“Where the Wurzburger Flows…”

 

The title is a reference to a hit song of 1902, composed by Americans Harry von Tilzer and Vincent Bryan, that lauded an admired German beer at Luchow’s, Wurzburger. The beer was from Wuerzburger Hofbraeu, still going strong in Bavaria.

The beer had cult status in America for some 100 years from the 1880s. It can still be found (numerous brands), e.g. at the national chain outlet Total Wine.

There are notable passages on beer in Leonard Jan Mitchell’s Luchow’s German Cookbook, published in 1952. These have historical importance and have not previously been remarked by beer historians, to my knowledge.

The book is sub-titled The Story and Favorite Dishes of America’s Most Famous German Restaurant.

First, a summary of my reading of Luchow’s history in New York. The subject is surprisingly large and would warrant a full-length essay, at least.

The sources include digitized Luchow menus, Mitchell’s book, books on the history of New York cuisine, books by H.L. Mencken on literary personages and beer (sample statement: Luchow’s is a “citadel of pilsner”). Also reviewed were various websites, blogs, and newspaper and magazine articles.

Luchow’s was started in 1882 by a German only lately arrived from Hanover, August Luchöw. (Henceforth I’ll omit the umlaut, which has a mini-history of its own in relation to Luchow signage and advertising).

It was founded on the site of a saloon on East 14th Street in the Union Square district in New York, then a happening area gathering theatre, business, and nightlife activities.

August had worked there for two years as a waiter, and then set up his German-theme restaurant. He had the help of a $2000 stake from William Steinway, the piano magnate and fellow German-American.

 

 

August did this by buying the saloon and steadily enlarging the restaurant through land acquisition until it occupied a full block to 13th street. It encompassed various “hunting” and other rooms in the baronial German style in addition to the main dining hall. It was known for dark wood panelling, carved beams, giant paintings, statuary, and cut glass. A wag once termed the general style “Early North German Lloyd”.*

The restaurant lasted at the same location a full 100 years. It moved to new premises on Broadway in 1982 but expired a couple of year later with a satellite in Penn Station going dark in 1986. From 1950 Luchow’s had been owned by Mitchell who bought control from August’s nephew, Viktor Eckstein.

Mitchell, who must have changed his name in the fashion of countless American immigrants, was a debonair blond Latvian or Swede (accounts vary) who arrived in the country by jumping a ship of the Russian merchant marine in 1932.

In his book he suggests had he not come to America he’d have settled as a country squire at home. I believe this an arch or humorous statement as he was a Jewish immigrant and like millions of incomers, likely came without much personal resource except abundant drive and ambition.

He became prosperous through investments in the restaurant business and also by collecting pre-Columbian gold, a collection he donated to a New York museum which you can see today.

Mitchell’s goal was to revive Luchow to its pre-Prohibition eminence and he did this successfully for decades until the bell finally tolled. He had his work cut out for him since Prohibition and WW II had diminished the venerable establishment.

 

 

After WW II the menu was considerably slimmed, the beer choice too, from the prewar glory. In 1936 for example no less than 15 draught beers were available, see details here in a menu in the collection of the Culinary Institute of America. Numerous bottled beers were offered, in addition.

Only Janssen’s in New York had anything comparable, as I discussed earlier here. Still, its draught range, certainly carefully selected, was rather smaller than Luchow’s in its prime.

Still, Luchow’s enjoyed new-found popularity from the 1950s until it finally lapsed in 1986.

Quite amazingly, Leonard Jan Mitchell lived until 2009, dying at 96. It is truly a pity no one interviewed him on Luchow’s and its beers in his last years. He passed away just before the onset in America of widespread interest in culinary and beverage matters. One wishes that a gastronomic researcher such as Anthony Bourdain had sat down with him for an extended chat.

 

 

Luchow’s was American agent for Wurzburger from the 1880s until well into the 20th century. It also represented Pilsner Urquell, two valuable franchises for the top end of beer imports.

As Mitchell lived well into the era when beer again became a gourmet item in New York one can only ponder how he viewed its revival. Had he been in his prime in 2009 I’m sure he’d have wanted to start again in the beer and restaurant trade. As it was, he sold out in 1970 to focus on other endeavours, and the restaurant faltered thereafter.

Earlier I described the wide-ranging 1930s beer offerings of the Waldorf-Astoria bar in New York. Luchow’s offerings, especially in the 1930s, amounted to almost as many beers but focused more squarely on the European lager tradition, not least via its palette of draught beers.

Wurzburger in multiple types was the star, a light or Helles, an Edelbrau (perhaps a Dortmund or Export variation), a dark Munich, and sometimes a bock or other seasonal specialty.

Mitchell’s volume benefitted from a witty introduction by the Belgian-Austrian-American writer Ludwig Bemelmans, who possibly ghost-wrote the book.

