Bismarck Hotel Breakfast Menu, Chicago, 1945

Greet the day with a smile, this cheerful egg seems to say. In the golden era of menu design, many foods were made to look human. They were given faces by talented illustrators and dressed up – this egg has a hat and a cane. Chicago's famed Bismarck hotel was opened in 1894 by German immigrants Emil and Karl Eitel and for many decades, businessmen and lawyers conducted their affairs over breakfasts of steak, eggs and coffee in the hotel's elegant Walnut Room. The Eitel family sold the Bismarck in 1956 and it went through several other owners before eventually closing in 1996. It reopened in 1998 as the Hotel Allegro, a chic boutique hotel in The Loop that retains many of the Art Deco glories of the old Bismarck.