num_pages: 224
description: The restaurant is where we go to celebrate to experience pleasure to show off - or sometimes just because we're hungry. But these temples of gastronomy hide countless stories.This is the tale of the restaurant in all its guises from the first formal establishments in eighteenth-century Paris serving 'restorative' bouillon to today's new Nordic cuisine via grand Viennese cafs and humble fast food joints. Here are tales of cooks who spend hours arranging rose petals for Michelin stars of the university that teaches the consistency of the perfect shake of the lunch counter that sparked a protest movement of the writers - from Proust to George Orwell - who have been inspired or outraged by the restaurant's secrets.As this dazzlingly entertaining eye-opening book shows the restaurant is where performance fashion commerce ritual class work and desire all come together. Through its windows we can glimpse the world.
language: English
title: In the Restaurant: Society in Four Courses
publisher: Pushkin Press