My interpretation of a number of statements in the introduction:

  • the reference to March beer may refer to the colour of the standard Wurzburger then, apparently a Vienna-like bronze. Wurzburger is a classic Franconian brewery and would seem inapt for influence from the Viennese brewer Anton Dreher, so perhaps March beer simply meant here long-aged lager. American breweries had cut down lagering times significantly but Wurzburger in 1950 likely aged its standard brew three or four months and the specialties (see below) longer
  • the “resting” of the beer in cooler after shipment was probably to allow re-absorbtion of carbonation. There is no indication if this beer was pasteurized or treated with preservative of some kind, or how long the journey took from a newly-peacetime Germany
  • the beer-warmers mentioned can still be seen in parts of Germany, e.g., for wheat beer
  • the “Zahn” draft system mentioned probably is technology of Zahm & Nagel, a brewing equipment supplier based in Buffalo, NY founded by a German immigrant who had brewed in Germany. He designed volume meters and other carbonation and piping equipment whose basic designs are still used by the firm today (see website referenced).
  • The October and Christmas beers were probably heavier-gravity versions of the basic lager that received longer aging
  • Beer kept long in barrel would in the old days sometimes have been extra-fizzy from continued fermentation in the cask, often probably by wild yeast or Brettanomyces. This is lore deriving from pre-Prohibition times
  • The consumption, at some 100 barrels per week, is impressive but was far greater in the heyday of Luchow’s, when the house got through scores of thousands of half-barrels per annum
  • The reference to different gas pressures for each beer is of particular interest. The range specified is quite high by modern standards, I’d say 10-12 psi is more typical. Two reasons may explain Luchow’s practice: first, if the lines were unusually long between casks and fonts, more pressure may have been needed to speed the beer to destination. Alternatively, if the lines were a standard length in relation to the pressure, Luchow’s may have liked a high froth as in some German traditions beer is served with a thick head
  • would that I could have attended their 1950s Bock Beer Festival! What I wouldn’t give for that. A gala of Gambrinus, gammon and gans that must have been…
  • to my best recollection, none of the beers on any Luchow menu or menus of other German-American restaurants from c.1900-1970s was a wheat beer. The reason I think is, the relative lack of popularity of these beers in contemporary Bavaria. The style only really resurged from the 1970s as many commentators have stated. One can see this refracted through the contents of otherwise well-curated German beer lists in America.

 

N.B. The edifice that housed the restaurant on 14th Street no longer exists. The building, derelict by the late 1980s, was torn down to build a residence and related functions for NYU or New York University.

Note re images and quotation: the first and second images are courtesy the historic photo and menu collection of the New York Public Library, www.nypl.org. The third image was sourced from the digitized newspaper site Chronicling America, here. The fourth is from the menu collection of the Culinary Institute of America, here. The last image is from the website of Wuerzburger Hofbraeu, also linked in the text. All intellectual property in the sources belongs solely to the lawful owners, as applicable. Images and quotation are used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcome.

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*For further context regarding North German Lloyd see here, as well as this 1982 article by Frank Prial in the New York Times. The wag was journalist and author Bob Considine, famous for his co-authored Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Paint me a Picture

Using Images to Market Food and Drink in Restaurants and Pubs

One of the simplest ways to depict food and drink, and certainly the oldest, is pictorially, as below.

The event was a dinner in Paris in 1937, held for an international theatre organization.

The reason is simple to contemplate: most attendees did not speak French. The simple pen-and-ink drawings gave them an idea of the food to be served, and drinks. A secondary reason may have been the inclination of those trained in the dramatic arts to communicate by visual impact, sometimes without verbal aid (think of silent movies).

It is surprising that ideograms, or pictograms properly speaking, aren’t used more often on menus. The “Mad Men” have long known that images on billboards and food labels convey strong content but one sees it much less in restaurant menus.*

Images of bottled or canned beer are sometimes included in a menu offering these formats, but not as often as one might think. In part, the reason is probably continuing change of supply and increased cost to keep the images current.

For draft beer, given beer has a variety of colours a skilled artist can render a bar’s offerings in pictographic form. Where a specific glass is used for each beer, the content can be even stronger. You could put Russian or Irish iconography around a glass of stout, say.

Shape and colour can prompt or encourage consumer demand. Many people react to images positively, I see this on social media a lot. To suggest that a person’s reaction is childish and intemperate someone might upload an image of a crying baby, maybe from a well-known film or tv show.

Emotional reactions are frequently depicted in this way, a primal form of communication that has returned ironically with a hyper-sophisticated medium, Twitter.

Obs. You know you are in France when not less than four alcohol courses accompany, not a special gastronomic evening, but a meal for a trade group: aperitifs for the hors-d’oeuvre, Riesling with the soup, Burgundy with the duck and lamb, and Champagne to conclude.

The caterer no doubt proposed liqueurs with the coffee. One can imagine the organizers were mindful the troupes had a show to mount the next day, or of their budget.

Perhaps one should speak in the past tense of this Gallic proclivity. What’s bred in the bone may be no longer…

Note re images: the first and third images are from the Culinary Institute of America’s Digital Collections, see further details here. The second image is from the source identified and linked in an earlier post of ours, here. All intellectual property in the images belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Images used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*An exception may be some Asian cuisines, at least in Western markets, as I recall numerous menus with colourful depictions of the foods offered. I may be wrong but I associate this practice with popular or lunch-oriented eating.

 

The End of Quebec’s National Breweries Ltd.

 

As a clue to the end of National Breweries Ltd. in Quebec, consider its 1949 annual report. It’s the final report in digital form in McGill University’s business reports archive before buy-out in 1952 by E.P. Taylor’s Canadian Breweries Ltd.

The report states that sales were down, production and other costs were up, and taxes unchanged from wartime peaks. Hence, earnings were considerably down although a profit was still made, paying a dividend of $2.38 on the common shares. The rate the year earlier was almost $4.00.

