The Restaurants Book

Ethnographies of Where we Eat

David Beriss, David E. Sutton, David Beriss, David E. Sutton

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781847883506
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Is the restaurant an ideal total social phenomenon for the contemporary world? Restaurants are framed by the logic of the market, but promise experiences not of the market. Restaurants are key sites for practices of social distinction, where chefs struggle for recognition as stars and patrons insist on seeing and being seen. Restaurants define urban landscapes, reflecting and shaping the character of neighborhoods, or standing for the ethos of an entire city or nation. Whether they spread authoritarian French organizational models or the bland standardization of American fast food, restaurants have been accused of contributing to the homogenization of cultures. Yet restaurants have also played a central role in the reassertion of the local, as powerful cultural brokers and symbols for protests against a globalized food system. The Restaurants Book brings together anthropological insights into these thoroughly postmodern places.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Starter: Restaurants, Ideal Postmodern Institutions
• Small Plates
• 1 Tight Spaces and Salsa-stained Aprons
• 2 Forming Family Identity in an American Chinese Restaurant
• 3 Tasting Wisconsin
• Mains
• 4 Side-Dish Kitchen
• 5 Familiarity, Ambience and Intentionality
• 6 Serving the Past on a Platter
• 7 Ethnic Succession and the New American Restaurant Cuisine
• 8 From Khatchapuri to Ge“lte Fish
• 9 Daughters, Duty and Deference in the Franco-Chinese Restaurant
• 10 Authentic Creole
• 11 Food, Family and Tradition in Northern Italy
• Dessert
• 12 Tipping
• Digestif: Postprandial Imaginings
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index