OnAugust 18, 1972, Patricia Curtan used a letterpress for the first time tocreate a menu for Alice Waters's famed Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, back when Sunday brunch was only $1.75, a cheese plate $1.50. Curtancontinued to hone her craft throughout the restaurant's four decades ofexistence, marking each dinner with a new menu and image printed in the classic method. "Menus for Chez Panisse: The Art & Letterpress of PatriciaCurtan," chronicles the iconicCalifornia establishment's history through her creations.

Curtan's complexmethod uses a century-old Chandler & Price platen press and hand-carvedlinoleum blocks that serve as stamps to create the images. Curtan painstakinglycreates each menu with care. "For decades now, Patty's art has been the perfectvisual analog to the food we cook — and, I should add, to the food Patty cooks,because her cooking, as well as her art, has defined what Chez Panisse is,"writes Waters in the book's foreword.

The book runsthrough almost 40 years of menus, from intimate birthdays to lively Bastille Daycelebrations to bittersweet farewell parties. Each card is elegant and simple, serving as a memento of that night. Both ordinary and momentous meals are showcased inthe book, giving the reader an idea of Chez Panisse's inventive California cuisine.

A 1987 dinner menufor Julia Child with a stamp depicting the spit-roasted truffled chicken servedthat night lists friture of vegetables, rockfish and crab soup with fougasse,and garden salad. Another of Curtan's creations marked choreographer MerceCunningham's 80th birthday, with the words "for Merce" scripted at the top. Autumnleaves cover another, this time to mark a 2005 visit by Prince Charles and theDuchess of Cornwall. For a menu celebrating artist Olafur Eliasson's exhibitionat the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Curtan used "a typographic menu organizedaround words that evoked the season," embellished with "grass green" and "silver blue" for the springtime event.

Sadly, oneinteresting menu is noticeably absent from the book — the one from the nightimmortalized in the 1980 Les Blank documentary "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe." That evening Waters prepared the director's footwear for five hours, boiling it in garlic, herbs, and stock after Herzog lost a bet to fellow filmmakerErrol Morris. Does a Curtan creation exist for that night? If so, we would love tosee it.