The total tax bill absorbed half the sales dollar and had sharply risen since the start of WW II.

While reversing the excess war tax would have improved results other indicators suggested danger ahead.

The report states the company was not able to meet full demand in the peak season. Quebec has a long cold winter and spring, and a short although sometimes hot summer. In those pre-air conditioning days, drinking cold beer was a common way to refresh. I remember growing up in Montreal seeing people drink it on their balconies, stoops, and backyards.

The problem seems to have been structural. National could not make enough beer when it needed to, but most of the year had too much capacity. It had, in a geographically large but comparatively small-population province, six plants: two Dawes plants in Montreal, the Dow and Frontenac plants there, and two small breweries in Quebec City.

Too much capacity, too much work force… The answer seemed clear: reduce excess capacity but modernize plant to enable spikes in sales to be met. A solution required capital investment and rationalization, but National was already paying interest on a debenture draining profits.

It sounds like the company couldn’t afford the first course and delayed the second although they went hand in hand, arguably.

The report states that the company was still in a good competitive position. I think the idea was steadily to increase sales to obtain the revenue to re-invest in the business. Yet, sales had dropped from the year before.

Canadian beer industry historian Allen Sneath, cited in my posts earlier, writes that E.P. Taylor was not able to do a handshake deal with Norman Dawes of National. Taylor had to mount a hostile takeover but was successful as he gained enough of the public float to gain control.

E.P. Taylor, who had limited production in Quebec province before buying National, implemented full rationalization after 1952.* The Dow brewery in Montreal was chosen to make all remaining brands for that city while the Boswell plant did the same in Quebec City. The Black Horse and Boswell brands exited the market, henceforth the focus was Dow Ale.

The corporate name was changed finally to Dow Breweries Ltd.

One has to admire the tenacity of the Dawes family, but wonders what strategy they would have implemented had Taylor not appeared. He came along, as I said earlier, at the right time for the company as a whole. But for one of its brewing dynasties, a saga that commenced in the early 19th century in Lachine, Quebec, the end was reached.

N.B. High taxes again are an issue in the brewing business as the main Canadian beer lobby, Beer Canada, has recently argued. You can parse the figures different ways, but ceaselessly increasing the excise tax together with various provincial mark-ups and other levies on the beer business, even with the break craft brewers get in Ontario, is a mug’s game (sorry!).

While consolidation at the industrial brewing level – the Big Two in Canada, I mean – has reached the limit seemingly, consumers have other options today, wine in particular, but also cannabis, soon to be legal in this country. Government needs to be mindful not to kill the golden goose.

Yes, cannabis will be taxed, but the robust survival of the illegal trade is a real possibility if that rate is seen by consumers as excessive.

Note re image: the images shown are sourced from the City of Montreal’s online museum exhibition on the history and advertising campaigns of Dawes Black Horse Brewery, here. All intellectual property in the images is owned solely by the lawful owner, as applicable. Images used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*In 1951 National sold the Frontenac plant to Canadian Breweries Ltd. Taylor later turned Frontenac into a Carling Black label plant. National no doubt hoped the money would delay survival but for Taylor, it was simply the beginning of taking the whole prize.

 

PR, Profit, and Porter: Champlain and National Breweries

Yesterday, I posted my discussion of annual reports of National Breweries Ltd. in Quebec Province in the late 1940s. National Breweries, public-traded and representing all breweries in Quebec outside Molson Brewery, purchased Champlain Brewery of Quebec City, in 1948.

The 1948 annual report stated of the purchase:

 

 

(The 1940s annual reports of National Breweries are digitally archived at McGill University’s business library. Most are in English but the 1948 report is in French).

The last paragraph states that following the purchase Champlain will gain greater marketing opportunities – a reference to National Breweries’ comparatively large advertising budget and sales staff. The report continued, “a much larger distribution network … will enable the four corners of Quebec province to purchase Champlain ale and porter”.

So Champlain’s line would reach all of Quebec vs its traditional Quebec City market.

Champlain made India Pale Ale and porter. National Breweries made similar beers at its Dawes, Dow, and Boswell units.

Was National Breweries sincere to maintain the product lines of Champlain? It apparently did so until 1952 when Toronto-based E.P. Taylor’s Canadian Breweries Ltd., took over National Breweries.

Did National fail to realize efficiencies that Taylor was more pitiless to exact from his new purchase? It is hard to say. Either way, the bland, reassuring language in the 1948 report echoes today’s press releases that accompany big brewery buy-outs of craft breweries.

Business does not, in the essentials, change over time. In 1948 National Breweries wanted to convince shareholders and Champlain’s customers that a local hero was better off in National’s fold – even though National Breweries had an existing brewery in Quebec City, Boswell.

Just as today large breweries which buy smaller ones make reassuring noises about maintaining the smaller’s product lines and (often) production capacity (sometimes of course they do, but it is probably the exception).

 

 

My sense is National Brewerues would have made the same decisions ultimately as E.P. Taylor did: cut excess production capacity and trim staff, unless a turn-around in profitability and industry prospects came soon.

Clearly, National was in trouble by the early 1950s. Why is hard to say without an in-depth study of Quebec brewing at that time. Even a cursory glance at the annual reports shows, though, the large spike in taxes the industry had to cope with since 1940, imposed to help pay for WW II. It must have kept management up at night.

