Feast Your Eyes on Vintage Vegas Menus

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) recently released a new online exhibit, “Menus: The Art of Dining.” We heard about this exhibit while listening to public radio. (Don’t panic. We accidentally landed there while searching for ’80s music.)

Check out this amazing exhibit.

Flamingo menu

Showgirl-fest! A menu from the Flamingo Show Room, circa we-have-no-idea.

The exhibit is a fascinating look at vintage restaurant and hotel showroom menus, many of them from Las Vegas. Some of our favorites are from Flamingo Las Vegas and Caesars Palace. Such rich, delicious histories!

Circus Maximus

This Circus Maximus Showroom menu is adorned with Caesars Palace performers like Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Paul Anka and Johnny Carson.

Listen to the NPR story online here.

This menu collection is so much fun to browse through! As a Las Vegas blog, not surprisingly, we eat this stuff up. (See what we did there?)

Granted, some of the prices in Vegas have gone up a bit since these early menus were printed.

El Rancho casino menu

El Rancho Vegas was the first hotel-casino on the Strip. It opened on April 3, 1941.

This online exhibit is a glimpse into the colorful evolution of dining in Las Vegas. Have fun, and thanks to UNLV for making this exhibit available to Las Vegas fans around the world.

Vintage Caesars Palace logo

Found on the back of a vintage menu, it's an early version of the Caesars Palace logo that probably wouldn't go over quite as well these days.

Go here to see today’s dining options at Caesars Palace and Flamingo. Hey, we had to include a little marketing at some point.

Silver Slipper

The menu from the"famous" Silver Slipper. A true classic!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 11th, 2010 at 7:15 am and is filed under Caesars Palace, Flamingo Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Casinos, Las Vegas Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. To leave a comment you must be 21 years of age or older.

  • Roz

    EXCELLENT! Love it. There’s also a vintage postcard link out there somewhere. Sorry, lost it when my computer crashed. I actually have a couple older postcards of Harrah’s in my cube (hint hint).

  • Roz

    EXCELLENT! Love it. There’s also a vintage postcard link out there somewhere. Sorry, lost it when my computer crashed. I actually have a couple older postcards of Harrah’s in my cube (hint hint).

  • Rick Whitney

    The Silver Slipper menu brings back memories. We lived in Las Vegas in 1963, and every Friday night my parents would take us to the Silver Slipper for dinner. After dinner my sister and I would go next door to the Last Frontier at the Frontier Hotel to play pinball games while our parents gambled. I now go to Las Vegas three times a year. I just returned yesterday from a week long visit. I love that place! I am strictly attached to Harrah’s because they treat me right, and they especially take care of their Diamond Members.

  • Rick Whitney

    The Silver Slipper menu brings back memories. We lived in Las Vegas in 1963, and every Friday night my parents would take us to the Silver Slipper for dinner. After dinner my sister and I would go next door to the Last Frontier at the Frontier Hotel to play pinball games while our parents gambled. I now go to Las Vegas three times a year. I just returned yesterday from a week long visit. I love that place! I am strictly attached to Harrah’s because they treat me right, and they especially take care of their Diamond Members.

  • Su Kim

    So glad you liked our digital exhibit. We appreciate your support!!

    Su Kim Chung
    Manuscripts Librarian
    UNLV Libraries

  • Su Kim

    So glad you liked our digital exhibit. We appreciate your support!!

    Su Kim Chung
    Manuscripts Librarian
    UNLV Libraries

  • sroeben

    Love it, Su Kim. It’s such an interesting facet of Vegas and our culture. It’s also validation whenever our grandmother says, “Back in my day, you could get two eggs, bacon, hash browns, a donut and a bar of gold for 14 cents.” Come to find out, she was pretty much right!

  • sroeben

    Love it, Su Kim. It’s such an interesting facet of Vegas and our culture. It’s also validation whenever our grandmother says, “Back in my day, you could get two eggs, bacon, hash browns, a donut and a bar of gold for 14 cents.” Come to find out, she was pretty much right!

  • sroeben

    We love those classic Vegas postcards, too, Roz. Here’s a nice batch: http://www.crecon.com/vintagevegas/museum.htm

  • sroeben

    We love those classic Vegas postcards, too, Roz. Here’s a nice batch: http://www.crecon.com/vintagevegas/museum.htm

  • http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ Cory Lampert

    What a wonderful blog entry! Thank you Pulse of Las Vegas! Just wanted to let people know that we are collecting stories and memories of dining in Las Vegas on the menus digital collection website. Stories like Rick Whitney’s above are perfect examples of the kind of thing we are hoping to share! Rick, do you mind if I add your story to the collection? If you have a memory or story about one of the restaurants in the collection, please share it by going to the Share A Story page and submitting a short form: http://digital.library.unlv.edu/collections/menus/stories

  • http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ Cory Lampert

    What a wonderful blog entry! Thank you Pulse of Las Vegas! Just wanted to let people know that we are collecting stories and memories of dining in Las Vegas on the menus digital collection website. Stories like Rick Whitney’s above are perfect examples of the kind of thing we are hoping to share! Rick, do you mind if I add your story to the collection? If you have a memory or story about one of the restaurants in the collection, please share it by going to the Share A Story page and submitting a short form: http://digital.library.unlv.edu/collections/menus/stories

  • Rick Whitney

    Cory, Yes, of course you can use my story. I have fond memories of Las Vegas as a child, and I’m enjoying the city a lot more as an adult. November will be my third trip to Las Vegas this year.