Many date back from one-off collaborative dinners and were signed by the great chefs who cooked them. I have menus without prices, from that all-too-recent era when women were considered best protected from that information. I have a carte du jour handwritten on the flank of a brown paper bag, its edges artfully torched with a lighter — something that passed for a design flourish back in the ’70s. There are menus from significant restaurants, long since closed, and others that marked occasions I hope to never forget. And there are a select few I hung on to, simply for amusement. To prove to someone one day that there really was a time when a medium-fat from Schwartz’s could be yours for 75 cents. Or that there was once a Toronto chef who, in the name of fusion, thought it was a great idea to build a soupe aux truffes VGE, à la Bocuse, pastry dome over a bowl of tom yum goong.
But will anyone under 30 ever believe it, when there’s no corroborating QR code to be scanned?
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