Ontario-based Edward P. Taylor appeared at the right time, offering a convenient and less risky alternative to an in-house reorganization.

It came at a price, as such deals always do. The still-surviving (1952), separate Dawes Black Horse, Boswell, and Champlain ales disappeared before long, the first two with roots in the early 19th century. Dow Ale was selected as the Quebec champion. The other brands withered although Champlain Porter continued to be produced.

Champlain’s building in Quebec City still exists in modified form, as offices. Canadian Breweries Ltd. after many peregrinations was absorbed into Molson Breweries in 1989.

Molson to this day is run by canny descendants of Lincolnshire-born John Molson. Molson stayed out of the 1909 merger that created National Breweries Ltd.  A bruited 1944 marriage of Molson and National Breweries, see Allen Sneath’s book I cited yesterday, came to nought. In retrospect, perhaps a good move by Molson, although perhaps it would have fended off E.P. Taylor Quebec.

Finally, therefore, Molson got it all. In time it made its own compromises, the deal with Colorado’s Coors Brewery about 10 years ago. Still, Molson survives as a substantial Canadian and Canadian-managed business.

 

 

Craft Beer Community: Real or Illusory?

Martyn Cornell and Boak and Bailey have had a go at this question.

In my view, there is a community of the beer palate, understanding and caring about it in-depth. To use an unfashionable term, it’s a gastronomic interest, that much but not more.

Lots of people like beer but have nowhere near this degree of interest and commitment. I like coffee but the borders of the interest are close to the cup. I can see how some people want to investigate it much further, but I am not one.

I do have the beer bug though and share it with many others. It’s a sub-culture. I’ve participated in it for 40 years and I know it’s real.

We don’t have to like the same kinds of beer, we don’t have to like each other (always), but the community is no less real for that.

This unites me to a broad range of people, from CAMRA volunteers to bar owners, bloggers/writers, brewers, many brewery owners. The instant rapport when we meet or chat cannot be explained otherwise.

Not everyone in commercial brewing cares about beer in this way. For some, it’s more an avocation, or perhaps something temporary, or a good business opportunity. Even in small-scale brewing you find that but it’s the exception, not the rule in my experience.

It follows that nothing is owed by craft brewers in the sense of solidarity beyond the circle as I’ve defined it, say, with those who oppose takeovers/investments in small brewers by international groups or venture capital. At best that’s in the penumbra of the true beer community.*

But the beer community is not illusory for the ground it validly covers.

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*H.L.A. Hart’s thinking in legal jurisprudence helps clarify the issue for me, perhaps for others. See this summary by John Gardner in 1988, from the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.

 

Quebec Ale and Porter: the 1940s Heyday

The images below are striking colour plates in the 1948 annual report of National Breweries Ltd. (NBL). NBL at the time comprised six breweries in Quebec Province, with a headquarters in Montreal.

The originally separate Boswell, Dow, Dawes Black Horse, and Ekers breweries merged in 1909 as NBL – with others, but those named were the main components – Molson stayed out of it.

The Frontenac and Champlain breweries joined NBL in subsequent decades.

NBL was publicly traded but in the 30s and 40s senior management still derived from the pre-merger breweries. Dawes, Boswell, and Ekers surnames regularly appear in corporate or business documents from the time.

In 1952 E.P. Taylor’s Canadian Breweries Ltd. scooped up NBL and considerably trimmed its facilities and product lines.* Taylor started in Ottawa before the war with Brading’s Brewery, founded by his grandfather. Its ale was available into the 1960s in Ontario and Quebec.

The star beers of NBL in the late 1940s, a time seemingly indomitable for the group but proving evanescent, included these:

 

 

While Frontenac offered a lager, ale and porter dominated the NBL portfolio, inherited from early Canadian brewers working in the British way. The founders were typically immigrants from the U.K. or Ireland.

The beers had evolved by the late 1940s, but there is reason to think they preserved features of their ancestry.

The 1948 and 1947 reports are luxurious in presentation and design. The 1949 report is, by contrast, slimmed down, likely reflecting the increased financial pressures that resulted finally in takeover.

The reports show the sophistication of Canadian business by this time. The tone is perfectly pitched between business needs and “PR”. Selling the virtues of “drinking local” is nothing new: the reports vaunted NBL’s large purchases of Canadian barley, and hops grown in British Columbia.

 

 

Then, as now, brewers made hay of taxes they paid. Then, as today, brewers argued the virtues of taking over inefficient, small brewers. One report stated smoothly that buying Champlain Brewery improved distribution and meant the beers would be available all over Quebec. (Sound familiar?).

The brewers lauded their employee benefits and public service record, the latter on display notably during WW II. In truth the breweries did make many contributions to the war effort. I documented some of this viz. Dawes earlier, as gleaned from issues of its house magazine.

One difference from today is the stress placed on efficient modern production methods, with an implied critique of historical brewing methods. Eg. a pictorial compares aging barrels of beer in dank-looking, old cellars to tall ranks of orderly tuns (albeit made of wood) in spic and span modern halls.

Today, the public mind favours, or ostensibly, the old-fashioned, the local, the small. In the 1940s business vaunted the ultra-modern, the “hygienic”, with the implication products were better, and safer. Both are constructs in which marketing plays a large if not decisive role.

