Portland Public Library

Turning the tables, restaurants and the rise of the American middle class, 1880-1920, Andrew P. Haley

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-351) and index

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Turning the tables

bibliography

668197666

Andrew P. Haley

restaurants and the rise of the American middle class, 1880-1920

"In the nineteenth century, restaurants served French food to upper-class Americans with aristocratic pretensions, but by the twentieth century, even the best restaurants dished up ethnic and American foods to middle-class urbanites spending a night on the town. In Turning the Tables, Andrew Haley examines the transformation of American public dining at the start of the twentieth century and argues that the birth of the modern American restaurant helped establish the middle class as the arbiter of American culture"Early twentieth-century battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, ethnic restaurants, unescorted women, tipping, and servantless restaurants pitted the middle class against the elite. United by their shared preferences for simpler meals and English-language menus, middle-class diners defied established conventions and successfully pressured restaurateurs to embrace cosmopolitan ideas of dining that reflected the preferences and desires of middle-class patrons"Drawing on culinary magazines, menus, restaurant journals, and newspaper accounts, including many that have never before been examined by historians, Haley traces material changes to restaurants at the turn of the century that demonstrate that the clash between the upper class and the middle class over American consumer culture shaped the 'tang and feel' of life in the twentieth century."--Jacket

The tang and feel of the American experience: class, culture, and consumption -- Terrapin a la Maryland: the era of the aristocratic restaurant -- Playing at make believe: the failure of imitation -- Catering to the great middle stripe: beefsteaks and American restaurants -- The restauration: colonizing the ethnic restaurant -- The simplified menu: the case against gastronomic ostentation -- Satisfying their hunger: middle-class women and respectability -- The tipping evil: the limits of middle-class influence -- Ending linguistic disguises: the decline of French cuisine -- Indifferent gullets: the middle class and the cosmopolitan restaurant