Lincoln ate at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City

[David Lockmiller]

There is a story in today's New York Times referencing Lincoln entitled "The Dinners That Shaped History." The article led with a story about a famous Picasso dinner with a group of other artists in honor of the artist, Henri Rousseau. I thought the best part of this story was the following: "Marie Laurencin did a risqué dance for the crowd and then fell, blind drunk, onto the pastries that were supposed to be served for dessert." Sounds like a really good party.

The segment of the journalistic piece relating to Abraham Lincoln is the following: "Since 1837, the wealthy and the notable have eaten at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City: Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon III, Jenny Lind and even Charles Dickens, who despised American cuisine. Delmonico’s seemed to rebut single-handedly the notion that American cooking, as one historian put it, insulted every sense but hearing." I am wondering whether the historian referred to in the quote was a Lincoln historian.