Nothing Keeps a Restaurant’s Brand Alive Like Custom Matchbooks

Neither a smoker nor a pyromaniac, I’ve spent much of my life picking up matchbooks from every restaurant or bar that offers them, and my collection overflows from an oversized glass brandy snifter. Some remind me of bygone restaurants; others I pocketed from establishments I hardly remember visiting. 

I faintly recall a time when restaurants had “smoking” and “non-smoking sections,” but they vanished in my youth—often taking novelty matches with them. But in the...