“I never talk about love on an empty stomach.”
That was Eva Maria Saint’s character to Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock (1959). Viewers watch as Hollywood royalty sit in a lavish dining car, complete with white tablecloth, silverware, and a vase of flowers. While rolling along the Hudson River, she sips coffee; he a Gibson from an actual martini glass, pearl onion to boot. Everything about the scene seduces the viewer into what dining while traveling in the most luxurious fashion could be, and once was. One of The New York Historical’s exhibitions this summer, Dining in Transit, brings visitors back to the 20th century when dining and dining well was a signature of the transportation experience, not what some believe it has dwindled to today.
The exhibition, up through October 19, walks visitors through the many ways in which planes, trains, and ocean liners used to curate meals to tempt an array of travelers’ appetites. From the involvement of culinary heavyweights like August Escoffier to excitement surrounding newly packaged goods soon to hit the mainstream, the experience was just one way to keep up with the rapidly growing technology attracting travelers during the era.
All Aboard
Small but mighty, the exhibition is full of illustrated menus, tableware, recipe books, employee handbooks, and other accoutrements from the world of dining in the sky, along the rails, or on the water. Dining in Transit explores just how much food was a part of the traveling experience and how marketing it rivals the lengths many in social media might go to today.
Economic status certainly informed the type of service offered—from 1st and send class to third and steerage –and took shape in the versions of meals served or seats secured by travelers. While walking through the exhibition, curator Nina Nazionale, reiterates just how much time, effort, and money went into the curated experiences, including the art for all the brochures, the menus, handbooks, tickets, and more.
Amidst her research, especially through a collection of menus from the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library within the Historical, she discovered a surprising starting point. “I found out that in the first half of the 20th century, ships, trains and planes were putting all their money, all their marketing, all their energy into attracting customers by using the dining experience.”
120 years ago today, August 27, 1905, if your found yourself traveling from England on the R.M.S. Campania, you might enjoy Russian caviar or borscht, frog’s legs, roast lamb, fried eggplant, or tomatoes au gratin.
Tickets, Please
Originally set to open during the pandemic, the exhibition delay allowed more dots to be connected in the research process, adding to the range in artifacts now presented. In addition to the detailed menus, posters, tableware and more, Nazionale was able to further discover more about how the actual kitchens aboard operated, details behind the equipment used to create various meals, and some of the stringent–in many cases, discriminatory–requirements regarding employees working the kitchens, dining rooms, or aisles of the various modes of transport.
Dining in Transit also delves into the dark truths behind these culinary experiences, examining the racialized hiring practices of the Pullman Company, which recruited formerly enslaved Black men to serve as railroad cooks and waiters. On view, as a loan, is Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus (1911), a cookbook by Rufus Estes, who was born enslaved in Tennessee and worked for Pullman as a chef from 1883-1897.
When putting the exhibition together, Nazionale expanding on what drove her to highlight the types of materials included beyond the impressive menu collection the museum already had in its possession. “I think people think culinary history and they think of restaurants and pony kitchens and cooks and chefs and recipes and cookbooks, but very few people think about dining and transit, mostly because we don’t do it anymore.”
It is a novelty, in some cases, down to a few options in Central Europe, New England, California, and Canada; nothing like the yesteryear experiences featured in the Dining in Transit exhibition that took people everywhere and included real meals. Areas like Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Baltimore were all major hubs, as they still are today, but were centers for training with their own kitchens and schools just for traveling service staff.
The needle does seem to be shifting again to offering higher-quality food options during travel, soon making the stale popcorn of today a distant memory. In 2024, Alaska Airline launched a “Chef’s (tray) Table” program, highlighting celebrated chefs; Air France recently partnered with chefs for its La Première and Business cabins, like Daniel Boulud and Dominique Crenn; earlier this year, South African native, Chef Lorna Maseko, partnered with SAA to create a menu full of elevated, regional dishes enjoyed during flight.
Amidst the exhibition, visitors learn that much of the equipment used to “cook”, warm and serve dishes–and a precursor to the TV dinners popular in the 50s, 60s, and 70s–were initiated on the ground by World War II veteran, William Maxson, who created what he called “a sky plate.” “He also invented the whirlwind oven,” Nazionale shared during the exhibition tour. “It’s a convection oven, since you can’t use a microwave on a plane due to the signals,” she continued. “But the innovation that was first for planes in the military then became the way for commercial airlines.”
Last Stop
Just when we think our generation originated a food trend, a little glimpse into the history discovered in the Dining in Transit exhibition will prove otherwise. The kale craze of yesterday was actually popular one hundred years ago. Tomato Girl Summer? Fuhgeddaboudit. Some of the ocean liners of the 1920s and 1930s hosted all-out vegetable dinners, including dishes like stuffed-celery, vegetable rice casseroles, or parsnip bisque.
To add a cherry on top of the experience, visitors stopping by the museum’s new restaurant, Clara–helmed by Chef Alex Guarnaschelli and Chef Michael Jenkins can indulge in the seasonal menu and the rotating cake-of-the-day specials, some of which have been inspired by the Dining in Transit exhibition. For example, they’ve featured a fresh strawberry Bavarois from a 1938 voyage on the SS Normandie—and a Neapolitan ice cream slice from a United Airlines flight, circa 1949; and a homemade blueberry cobbler from the “20th Century” Train, circa 1952.