Menu from the Fred Harvey Dining Room and Coffee Shop. El Paso, Texas in c1910.

[GON]

Menu from the Fred Harvey Dining Room and Coffee Shop. El Paso, Texas in c1910.

Interesting to see what was being served in El Paso in 1910:
Jumbo frog legs
Fresh lobster (how did they get fresh lobster in El pao in 1910?)
Swordfish steak (maybe understandable if the fish came out of Mexican waters)
Cold roast beef sandwich for .20
Blue point oysters

Beers on the menu:
Muehlebach
Harry Mitchell
Budweiser
Schlitz
Pabst
Miller
Carta Blanca (from Old Mexico???)

One of the last lines on the menu:
Suggestions or Criticisms Regarding our Service will be Appreciated

 

[skyactiv]

Railroads had refrigerated railcars back then.

 

[earlyre]

I was surprised to not see Shiner on the beer list... but they only started in 1909... probably not widely available outside their hometown only a year in...

 

[Pterostylis]

Arrangements Gladly Made For Special Diet

That menu is a lot more fancy sounding than I would have ever imagined. The line about special diets is also interesting and not something I would have expected to see.

 

[Pablo]

I still wouldn’t eat oysters in El Paso in 2024!

Says the PNW Snob

 

[Kira]

I was surprised to not see Shiner on the beer list..

There were hundreds of newspapers and hundreds of breweries, etc., at that time.
You're surprised one beer isn't on a list of 7 brands?

A cold roast beef sandwich and a pineapple sherbert, please.
Seems dimes don't pack the thunder they once did.

 

[Owen Lucas]

Move the decimal over 2 places and pricing is consistent with a fancy city restaurant for the special dinner plates.

 

[andyd]

This scene is reputed to have been filmed in one take. Not a Garland fan, but wow!

 

[GON]

This scene is reputed to have been filmed in one take. Not a Garland fan, but wow!

Yes, that is definitely a wow scene- thanks for sharing and especially the scene was a go in its first take.

 

[andyd]

I saw your post of the Fred Harvey menu. So, I googled him. Being a TCM fan, my only connection was Robert Osborne talking about Judy Garland and how incredible that th"All Aboard " scene, with all the stuff going on From the "Harvey Girls" Same guy

 

[y_p_w]

The Fred Harvey Company did have some issues at the time. Like its hiring practices. The National Park Service has a history with The Fred Harvey Company because the Santa Fe Railway set up a lot of the facilities at the Grand Canyon.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-harvey-girls-increasing-opportunity.htm​

While Fred Harvey was ahead of his time in some ways, he almost always hired White women to be Harvey Girls. At establishments in the Southwest, where Hispanic and Indigenous women made up a large part of the population, there was still very little recruitment to hire Harvey Girls from these communities. Most often women of color were hired for the lowest paying jobs, such as laundress and cleaner, amongst other “back of house” positions.​

​

There were always exceptions to the rule. One Harvey Girl working in Arizona remembers a woman of Hispanic heritage working with her in the 1930s. She said, “I was assigned to train the first Hispanic woman hired by the house manager. She was a wonderful person; the manager knew it, and I know – a whole lot of people at the Harvey House knew it. But the railroad men threatened to leave if she stayed and worked. The manager ignored them. She stayed. And that was that. Things changed a little at a time.” ​

 

[earlyre]

There were hundreds of newspapers and hundreds of breweries, etc., at that time.
You're surprised one beer isn't on a list of 7 brands?

A cold roast beef sandwich and a pineapple sherbert, please.
Seems dimes don't pack the thunder they once did.

well... shiner is kind of ubiquitous in TX.

 

[wpod]

Railroads had refrigerated railcars back then.

Ice?

 

[skyactiv]

Ice?

Yes, but they were called refrigerator cars. You'll see what I mean if you Google it.