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A menu records what is eaten and in which order. It also anticipates the meal itself: it names dishes in a particular language, addresses a particular guest, and assigns particular roles to those who cook and those who are served. Read in this way, the printed menu is a script of hospitality. It is a written document that prefigures a performance with its own dramaturgy, staging, and audience.
The archive
The archive brings together menu cards from restaurants in Belgium and beyond, dating from the 1940s to the present. Some were kept after family meals and carry the memory of specific occasions, people, and places. Others are chance finds, collected at flea markets, in second-hand shops, and in private attics. Many document establishments that no longer exist and dishes that are no longer served. Each card is digitised, described, and made accessible online. The collection continues to grow.
Taken individually, a menu is a trace of one evening. Taken together, menus make legible the hierarchies of class, gender, language, and belonging that have been written into public hospitality, and how these have shifted. The archive follows the transformation of the menu from an elaborate, often theatrical object to the minimal form of a QR code.
Contribute
Bill of Fare is conceived as a growing, collaborative archive. Menu cards, their histories, and recollections of the meals they accompanied are welcome as contributions. For donations, exchanges, and enquiries about the project, please get in touch.
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Credits & Rights
The texts, the structure and the photographic reproductions on this website are the property of the site owner. Any use without prior consent is not permitted. The menu cards shown are reproduced as historical documents. The site owner is not the author of these cards: copyright and other rights in their design, typography, illustrations and texts remain with their respective creators and rights holders.
For questions about the rights in a menu card, or if you are the creator or rights holder of a card and would like it credited, changed or removed, please get in touch.