Vintage Menus to Make Modern Hearts Go Pitter-Patter

Restaurant menu design has come a long way in the last century. As proof, Reminisce magazine calls our attention to a collection of downright gorgeous vintage menus from the site Cool Culinaria.

"The golden age of menu design spanned the 1930s to the 1960s, when restaurant owners marketed their food and themselves like buccaneers," Cool Culinaria co-founder Eugen Beer writes for Reminisce. "They hired artists to create lobster-riding mermaids, cigar-chomping swordfish, and gun-toting cockerels for their menus. It was a time when chefs carried cheery ducks in saucepans, eggs bade you good morning and seals in dinner suits brought you Champagne."

Sadly for lovers of lobster-riding mermaids everywhere, menus are much less elaborate affairs these days. But perhaps, after a look at the following slideshow, restaurateurs might change their tune and steer their menus into flashier territory.