About

About UK Menu Archives

Our objective is to support & expand the archive by image licensing & publishing peoples/establishments menus on our website & archiving them in perpetuity.  

We have licence types to service all requirements; from a simple download to a TV Documentary.  So please drop us a line on the contact page.

United Kingdom Archives has just started the process of digitising the collection. It was decided to open straight away online; so please be patient with us as we get over any teething problems. The plan is to place 5 menus from each group, so we can get all the categories up and running. Thus starting the full uploading of the archive. We have thousands of important historical menus and there is a lot to sort out behind the scenes…….So please be patient with us.

Thank You.

Occasionally we will make a decision on how to best place a Menu not exactly to its category – E. G.  – Deutscher Offizier-Club, London – 1912.  It is not strictly Edwardian and pertains to Military interest; especially as it is a German Army Club in the Metropolis and so close to the First World War. So we placed it in Military – First World War.  So please be aware of some reworking in certain circumstances.

 

My name is Alexander Everett & I am in charge of the archive. I was a Chef for twenty years starting with an apprenticeship and working my way up through the ranks.

During this period I have always sought out menus. I started like most people, saving them as a souvenir, or for studying the content and terminology for writing my own menu ideas later.

This style of collecting dramatically changed one day when I discovered my first vintage menu in a junk shop, it was from the Crypt Café in Dover from the 1930s.

I was now captivated. I experienced great affinity towards these rare and vulnerable records of eating out. Whether they were a little card composed of humorous art & menu vocabulary from a British Tommy in World War II, or a Grand Banquet at the Guildhall. I now felt a charge to collect, collate and care for this neglected sphere of British social and culinary history.