Why is there a panda on the front cover of this thoroughly American 1948 menu in Bartlesville, Oklahoma?

We can only guess. However, America has long had a love affair with pandas, starting in 1936 when a three-month-old panda cub called Su Lin arrived in California, the first panda to leave China.

By the end of the 1930s, pandamania was in full force and zoos clamored to have them. ‘Everyone from Helen Keller to Al Capone couldn’t resist the chance to visit a panda,’ writes Chris Heller for Smithsonian.com.

In 1972, following President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China, the US was gifted Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. The two pandas lived the rest of their lives in the National Zoo in Washington DC.

Since then, China has merely loaned to foreign nations.

The Panda Grill certainly loved the distinctive black and white bears that live in the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu in China.

The panda theme continues in the food offerings, with Paddy Panda’s Pancakes for breakfast and the Panda Boogie hamburger special, along with more cute panda illustrations.

The most expensive item on this menu was a $2 top sirloin steak dinner.

Bartlesville was the location of Oklahoma’s first commercial oil well, called The Nellie Johnstone No 1, and is the birthplace of the Phillips Petroleum Company. With fascinating history, museums and restaurants, it is a popular tourist destination.

However, if you want to see pandas, you will have to visit the National Zoo in Washington DC or the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California, currently the only two zoos with pandas on loan from China.

This menu is dated 1948 and we found an old advertisement in the Bartlesville Advertiser newspaper in that year about an Anda Panda Prevue at the Osage Theatre followed by midnight snacks at the Panda Grill. Pandamania indeed!