Maybe it’s nostalgia — maybe it’s trendy aesthetics — or perhaps just old-school marketing, but restaurants across the country are bringing back the beloved matchbook.

You know the ones. Sitting in a bowl on the edge of the host stand with the restaurant’s name artfully etched on the front. And while smoking in restaurants has been banned since the 2000s, diners aren’t using a matchbook to light up.

Instead, they’ve become much more.

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“My best friend lives across the country, and she actually started collecting them first, so whenever I was out somewhere special that had them, I’d grab two: one for her, one for me,” says Tara Shepherd, Senior Account Manager at Eleven Eleven PR. “It became this nostalgic way to remember the meal and also stay connected to each other through the

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