Menus, menus, menus

I haven't really blogged or talked about our Menu Project for a while. People ask me whether it is still on-going. The answer to that question is an unqualified "Yes!" We still want a menu at least once a year from every place that serves food in the South and from those places outside the South - the rest of the US and the whole world - that consider themselves Southern restaurants. We ask for your help.

Every time you eat out, whether it's at a diner, a gas station selling pimento cheese sandwiches, or a white tablecloth emporium, collect a menu. Then send us those menus. We will add them to the collection. When you are ready to discard that file of take out menus by the telephone and replace it with a more up-to-date file, send the old file to us. We want it all. Don't worry about duplicates. We want those too.

Of course, we also want any vintage menus that you can spare, but we are systematically collecting so that we will have the basis for a great research tool. Scholars in the future will be pleased that we collected and collected.

You can read about the collection, which is done in partnership with the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans, in the current issue of Food Arts magazine.