New York Public Library What's On The Menu

New York Public Library What's On The Menu Menus API

Historical menu records and pages.

Documentation GitHub OpenAPI

Operations 5

GET /menus List menus

GET /menus/{id} Get menu

GET /menus/{id}/pages Get menu pages

GET /menus/{id}/dishes Get menu dishes

GET /menus/search Search menus

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OpenAPI Specification

openapi: 3.2.0
info:
  title: NYPL What's On The Menu Dishes Menus API
  description: The New York Public Library's What's On The Menu API provides programmatic access to over 17,000 historical restaurant menus from the New York City area dating back to the 1850s. Explore menus, pages, and dishes including prices, names, dates, and full-text search across the dataset.
  version: '1.0'
  contact:
    name: NYPL Menus API
    email: menus@nypl.org
    url: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
servers:
- url: http://api.menus.nypl.org
  description: Production
security:
- apiToken: []
tags:
- name: Menus
  description: Historical menu records and pages.
paths:
  /menus:
    get:
      tags:
      - Menus
      summary: List menus
      description: List menus with optional filtering. 50 menus per page by default.
      parameters:
      - name: min_year
        in: query
        schema:
          type: integer
      - name: max_year
        in: query
        schema:
          type: integer
      - name: sort_by
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - date
          - name
          - dish_count
      - name: status
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - complete
          - under_review
          - to_transcribe
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Collection of menus.
  /menus/{id}:
    get:
      tags:
      - Menus
      summary: Get menu
      description: Retrieve a specific menu by ID.
      parameters:
      - name: id
        in: path
        required: true
        schema:
          type: integer
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Single menu.
  /menus/{id}/pages:
    get:
      tags:
      - Menus
      summary: Get menu pages
      description: List pages associated with the given menu.
      parameters:
      - name: id
        in: path
        required: true
        schema:
          type: integer
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Pages of the menu.
  /menus/{id}/dishes:
    get:
      tags:
      - Menus
      summary: Get menu dishes
      description: List dishes that appear on the given menu.
      parameters:
      - name: id
        in: path
        required: true
        schema:
          type: integer
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Dishes on the menu.
  /menus/search:
    get:
      tags:
      - Menus
      summary: Search menus
      description: Full-text search across menus.
      parameters:
      - name: query
        in: query
        required: true
        schema:
          type: string
      - name: sort_by
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - relevance
          - date
          - name
          - popularity
          - obscurity
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Search results.
components:
  securitySchemes:
    apiToken:
      type: apiKey
      in: query
      name: token
      description: 26-character API token. Request access by emailing menus@nypl.org with subject "API ACCESS".

New York Public Library What's On The Menu Menus API

Operations 5

Documentation

Specifications

Schemas & Data

Other Resources