Ten Restaurants That Changed America [Paperback]

Combining an historians rigor with a food enthusiasts palate, Paul Freedmans seminal and highly entertainingReading Paul Freedman about America, stalking myself through the taste of meals at eight of his ten restaurants, each sampled for different reasons at different moments in my life, I began to draw the outlines of a world I shared with other people, people more or less like me, and to wonder what like me meant when it came to expectations of inclusion, of common flash points of reference, of understanding and participating in the coded language of what we eat and how it is prepared and who is sitting at all those tables around us. I think thats what Freedman intended us to do. . . .Fascinating. . . . In his sweep through centuries of food culture, Freedman illuminates much more than what happened in the front or back of the house of these 10 distinct places (although he does plenty of that). He effectively makes the case that the story of Americas restaurants is one of changing immigration patterns, race relations, gender and family roles, work obligations, and leisure habits. . . . [Freedmans] insights are shrewd and demonstrate the power of historical study in understanding the world.Impeccable . . . . Inevitably, a book like this will induce a feast of delicious nostalgia in most readers, a longing for all those good  and even some not so good  menus and dishes past. But the culinary and cultural journey Mr. Freedman has taken us on demonstrates the abiding qualities in our society  its openness to new sources and sourcing, its diversity, its restlessness with the same old thing, its capacity for reinvention and assimilation  all of which bode well for the future of Americas restaurants and its cuisine.Fascinating....Mr. Freedmans book suggests that its not ultimately restaurants that change Americaits the people in the kitchen.Eminently readable. . . .In a narrative that is intellectually delicious, Freedman presents a new way of tl3œ