Here's a terrific technicolor photograph of the Old Bookbinder's Restaurant, Philadelphia, taken from Vincent and Mary Price's "A Treasury of Great Recipes", published in 1965. The "Treasury" was really just an excuse for Vincent to eat at various horribly swanky restaurants around the world, no doubt at the publisher's expense. It's a fun book, and includes recipes for the restaurants' signature dishes and original menus in facsimile.
This is very much my sort of thing: fawning waiters in dinner jackets, bouillon ladelled from a silver tureen, the copper canopy over the roaring fire, oysters, chafing dishes over little spirit lamps, an avuncular maitre d'. Bet you anything he was always called by his first name. He's got to be a "Charles". Note the model yacht in the top left hand corner, sitting next to the exposed brickwork. Can't you just see the clientele offsetting their lunch bills against their tax returns? It's like something from The Seven Year Itch.
