The Culinary Institute of America Menu Collection
The Culinary Institute of America, the world’s premier culinary college, has recently opened its vast and diverse collection of 30,000 menus to the public. The collection began in the small reference library at the college’s first campus in New Haven, Connecticut with donations from members of The CIA community. Over the years, it grew from the generosity of many major menu collectors, including George Lang, Chapman S. Root, Craig Claiborne, and Roy Andries de Groot . Now housed in the Conrad N. Hilton Library on the college’s campus in Hyde Park, New York, the menu collection contains items dated from 1855 to the present, including a significant representation of international menus. The menus are used by students for various projects, are often on exhibit in the library, and are currently being digitized.
