Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880–1920. Andrew P.Haley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Abstract

Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920. Andrew P. Haley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.In the mid-nineteenth century, America's big-city restaurants catered to the upper class with menus in French describing French cuisine prepared by French chefs and served by stuffy professional waiters to aristocratic diners, generally social elites and businessmen. However, between 1880 and 1920, the restaurant industry underwent a major transformation. In Turning the Tables, historian Andrew P. Haley argues that middle-class diners active agents of cultural change who shaped the emerging consumer culture of the twentieth century. In the nation's restaurants, members of the middle class discovered themselves, transformed groaning boards into spaces of class conflict, and proved that how one eats can shape the course of history (4). In order to chronicle the upper class's loss of dominance over eating establishments in America, Haley considers newspaper accounts, editorials, menus, photographs, diaries, poems, cartoons, advertisements, songs, novels, culinary and restaurant industry journals, and other sources from restaurateurs and patrons. What results is an intriguing, remarkably well-written, and substantive study of culinary and social change.Haley anchors his book with background on the nineteenth-century French restaurant tradition, best exemplified by Delmonico's in New York City, one of the finest and most celebrated of America's eating establishments, considered by some in its heyday to be one of the best French restaurants in the world. more wealthy New Yorkers began entertaining in restaurants after the Civil War, Delmonico's became the place to go for elegant society events. In 1938, its lavish menu was a full ten pages long (not including the wine list), printed in French and English, and influenced fine-eating menus all over the country. The restaurant not only introduced new dishes, such as Lobster Newburg, and became a training ground for new chefs, it also became a social institution, establishing manners, tastes, and customs not only of the city but of the nation for decades to come (25). Delmonico's and the restaurants emulating it, however, were not for everyone. In 1900, only fourteen percent of American high school students studied French at a time when many restaurants were issuing French-only menus, and elite waiters intimidated patrons who lacked proper breeding and sophistication. Further, the cost of fine French cuisine at a posh upscale restaurant was unaffordable for middle-class diners, in part because French chefs and professional waiters commanded exorbitant salaries that translated to higher prices for consumers. Finally, influenced by advocates of simple eating and the popular magazine What to Eat, which called gormandizing and over-eating the great sin of American life, many diners eschewed the five-course French meal in favor of smaller portions and healthier fare.By the late nineteenth century, the middle class in America grew, sparked by increased immigration and a managerial revolution that created the need for office workers, and more Americans sought dining establishments that were relaxed, comfortable, and affordable. In turn, restaurateurs wanted their business. Thus, as Haley contends, As the middle class began to exert its economic and cultural influence, restaurateurs discovered - in much the same way that Henry Ford embraced mass production - that profits were to be had by lowering standards, increasing efficiency, and catering to the largest number of customers (18). …