 

 

In their favour, NBL’s ales and porter were all-malt; the reports make no reference to brewers’ grains apart from malt. I discussed earlier that in the 1930s American brewing albeit reliant on corn and rice as brewing adjuncts, still featured high hop rates and high final gravities – compared that is to today’s mass-market norm.

NBL’s beers were likely as good or better since they were still 100% barley malt. Indeed it was an era in which Canadian beers had a high reputation in America. NBL’s beers likely approached modern craft beers in quality.

Champlain Brewery’s India Pale Ale is noteworthy. Champlain’s porter is remembered by beer historians but its IPA is rarely or never mentioned. Here you see it in its glory.

Champlain’s facility in Quebec City closed in the 1950s and the IPA forever disappeared. The porter was made into the 1990s by Molson Breweries which had absorbed Carling O’Keefe in 1989, the successor to NBL. Champlain porter, which I drank many times, had a frankly sweet, liquorice taste.

Note re images: The images above were sourced from the National Breweries Ltd. Annual Report linked in the text, part of McGill University’s digital business library. All intellectual property in the sources belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Images are included for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*See Allen Sneath’s summary in his 2001 Canadian brewing history, Brewed in Canada, here.

**Old-time B.C. hop cultivation is explained by an online museum exhibition, Brewers Gold, at Chilliwack Museum, Chilliwack, B.C.

 

 

Taverns and Beer in Working Class Montreal,1963

In 1963 the City of Montreal took dozens of black-and-white images of a quarter known colloquially as Faubourg à M’lasse, to store in archives. The odd-sounding name comes from the fact that nearby docks unloaded barrels of molasses in the 1800s. The odour, as well as the sight of urchins licking the droppings from the tuns, gave the quarter its name.

The pictures were taken to memorialize the buildings, businesses, and daily life of the heart of the area, soon to disappear under urban renewal. The national broadcaster Radio-Canada decided with the city to build its headquarters there. Where its office tower now stands, including the parking areas, the people of the Faubourg once lived and worked.

The lands were expropriated under Crown authority, and the people were moved to new dwellings elsewhere.

You can see the photos here on two pages of Flickr uploaded by the City of Montreal. In total they make a melancholy and pensive statement, one with greater impact if you know Montreal but I think compelling for anyone interested in urban life or French Canada.

Parts of the Faubourg, in the broader radius, survive especially north of the arterial Ste. Catherine Street but the core was razed. This is where the oldest buildings stood, the small shops and manufacturing plants, workshops, garages, and the like.

The Faubourg was one of the poorest areas in the city and almost exclusively French-Canadian. It symbolized for many the inferior status of the Québecois in what they viewed as their homeland (80% or more of Quebec Province has always been francophone).

However, in recent years a more complex memory has emerged, one that recognizes the spirit of the inhabitants and pride they took in their community with a knowledge that conditions had to change.

The images really are a kind of visual form of the famous English social research project, Mass Observation.

About a dozen pictures are of taverns or grocery stores selling beer. These contain great detail for the beer historian. From them alone you can tell the domestic beers available in the city then: Dow Ale, Dow Kingsbeer (lager), Dow Champlain Porter, Molson Ale, Molson Laurentide Ale, Molson Canadian (lager), Molson Porter, Labatt 50, O’Keefe Ale, and Carling Black Label (lager).

These were the same beers still popular in the mid-1970s when my memory starts for this aspect of Montreal life, except that porter had almost (not quite) disappeared. Dow ale had declined a lot due to the additives scandal c.1965 but was still sold in the 70s, indeed to about 1990.

To see the beer-specific images, on page 1 go to the sixth row, second image; seventh row, third image; tenth row, third image; and 11th row, first image.

On page 2, it’s first row, second and third images, and fourth row, all three images. But it doesn’t take long to view all the images row by row and that way too you see how the tavern life fit in to the larger picture.

The Flickr upload permits superb magnification, you can see many details including names of cigaret brands on the backbar (Player’s, Export, Du Maurier). Note the black pants and white shirt of the waiter in the sample image above. A matching black jacket was often worn but he took it off as the pictures were taken in July, 1963. It’s 55 years ago.

The suit of clothes for this métier descended from similar dress of waiters in the 19th-century that resembled today’s tuxedo. While in international use by the early 1900s, the British surely brought it here.

In the sample image you can also see, second bottle from the left on the hoarding above the bar, Molson Porter being advertised. Ale and porter were almost exclusively the beers sold in Quebec at this time, an inheritance of British rule and cultural influence again from the 1800s.

Porter had disappeared in its home city of London by 1963 but it was still commonly available in Montreal.

I want to emphasize that not all of urban French Canada lived in conditions like these. There was of course a middle class and an elite too, from which, say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau partly issues.

And there were English-speaking deprived areas as well. Examples include Little Burgundy, Goose Village, and parts of Verdun. I should not exclude the Jewish tenements east of St. Lawrence Boulevard which were very substantial until the 1950s.

But both statistically and in the general understanding I believe it is true to say that on average French speakers were less well-off than the English minority in Quebec. That has been reversed since The Quiet Revolution, La Révolution Tranquille, which started about the time these photos were taken. The term needs no explanation, je crois.

N.B. There was no English and French beer by the way, everybody drank the same stuff.

