40 PHL Menu

I love our Connecticut house. I really do. I love escaping the concrete jungle for greenery and tranquility. It's only an hour and twenty minute drive from Chelsea without traffic, but lately, it's been taking us around an hour and a half + change. Most of the time we go alone but often times we host our family, friends and clients. When we do host, I like to make sure everyone has a first class experience.

For our dining experience, I always like to write down our meals, so we have a small ceramic menu board with a frog on top that you can use with dry erase markers. I've been using it for years and I like it because I can update it for each meal service quickly. Although, I would prefer a larger one because sometimes it doesn't all fit so I have to write smaller. Also, the markers tend to bleed a little so sometimes you can't read it that well, but it works for now.

Through the years, we've come up with different ways to present the food menu. At one point, Mark designed a simple but elegant paper menu that we were going to hand out like a regular restaurant menu, but I decided to cut and tape it to the frog menu board. It didn't look that classy, but at least it looked clean and neat. I like the printed paper menu because you can be creative, add graphics and use a classy font versus sloppy handwriting and having to draw on the menu board, which I can't draw.

For my birthday last year, Bill, Mark's brother, gave me a very special gift. He created a very classy, creative and exceptional menu with help from a coworker. It's printed on egg shell colored high quality card stock and is folded in half like a booklet. The front cover has the address 40 PHL in a diamond shape in the middle of the cover AND has a picture of the house in the background. How cool is that? The inside left page is blank and dark brown colored, while the inside right page has the title "MENU" at the top with a picture of the kitchen in the background. It takes up about 1/4 of the top of the page to make room for the removable insert which is sized perfectly for the space for where the food menu goes. The removable insert is also printed on the same egg shell colored high quality card stock so it matches. The insert includes: the date, starters, main courses, side dishes, desserts, and wine with a smaller diamond logo of 40 PHL at the bottom. I like the insert because, obviously, you can update it accordingly and it also provides the opportunity to place small icons next to a dish highlighting if a dish is vegetarian, spicy or dairy free. Possibilities are endless, but I'd like it to stay classy, of course. The back of the menu has a picture of the house during the winter with snow on the ground.

I like this menu because it could be used only for dinner and guests can take it home as a souvenir (just the insert), and for breakfast and lunch, I could continue using the frog menu board.

Many thanks, Bill. One of the best birthday presents I ever received.