Menu from the Florida Avenue Grill restaurant: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A menu from the Florida Avenue Grill restaurant in Washington, DC. The menu is a tri-fold design, with plastic sleeves bound by plastic trim. The sheets of paper inside each plastic sleeve can be removed or replaced. The front of the menu features a full-page photograph of the restaurant's founder, Lacey C. Wilson Sr., with the logo of the restaurant at the bottom-right corner. Adhered to the upper right hand corner is a sticker, worn around the edges, with the text "FLORIDA AVENUE GRILL / 65th / ANNIVERSARY 200 [obscured]". On the inside of the menu, in the upper banner, are the headers "BREAKFAST" on the left side, "SANDWICHES" in the middle, and "DINNER" on the right. The breakfast menu is listed on the left, sandwiches and daily specials in the middle, and dinners, seafood, desserts and beverages on the right. The verso of the middle fold tells the story of the founding of the Florida Avenue Grill, with pictures of the original owners Bertha Wilson and Lacey C. Wilson Sr., and the subsequent owner Lacey C. Wilson Jr. The back cover has pictures of souvenirs that can be purchased from the restaurant, including a collectible souvenir menu featuring President Barak Obama, a souvenir mug, two kinds of t-shirts, and a keychain. The outermost top left and top right corners are protected with small metal end caps.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: after 2009
• Manufactured by: Unidentified
• Used by: Florida Avenue Grill, founded 1944
• Subject of: Lacey C. Wilson Sr., American, died 1989
• Type: menus
• Medium: printing ink on paper, plastic, metal
• Dimensions: H x W x D (closed): 11 5/8 × 9 3/4 × 5/16 in. (29.5 × 24.8 × 0.8 cm)
• Dimensions: H x W x D (open): 11 5/8 × 27 3/4 × 3/4 in. (29.5 × 70.5 × 1.9 cm)
• Place used: 1100 Florida Avenue NW, Washington, District of Columbia, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Black Enterprise
• Topic: Business
• Topic: Cooking and dining
• Topic: Foodways
• Topic: Local and regional
• Object number: 2016.114.1
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Imar and Tasha Hutchins, Florida Avenue Grill
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.