSA

The earliest menu is from a dinner held at Authorities Home in 1867 to mark the arrival of Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria. On his first night time within the colony, Prince Alfred was visitor of honour at a cocktail party the place the splendid meal included mulligatawny soup, “kromeskys aux heutres” (oysters rolled in skinny shavings of bacon, dipped in batter and fried in sizzling lard), “timbals maccaroni” and Albert pudding (named in honour of Alfred’s father).

Candy and Savoury, curated by State Library senior conservator Peter Zajicek and exhibitions curator Mark Gilbert, consists of  70 reveals from the library’s assortment of hundreds of menus which have been donated by members of the general public or collected by library workers.

“In library language we name this ‘ephemera’, which is principally something that’s not books or information or archives – issues like menus, theatre packages, wine labels, all that type of factor which might be virtually throwaway objects however individuals did maintain them and we nonetheless accumulate menus proper up till as we speak,” Gilbert says.

A number of the extra distinctive objects embody a menu written on a cleaver for the Cork and Cleaver restaurant in Glenunga, which opened in 1978 and ran for 43 years, and a menu written for radio station 5DN’s annual Christmas occasion held on the Freeway Inn in 1962, the place the names of dishes have been modified to replicate names of radio personalities of the day.

Set up view: Candy and Savoury: menus from the collections of the State Library.

“The menus additionally replicate the modifications in design types over the intervals as nicely,” Gilbert says. “For instance, the 5DN menu from 1962 exhibits the mid-century fashion, [while] earlier ones are in an ornate Victoriana design. Some menus had been purely useful – an expression of the instances.

“The menus that come from the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s is absolutely when the restaurant business modified in South Australia. There have been plenty of modifications to the licensing legal guidelines, so it meant that the world of high quality eating modified and opened proper up, so we had been launched to quite a lot of new flavours and new types of cooking.

Don Dunstan’s Cookbook. Photograph: SLSA

An illustration from Mistress Augustine’s 1986 Bastille Day menu. Photograph: SLSA

“I feel individuals look again not simply on the modifications to restaurant consuming however the modifications socially. Eating places and motels might keep open later, the alcohol legal guidelines had been loosened up, so it was a interval of change.”

Key to a few of these social reforms within the Nineteen Seventies was then-South Australian Premier Don Dunstan, whose cookbook, aptly named Don Dunstan’s Cookbook, types a part of the exhibition and consists of Indian and Malay dishes. Dunstan was instrumental in selling South Australia’s meals and wine industries and introducing the “revolutionary” concept of al fresco eating. He additionally opened his personal restaurant, Don’s Desk, in 1994.

Different well-known names represented within the exhibition embody La Trattoria, Possums, one of many Ellis chain of cafés, the Arcadia – which ran by way of the 1930 and ’40s and supplied double-cut fritz rolls, beef tea and toast (all in shillings and pence) – Bangkok Restaurant, Jasmin Indian Restaurant, and Neddy’s, which was opened in 1975 by world-renowned chef Cheong Liew.

Double-cut tongue roll, anybody? A menu from Arcadia Cafe.

Considered one of Gilbert’s favorite objects is a restaurant evaluate written by a really sad diner at Ernest’s Restaurant, which opened March 1961. Ernest’s was within the mid-century constructing on the River Torrens weir, now occupied by Crimson Ochre Grill.

“It’s not a lot the menu for this restaurant, however the handwritten evaluate of the 1962 Christmas menu by an nameless diner, stapled to the menu when it was donated to us,” Gilbert says. “Ernest’s was recognized for its high quality eating, nonetheless this patron was clearly not impressed!”

The evaluate consists of: “…For the worth per head of three kilos 10 shillings it was the worst meal we’ve ever had except the Resort Elizabeth Christmas 1961. Caviar was served with chilly toast triangles unbuttered with a aspect dish of crumbed cream cheese. Iced consommé had jellied inventory floating in heat skinny soup skimmed from alleged minestrone. Xmas pudding was chilly and soggy – massive base of vanilla ice cream topped with whipped butter colored cream, garnished with the smallest strawberries out there.”

The Maple Leaf Café in Rundle Road. Photograph: SLSA

Gilbert says the menus in Candy and Savoury present the modifications in consuming habits over time.

“A whole lot of the sooner menus had been very meat-heavy however that has modified in current instances, with a a lot higher deal with greens and different delicacies types. In later menus we will see the introduction of Australian native components.”

Images kind a part of the exhibition, together with photos of Decca’s in Melbourne Road, taken in 1974, in addition to the Maple Leaf Café in Rundle Road and Ceylon Hut in Financial institution Road.

Two brief movies are additionally on present: A Style of Adelaide, a tourism promotion showcasing Adelaide within the Nineteen Seventies, and Resort Elizabeth, which depicts diners on the northern suburbs lodge within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s.

Candy and Savoury: menus from the collections of the State Library is exhibiting till the tip of June. It consists of actions for kids to get entangled, reminiscent of a scavenger hunt and a chance to “design your final occasion menu”.