Eat In or Dine Out: A Culinary Exploration of Our Special Collections

Credit: Chef illustration from It’s Tops for Taste! Canada’s Best Apple Pie, Murray’s Restaurant poster, approximately 1950.

About the exhibit

Nibble your way through early cookbooks, familiar menus, iconic dining spots of Toronto, and more culinary curiosities from our Special Collections.

Discover rare items that reveal how people ate in our past – at home and around town. Here's just some of what to expect:

• Recipe book for artificial milk from 1867
• Wartime posters about rationing
• Vintage ad for "fluid beef"
• A Mrs. Beeton's cookbook
• Pasta boxes from the 1940s
• Air Canada in-flight menu
• Giant ad for Tim Horton's hot dogs
• Zellers restaurant menu
• Poster for the Eaton's Centre food court

And for dessert: check out the related display beside the Balzac's coffee shop — it features Chinese restaurant menus through the decades from our Chinese Canadian Archive.

Guided tours

Drop in for an in-person, staff-led tour on Tuesdays. Meet us inside the TD Gallery.

April 2 at 3 pm
April 9 at 3 pm
April 16 at 3 pm
April 23 at 3 pm
April 23 at 3 pm
April 30 at 3 pm
May 7 at 3 pm
May 14 at 3 pm
May 21 at 3 pm
May 28 at 3 pm
June 4 at 3 pm