Lard burgers and fries are really good. I highly recommend checking them out. It may not be the exact taste of a brand from the past, but it will be closer to the taste of a mom and pop burger stand pre 1970s.

Sounds like a great idea to start a museum (exhibition) with. You could make a 50’s restaurant with various food offerings that were popular then.

Or restaurant which copies very precisely some famous historical restaurant menu.

You might be interested in the restaurant Next in Chicago. From the Wikipedia:

>Rather than stick with one type of cuisine, Next completely changes its style every few months, focusing on a different time period, parts of the world, or various abstract themes for each "season" of its menu.

Next's very first menu was "Paris 1906" which was based on Escoffier's dishes from that year.

https://chicago.eater.com/2011/4/4/6688919/next-restaurants-...

Although, depending on the era, sourcing all the identical ingredients may be impossible, or nearly so, due to "culinary extinction."

Lenore Newman's recent book, "Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food," explores the foods lost to the world.

In late 2019, the Gastropod podcast ran an episode with Newman and the "Ghost Foods."

https://gastropod.com/of-ghost-foods-and-culinary-extinction...

Also, it has become very hard to find things such as true buttermilk or real heavy cream that hasn't been ultra-pasteurized, etc.

I recommend Paul Freedman's Ten Restaurants That Changed America. The section on Howard Johnson's is very interesting.