Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain
Quaintest thoughts—queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
A long while back at the Louisville Restaurants Forum, the eternally helpful electronic institution created and curated by Robin Garr (the inimitable dean of Louisville food and drink writers), a user posted a photo of a Louisville hotel restaurant menu from 1857.
For once, we witness a literally antebellum phenomenon.
Recently I found the apparent source of this photo at Duke University, and what still strikes me about this menu—technically a broadside, defined as “a sheet of paper printed on one side only, forming one large page”—is the sheer novelty of viewing a pre-Civil War imported beer list offered by a top eatery right here in River City.
166 years later, such amenities cannot always be assumed.
I still recall an outing to a high dollar Louisville steakhouse on an evening long after better beer had become an established fact, where we observed numerous patrons quaffing Miller Lite alongside their $60...Read more