Art in Vintage Restaurant Menus

Cool Culinaria is to vintage restaurant menus as the History Channel’s American Pickers is to antique memorabilias. Charles Baum, Barbara McMahon and Eugen Beer collects and restores collectible menus physically and digitally and sells them as prints. The trio have made it their mission to preserve the time when characters on menus became synonymous to the restaurant’s name. Back then, illustrators were brought in to put their creative touch to an establishment’s menu. However, in today’s world, the reach for sophistication has eliminated talking fishes, cockroaches in top hats, and mermaids riding lobsters altogether and turned menus bland. Cool Culinaria wants to change this and aims to bring the allure of holding art in your hands when you least expect it.