Note re images: The image above is from the City of Montreal’s photo archive identified and linked in the text. All intellectual property in the image belongs solely to its lawful owner, as applicable. Image is used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

 

 

 

The McCord’s fab Menus

McCord’s Collection

The McCord Museum of social history in Montreal is a branch of internationally-known McGill University. The museum has archived, including in its website, a series of historic Canadian restaurant menus. They are of great interest to food and drink historians, collectors of food ephemera, and those interested in Montreal’s and Canadian history.

The collection, which is somewhat under the radar, mainly takes in restaurant menus between 1967 and 1969. Some predate thos period, and a few are from restaurants outside Montreal in Quebec.

The collection is organised under the headings of Transportation, Special Events, Clubs and Associations, Advertising and Promotion, and General.

Hospital menus are also included, an overlooked area surely of food historical studies.

See here for the index page. One must scroll through each group to view the items, and there is no master list. Some menus are numbered by hand, but are not consecutive. Still, it doesn’t take long to review each group.

The menus were gathered by Shirley Courtis who worked in the research department at Noranda Mines, see its history here. I imagine she assisted an executive who collected the menus as a pastime, as the subject matter has no apparent connection to Noranda’s business.

The website identifies various individuals as donors, probably Noranda executives or others with connections to Courtis or her boss.

Below, I discuss the menus in general, with notes on the imported beers they featured. These beers are to be distinguished from beers at the Montreal tavern of the era (la taverne), a male-only resort that sold beers brewed in Quebec.

Restaurant Types and Menus

The restaurants cover classic French cuisine, Québécois dishes (often then called Canadien), seafood, Italian, deli, steakhouse, Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Continental/hotel cuisine.

Some restaurants were of modest class but most catered to a high-end market. The scans are high-quality and the colour reproductions often striking. Menu graphical design then was an art, a tradition descended from the 19th century, now mostly lost.

Some menus contain historical notes and even recipes. Mother Martin’s menu, from a downtown business restaurant I patronized numerous times, offers a recipe from Alsace. Mother Martin’s specialized in French provincial and Québécois food.

The building that housed Mother Martin’s (La Mère Martin) earlier had been owned by a descendant of the Quebec Harts, of whom I have written for their c. 1800 brewing recipe. It is perhaps the oldest surviving commercial brewing recipe in North America.

My Personal Connection

I am a native of Montreal, and was 19 in 1969, so I lived when these restaurants were active and remember most of the names.

I dined in comparatively few given most were in the luxe category – I was on a student budget, and dining out was a special occasion.

Nonetheless having lived in Montreal until 1983 I had the chance to visit a few marquee names. This was after I started working, and was more prosperous. In Old Montreal, the historic and tourist section, I recall a memorable meal at Restaurant St. Amable, quail with green grapes. The dish duly appears on the St. Amable menu in McCord’s collection. Seeing it caused a frisson after all these years.

It was eerie too examining the menu for Ben’s Delicatessen. Ben’s was near McGill University and a frequent lunch or dinner destination between classes, or spells at the library.

In Ben’s I would sweep my eyes over things I never ordered to focus on two or three favourites, usually involving Montreal’s specialty of smoked meat (corned or salt beef). Looking at the menu today I instinctively did the same thing, except it’s 45 years later and Ben’s has long disappeared!

Some restaurants in the collection still exist but only a few. Moishes Steak House and the Bar-B-Barn, a rib and chicken restaurant, still continue but few if any others.

British-style Pubs Invade

Starting in 1967 with the Cock and Bull Pub on Ste. Catherine Street West a spate of British- and Irish-style pubs arrived. Two, the Fyfe and Drum and the John Bull, were near what is now Concordia University downtown. I patronized them during my years at university, 1967-1975.

My alma mater is McGill, and the British-style pubs were further west, near Concordia University (then called Sir George Williams University). We walked the 15 minutes through downtown to get there.

When having a beer out we generally went to the tavern, a male-only establishment as noted above. In about 1978 the dual-sex, differently-appointed “brasserie” was created. New licenses could only be issued for this newer type of beer parlour. The older type offered simpler drink and food and only basic atmosphere, intended for a working class/clerical or student clientele. The tavern was destined to disappear, an index of changing times.

The British-style pubs were a cut or two above these others and were really themed restaurants, often featuring live music.

There must have been a dozen by the early 1970s. A later entrant, founded in 1977, is Chez Alexandre on Peel Street which is still going strong. It was instrumental in introducing British draft beer to Montreal. It was founded by an immigrant Frenchman, Alain Creton, who runs it to this day. I saw him there a few years ago and he has hardly changed.*

Then as now the first floor of Alexandre was a French bistro. The second floor was the pub, now called John Sleeman Pub.

These pubs were stylized, rather distant interpretations of the real thing. The potent cultural power of the “British pub” drew the people, the rest mattered little.

These facsimile pubs were spurred IMO by the highly popular British pub at Montreal’s Expo ’67, which I discussed in this post.

Beer in Montreal Restaurants

The most beer-oriented menu in the McCord is from 1969, for Charlie Brown’s Ale and Chop House, see Partie III, group #3 of the general category. The beer list is shown in the third image above.

A draft beer, brand not stated, was also available at Charlie Brown’s. Perhaps it was Heineken or another international lager rather than an English ale, as Chez Alexandre always claimed to be the first (in modern times anyway) to offer draft British beer and Guinness stout.

