New York Public Library What's On The Menu website screenshot

New York Public Library What's On The Menu

The New York Public Library's What's On The Menu project is a crowdsourced digital collection of over 17,000 historical restaurant menus from the New York City area dating back to the 1850s, with more than 1.3 million transcribed dishes. The dataset is modeled as four related entities (Menu, MenuPage, MenuItem, Dish) and distributed as bulk CSV downloads. A companion HTTP API formerly provided programmatic access to menus, pages, and dishes; the live site and api.menus.nypl.org were retired in January 2025, but the crowdsourced dataset remains available as a gzip archive on Amazon S3 alongside a data dictionary.

New York Public Library What’s On The Menu publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: Dishes API and Menus API. Tagged areas include Libraries, Menus, Restaurant, History, and Open Data.

The New York Public Library What’s On The Menu catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

New York Public Library What’s On The Menu’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, and 5 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
34.9/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 23/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try
1 APIs
LibrariesMenusRestaurantHistoryOpen DataFoodDatasetsCultural Heritage

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
Composite quality — 34.9/100 · thin
Contract Quality 12.6 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 17
Access Clarity 2.7 / 17
Operational Transparency 1.2 / 11
Contract Governance 2.6 / 10
Discoverability 5.8 / 9
Regulatory Posture 4.7 / 15
Agent readiness — 23/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10
Documented Reversibility 6 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 9 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

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

Dish records appearing across menus.

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

Historical menu records and pages.

Open Collections 3

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

NYPL What's On The Menu Dishes API

OPEN COLLECTION

NYPL What's On The Menu Dishes Menus API

OPEN COLLECTION

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Context

26 classes · 21 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

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

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 4

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Dish

9 properties

JSON SCHEMA

MenuItem

9 properties

JSON SCHEMA

MenuPage

7 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Menu

20 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Dataset Structure

4 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 4

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Dish Example

9 fields

EXAMPLE

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Menu Example

20 fields

EXAMPLE

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Menu Item Example

9 fields

EXAMPLE

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Menu Page Example

7 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

New York Public Library Whats On The Menu Agentic Access

9 operations

9 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess
AgenticAccess

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization
GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity
 Authentication
Authentication

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website
Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

DataDictionary
DataDictionary

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu
name: New York Public Library What's On The Menu
description: The New York Public Library's What's On The Menu project is a crowdsourced digital collection of over 17,000
  historical restaurant menus from the New York City area dating back to the 1850s, with more than 1.3 million transcribed
  dishes. The dataset is modeled as four related entities (Menu, MenuPage, MenuItem, Dish) and distributed as bulk CSV downloads.
  A companion HTTP API formerly provided programmatic access to menus, pages, and dishes; the live site and api.menus.nypl.org
  were retired in January 2025, but the crowdsourced dataset remains available as a gzip archive on Amazon S3 alongside a
  data dictionary.
kind: contract
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-09-03'
  method: derived
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu.png
tags:
- Libraries
- Menus
- Restaurant
- History
- Open Data
- Food
- Datasets
- Cultural Heritage
tags_raw:
- Libraries
- Menus
- Restaurants
- History
- Open Data
- Food
- Datasets
- Cultural Heritage
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2024-11-14'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu:new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dishes-api
  name: New York Public Library What's On The Menu Dishes API
  description: Dish records appearing across menus.
  humanURL: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
  baseURL: http://api.menus.nypl.org
  tags:
  - Dishes
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dishes-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
  - type: Project Site
    url: https://www.nypl.org/research/support/whats-on-the-menu
  - type: DataAPI
    url: https://s3.amazonaws.com/menusdata.nypl.org/gzips/
  - type: DataDictionary
    url: http://curatingmenus.org/data_dictionary/
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-page-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-item-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dish-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-structure/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dataset-structure.json
  - type: JSONLD
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-ld/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-context.jsonld
  - type: Vocabulary
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-vocabulary.yml
- aid: new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu:new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menus-api
  name: New York Public Library What's On The Menu Menus API
  description: Historical menu records and pages.
  humanURL: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
  baseURL: http://api.menus.nypl.org
  tags:
  - Menus
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menus-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
  - type: Project Site
    url: https://www.nypl.org/research/support/whats-on-the-menu
  - type: DataAPI
    url: https://s3.amazonaws.com/menusdata.nypl.org/gzips/
  - type: DataDictionary
    url: http://curatingmenus.org/data_dictionary/
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-page-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-menu-item-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dish-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-structure/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-dataset-structure.json
  - type: JSONLD
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/json-ld/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-context.jsonld
  - type: Vocabulary
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-vocabulary.yml
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/new-york-public-library-whats-on-the-menu-authentication.yml
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/NYPL
- type: Website
  url: https://www.nypl.org/research/support/whats-on-the-menu
- type: Documentation
  url: http://nypl.github.io/menus-api/
- type: DataDictionary
  url: http://curatingmenus.org/data_dictionary/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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