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  Cooke elucidates the value of the traditional restaurant menu. More than a list of dishes, it is a medium that can amuse, flatter, educate and tantalize diners, elevating the restaurant experience. Cooke’s copiously illustrated book is filled with color images of menus both ancient and modern, including a bill of fare made up solely of emojis (from a boundary-pushing “immersive dining” restaurant in Bangkok) . . . Tastes and Traditions shows us how menus, unlike the transitory attractions of the QR code, became imbued with human meaning.

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  Wall Street Journal

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  This illustrated history of the menu explores how they shed light on culinary trends and reflect evolving notions of what’s healthy.

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  Publishers Weekly

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  The traditional restaurant menu, as we learn in this McGill professor's new book, can be a medium for expression, an artifact of life and trace moments in social change. Illustrated with examples, she covers three centuries of the evolution of dining à la carte.

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  The Globe and Mail: Books Gift Guide 2025

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  Tastes and Traditions explores menus as strategic documents – much more than simple bills of fare. Menus, it says, do not always present their wares in a straightforward way; some go off the beaten path, becoming almost as important as the food itself . . . All are a delight to read through . . . Menus from across history are shared as an opportunity to “to take a leap of imagination,” vicariously peering over the shoulders of the guests who read them and experienced the inventive meals they represent.

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  Foreword Reviews

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  Cooke considers aesthetic, textural, and culinary elements of menus to make a compelling case for their importance not only as a record of cuisine but as a cultural artifact and communication tool . . . This book will appeal broadly to nonfiction readers who are interested in culinary and cultural history as well as design. An entertaining and beautiful look at the history and significance of menus.

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  Library Journal

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  Cooke’s illuminating book reveals . . . our relationship with menus via their whimsical, sophisticated, and sometimes downright disturbing designs . . . With a cover featuring a Henri Gervex Parisian Belle Époque café scene, Cooke’s book may seem imposing. But who hasn’t experienced that moment when thumbing through a menu, whether at a comfort food diner or fine dining establishment, of anticipation building with each tempting dish? (Though this simple pleasure might vanish faster than yesterday’s special – thanks, QR codes.) This universal experience gives Cooke’s book broad appeal.

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  Digestible Bits and Bites

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  Whether bound, laminated, scrawled on a chalkboard, or scanned via code . . . menus are a staple of dining out. When you look at one, you probably see it as a conduit to getting the dish you want. But Cooke wants you to look closer. The literary food historian and McGill University professor . . . [explains] how a menu is not just a portal between you and the kitchen . . . but also to history, art, culture, and class.

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  CBC’s Sunday Magazine

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  Food for thought. What are menus? What do they contain? And, ultimately, why do they matter? . . . A handsomely illustrated and diverting celebration of a rich if overlooked genre.

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  Kirkus Reviews

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  A beautifully produced and intellectually rigorous work, Cooke’s Tastes and Traditions proves that menus are not just ephemera. Rather, they are narratives of taste, time, and transformation.

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  McGill News Alumni Magazine

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  Menus are so much more than a tool to order food, author Cooke posits in her engaging and informative new book on the history of menus: Among other things, they can be a window into the history, cultural identity and economics of the time in which they were written and designed . . . It’s an extensively – and beautifully – illustrated book that explores how menus entertain, reflect changing notions of health.

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  Montreal Gazette

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  Every page in this book is a work of art, stimulating the imagination as well as the appetite.

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  Jeffrey M. Pilcher, University of Toronto

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  This is a book for all of us who’ve been tempted to swipe a memorable menu. Brilliantly illustrated and argued, this is a tantalizing history of the restaurant menu as a cultural artifact. From the “menu French” of fine dining restaurants to the racist imagery of notable American chains, Tastes and Traditions explains how menus give meaning to our meals.

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  Daniel E. Bender, Canada Research Chair in Food and Culture, University of Toronto, and author of The Food Adventurers: How Around-the-World Travel Changed the Way We Eat

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  This dazzling volume guides us through several centuries of menus that reflect changing tastes and societal norms. Nathalie Cooke’s incisive text and visual juxtapositions illuminate the evolution of menus over time. From luxury trains to refugee ships, from high-end restaurants to prison bills of fare, the menus in Tastes and Traditions go far beyond gastronomy to explore important issues of aesthetics, social history, marketing and desire.

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  Darra Goldstein, founding editor of Gastronomica and editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies

Introduction: Where Can Menus Take Us?
Chapter One: Feasts for the Eyes
Chapter Two: Menus as Mementos
Chapter Three: Cultural Encounters
Chapter Four: Menus for Children and for the Children We Once Were
Chapter Five: Health on the Menu
Chapter Six: Riddle Me This: Menus That Intrigue
Conclusion: What Menus Can Do

References
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index

Nathalie Cooke is Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her books include Canadian Literary Fare (with Shelley Boyd, 2023), winner of the 2024 Gabrielle Roy Prize, and What’s to Eat? Entrées in Canadian Food History (2009).