Charlie Brown ceased operating about 1970, but had an enduring influence. I will discuss in a future post the Sir Winston Churchill Pub, now called Winnie’s. A popular watering hole, it soldiers on, some 50 years later in the Crescent Street entertainment district.

Other Restaurants and Beer

Other menus featured fewer imports than Charlie Brown. Except it seems for Irish Harp lager and famed Pilsner Urquell it seems Charlie Brown had them all.** A German restaurant downtown advertised Helles and Dunkel in the barrel but these may have been domestic brewings. No Quebec brewery then to my knowledge made a dark lager. Maybe the Dunkel in those barrels was really porter, still made at the time by Canadian breweries.

Many menus are accompanied by restaurant reviews clipped from the Montreal Gazette or Montreal Star, which adds to their interest. Helen Rochester wrote these for the Montreal Star, and her work came to life again many decades later.

Restaurant reviewers in the dailies then rarely mentioned alcohol so no form is discussed.

Another beer list of note was at the stylish Kon Tiki at the Mount Royal Hotel, see again in Partie III. The colour reproductions of its signature Tiki drinks are quite stunning with Day-Glo vividness.

Beer was a sideline at the Kon-Tiki but still the bar offered Brading Ale from Ontario, an old-style stock ale; Carling, either Red Cap Ale or the lager; Dow Ale; Bass Ale; Labatt’s, probably the “50” brand; Molson, this meant Export Ale then; O’Keefe, an ale; and Guinness stout. Brading was unusual being from Ontario. Any non-import beer then in Montreal usually was brewed in Quebec.

The Mount Royal attracted visitors from Ontario, hence probably this choice. The Carling may have been brewed in Ontario too.

(Today the hotel, considerably altered, is commercial and retail premises).

Some menus list bottled Guinness stout as an import but that form was made in Canada starting in 1965 as a Labatt historical timeline confirms. Ditto for Charrington Toby Ale, first brewed in Canada in 1962 as Allen Sneath confirms in his book Brewed in Canada. Then, as now, a locally-brewed beer of foreign origin might be touted as imported. The restaurateurs themselves hardly knew the difference, or cared, in most cases.

Envoi

Do I remember any of these imported brews? I do. I remember Whitbread Pale Ale’s sweet grainy character. I remember Danish Tuborg for its elegant, cakey taste. Bottled Guinness at the time (well, technically not an import) seemed burnt-tasting and quite unlike any Canadian beer I knew.

I have a memory of a scented, amber beer for the Bass Ale. I enjoyed Czech Pilsner Urquell and German Beck’s but remember thinking, even then, the wending route to destination did them no favours.

I also recall British draft beer in an Indian restaurant in the early 1980s, and enjoying the match with the food. It may have been Watney Red Barrel Ale, that type, certainly. The Worthington name rings a bell too, 40 plus years on.

Note re images: The images above, except for the last, were sourced from the McCord Museum’s digital menu archive identified and linked in the text. The last image is from Bouteilles du Québec, a bottle-collection site and discussion forum, see here. All intellectual property in the sources belongs solely to the lawful owners, as applicable. Images are used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

*This interview with Creton last year in a Montreal newspaper explains his durability. Creton states that his first importation of beer was in 1982. It shows how relatively meagre was the beer scene in Quebec then. But a few years later (1986) the first modern brewpub started up, the Golden Lion in Lennoxville, Quebec. Today the province is a craft beer haven. To my knowledge the Golden Lion is still going strong, buoyed by venerable Bishop’s University nearby.

**The Hunter’s Horn downtown, vaguely in the Irish genre, offered Harp lager. The “Horn” was a resort of Montreal’s English-language journalists and other media.

 

 

Lager Makes Waves in London

Yesterday, I discussed the beers of a chic hotel in Bermuda in 1927. I mentioned too rock stars around 1970 were photographed drinking lager, while most Britons still drank bitter or mild in the pub. Ale still enjoyed over 90% of the market entering the 1970s.

A blogger has compiled images of mostly British rock stars hoisting a beer, starting with The Beatles. In almost all cases it’s lager or another type quite similar, e.g. Joe Cocker cooly appraising a line-up of Cooper’s beers from it seems Australia.

It paints a certain picture, of lager’s “cool”, and there was the publicity or knock-on factor. Canadian mogul Edward Plunkett (E.P.) Taylor did much to spread the gospel of lager in Britain, as Cornell explains. But even he can only claim part of the credit.

The die was cast long before – in the colonies and other overseas possessions, among increasing numbers of Britons who visited Europe from the 1960s, among countless ex-forces members who became accustomed to lager when serving overseas.

Lager even formed part of Royal ships’ stores, as the 1975 article I mentioned yesterday notes: See Watts, H.D., Lager Brewing in Britain, Geography Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1975), pp. 139-145 (accessible by JSTOR).

Returning to restaurant menus, consider this splendid 1939 wine list from Prunier’s in London (via NYPL menus archive):

 

 

Once again Barclay’s lager appears, this time in its home city. If you had spent time in a Guards regiment in Bermuda in the 1920s and knew the beer then, you would remember it in Prunier’s years later. Prunier was the French founder’s name, owner of the original in Paris. A second outlet opened in France, and London had its branch too. The locations were well-tended by the daughter of Prunier after his death.

Today, the Paris location still continues, but under another name. The English branch closed in 1976. You might say, but this was a French restaurant so the beers bore the imprint of France, hence lager would dominate.

But it shows international influences were having an impact on local (London restaurant) practice, on the ground. Globalization was always a factor in European life but accelerated with modern transportion and communications, growth of tourism, and sadly war.

Most lagers on the 1939 menu were famous names by then, and became more so after the 1939-1945 war. There were five blond lagers, Worthington’s and Bass’ ales, and the ever-present Guinness stout. One lager was less well-known, a pilsener from Van Den Heuvel. This was a Brussels brewery, and likely it made a good choice for an Anglo-French menu.

Look in the NYPL archive at the same restaurant’s menus for the 1950s and 60s. By then it was called the St. James, after the street address in S.W.1. The beer choice is mostly lager still with Bass and Guinness hanging on. The situation after the war had to be similar in other West End restaurants and hotels.

Consider what a journalist wrote in 1893 for the Wrexham lager project in Wales:*

… this class of beer will be the beer of the future in the United Kingdom, and more especially in tropical countries.

In St. James, in West End restaurants and hotels, lager was the beer to have by the 1950s. In pubs down the road it was still virtually unknown. That wasn’t to last. The changeover was inevitable given the various forces at work as lager could be produced essentially for the same cost as ale and stout. If lager had remained as costly as, say, Champagne, it would be still reserved for an upscale market, as real Champagne still is.

Note: All intellectual property in image above belongs solely to lawful owner. Source is linked in the text. Image used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

…..

*The oldest commercial venture in Britain making beer by bottom-fermentation is, as far as I know, the Austro-Bavarian Lager Beer Company in Tottenham, London. It commenced business in 1881 and exited the market by end of the decade. See details here in an issue of the Lancet from 1884. In this post last year, I reviewed a company brochure on the types of beer made.

 

 

Lager – Made in the Shade

 

Above is the wine list that accompanied a special dinner held at the Princess Hotel in 1927, to commemorate George Washington’s birthday. The item is preserved in the menu archive of the Culinary Institute of America.

Wine you say during Prohibition? The hotel was, and is, in Bermuda.

Long a resort of monied tourists especially North American, Bermuda was a favoured bolt-hole especially in winter. Under British dominion, it housed a sizeable naval base and garrison – people with beer thirsts.

American Prohibition between 1920 and 1933 gave a huge impetus to this demand. The island was reached by boat from the American mainland, as commercial air service had not yet started.

Lots of thirsty Americans with money and time steamed over to Bermuda for good times. Wikipedia states of the still-thriving hotel:

From the moment it opened, The Princess was considered the gem of the island. With long shady verandas and a blue slate roof, the four-story building comprised 70 rooms, each equipped with gas lights, hot and cold running water and a five-inch mirror to allow guests to primp before stepping out for the night. Staff dressed in white jackets and waving pink handkerchiefs greeted luxury liners.

As word got out, celebrities started to appear. Mark Twain, a regular at the hotel, loved to smoke cigars on the veranda and wartime guest Ian Fleming is said to have used its fish tank-lined Gazebo Bar as a motif in his novel, Dr. No.

The beers offered at the hotel during Prohibition are most interesting. They pivot between Victorian favourites, an echo of the imperium ale and porter then enjoyed, and the lagers increasingly popular by the 1930s.

True, only in the 1970s did lager gain a solid footing in the U.K. itself. Much earlier though, lager was popular among British expatriates, in places like Australia, parts of Canada, parts of the Caribbean, Malaya, etc.

Lager was initially the people’s drink in Bavaria and elsewhere in Central Europe. Later it became toast of the beer world, smart, in a word.

British rock bands on the road ca.1970 drank Skol, Carlsberg, Heineken, Coors, trendy lagers then. It was pictured in magazines and films. This finally clicked with people in the British high street: this is our drink too.

American visitors to Bermuda, for their part, had an ingrained preference for lager. This explains in part some items on the menu. Still, the shape of beery things to come was clear, and the list is good proof of that.

Danish Carlsberg, a pilsener from St. Pauli in Bremen, another Bremen pils (one or both from Beck’s), another pils from another German port, Hamburg, and two Dutch lagers, one certainly Heineken or Amstel, tell the tale.

There was also London-brewed Barclay’s lager. It was never to be a Heineken but London brewers were starting to take lager seriously, in other words.

Perhaps hedging his bets, the steward included two Munich dark lagers, the original form of Bavarian lager. And certainly, John Bull favourites were listed: two Bass bottlings, Simonds milk stout and two bottlings of Guinness.

Long familiarity with lager by Britons outside the country set the stage for broader acceptance at home. The success of British pale ale in India in the early 1800s and later in Britain itself is an obvious parallel, not without some irony here.

Still, up to the 1970s U.K. lager, with some exceptions including Scotland, was largely exported. See Watts, H.D., Lager Brewing in Britain, in Geography Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1975), pp. 139-145 (accessible by JSTOR).

But the U.K. caught up, finally. Craft brewing has only partly reversed the steady success of lager nationally since the 1970s.

Much of the impetus started on menus such as the Princess’ in Bermuda in 1927.

 

Note re images: The first and last images were sourced from the Culinary Institute of America’s digital menu archive identified and linked in the text. The St. Pauli Girl label was sourced at the label collection and brewery information site, www.taverntrove.com, hereAll intellectual property in the sources used belongs solely to the lawful owners, as applicable. Images used for educational and historical purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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