York Restaurant Research Articles

Delivery in the city: Differentiated products competition among New York restaurants

We examine the response to entry in a large market with differentiated products using a novel longitudinal dataset of over 550,000 New York City restaurant menus from 68 consecutive weeks. We compare “treated” restaurants facing a nearby entrant to “control” restaurants with no new competition, matching restaurants using location characteristics and a pairwise distance measure based on menu text. Restaurants frequently adjust prices and product offerings but we find no evidence that they respond differentially to new competition. However, restaurants in locations with an entrant count in the top decile—areas with many new competitors—are 22% more likely to exit after a year than restaurants in the lowest entry decile.

War against Prohibition: Italians and Booze in New York City, 1920–1933

War against Prohibition: Italians and Booze in New York City, 1920–1933

Exploring extremity and negativity biases in online reviews: Evidence from Yelp. com

While some online reviews explicitly praise or criticize a product, others reveal a neutral evaluation. We predicted that extreme reviews would be considered more useful than moderate ones, and that negative reviews would be considered more useful than positive ones. To test these predictions, this study collected a dataset comprising 951,178 reviews of New York restaurants made by 142,286 reviewers on Yelp. com. By combining these two datasets, we incorporated each reviewer's unique reference point into a model and showed that extremely positive or negative reviews were considered more useful than moderate ones and that negative reviews were considered more useful than positive ones. This dominance of negative over positive reviews was also more pronounced in the conditions of larger variance and lower average ratings for restaurants. Overall, these results support the presence and influence of extremity and negativity biases, particularly in the context of high preference heterogeneity.

New York Restaurants: A Wine Odyssey between 1865 and 1920

We examine the existence of wines in New York City restaurant menus over the period 1865-1920 for a sample of 850,000 restaurant menu items and 51,000 wines. Wine was already commonly present on menus in 1865, and its presence increased up until 1914 before dropping with the outbreak of WWI. Casual restaurants offered a narrower wine selection. Special menus displayed a significantly higher probability of containing wine but with a more limited choice indicating that wine was especially appreciated on special occasions. French wines, especially from Bordeaux and Champagne, were the most represented on menus followed by wines from Germany. The average selling price of a bottle of wine was around 40 USD in 2018 terms. Prices, however, fluctuated widely over time and wine type. Notably, American wines were about 50% cheaper than French or German wines.

A Food Journalism Pioneer: The Story behind the First New York Times Food Writer Jane Nickerson and Her Food Section, 1942-1957

ABSTRACT Jane Nickerson was a pioneering food journalist whose story is largely untold. She began her job as The New York Times food editor during World War II, when food journalism was in its infancy but increasingly important. Nickerson learned how to juggle news about war rationing along with food product developments, feature stories and recipes. She also covered the growing New York restaurant community in the 1950s. She profiled local home cooks, new chefs and introduced readers to future food celebrities such as Craig Claiborne and James Beard—both who would later overshadow her career. Nickerson was at the heart of the beginning of food journalism in the women’s pages of newspapers—the only place for women at most newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s. Recognition of Nickerson’s significance to journalism history is overdue. This scholarship tells Nickerson’s story and adds to the growing scholarship of newspaper food journalism.

The Impact of Customer Loyalty and Restaurant Sanitation Grades on Revisit Intention and the Importance of Narrative Information: The Case of New York Restaurant Sanitation Grading System

New York City launched a restaurant sanitation letter grade system in 2010. We evaluate the impact of customer loyalty on restaurant revisit intentions after exposure to a sanitation grade alone, and after exposure to a sanitation grade plus narrative information about sanitation violations (e.g., presence of rats). We use a 2 (loyalty: high or low) × 4 (sanitation grade: A, B, C, or pending) between-subjects full factorial design to test the hypotheses using data from 547 participants recruited from Amazon MTurk who reside in the New York City area. Our study yields three findings. First, loyal customers exhibit higher intentions to revisit restaurants than non-loyal customers, regardless of sanitation letter grades. Second, the difference in revisit intentions between loyal and non-loyal customers is higher when sanitation grades are poorer. Finally, loyal customers are less sensitive to narrative information about sanitation violations.

Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish DeliTedMerwin. New York University Press, 2015.

Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of Deli Ted Merwin. New York University Press, 2015.Before getting to meat of matter, first things first. Let's get all puns out of way. If you're looking for a platter full of culinary delights alongside a smorgasbord of history, you need not look any further than Ted Merwin's Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of Deli. No skimpy servings here. To contrary, with so much to nosh on and so little to kvetch about, this book is whole schmear.Divided into four parts tracing history of deli from establishment of first delicatessens in Eastern Europe and United States in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-to glory years of delicatessens in 1920s and 1930s-to role these delicatessens played on home front and in battlefields during second World War and transformations they underwent, afterward, in postwar era-to declining state of delicatessen today, Merwin's cultural history of delicatessen is encyclopedic in scope, rich in substance, and intimate in details.As Merwin frames it, the history of delicatessen is history of Jews eating themselves into Americans (1). And as Merwin chronicles it, this history begins in early years of twentieth century as New York delicatessen provides immigrants with an economic foothold in New York restaurant and food services industries. It flourishes in years between World War One and World War Two as children of these immigrants transform that foothold into a fixture of culture-and a symbol of success-by establishing New York deli as an integral part of New York City social scene. It reconfigures itself in postwar years as increasingly secular, upwardly mobile, second- and thirdgeneration branching into suburbs, rely on kosher delis to serve as one of their few remaining cultural connections to their heritage. And finally, it all but ends in waning years of twentieth century as a confluence of changing times, tastes, and traditions contribute to demise of delicatessen along with so much of culture and community that, for so many generations, sustained it.Incorporating multiple methodologies and theoretical approaches, intertwining more than two dozen archival photographs and illustrations, and including over 500 supplementary notes, scholarship in Pastrami on Rye is exemplary. But equally important for an academic study, Pastrami on Rye is also a very good read. At heart of this read is a uniquely yet very common tale of immigrant aspiration for assimilation without disassociation. Throughout Pastrami on Rye, Merwin tells this tale with verve and relish signifying, well, much more than nothing. Among many substantive questions he explores and/or raises, for example, are what happens when immigrants come to a new country and they and their descendants transform-and are transformed by -that country's culture? At what point did Jewish Americans become American Jews, not only in name but in identity, and with what consequences to that identity? In what ways has culture become indistinguishable from America popular culture, and what historic role did delicatessen play in blurring of this demarcation?Like all good historical studies, Pastrami on Rye includes, literally, thousands of historical details about delicatessen-more than enough to satisfy even most meticulous of historians, while, at times, overwhelming its nonhistorian readers. …

A structural equation model of New York restaurant grades over a 2-year period

ABSTRACTThis study identified disparities in cuisine types and boroughs for attaining the highest restaurant grade in New York using regression modeling. The first structural equation models have been developed for the modeling of the highest grade possible with borough and cuisine type based upon the citywide results of these eight restaurant types from calendar years 2011 and 2012. The results suggest that certain styles of restaurants have lower odds of receiving the highest grade in comparison to American-style restaurants.

Sales Suppression as a Service (SSaaS) & the Apple Store Solution

The problem of sales suppression fraud is estimated to cost state and local governments $20 billion annually ($2 billion in New York restaurants alone). Modern sales suppression (skimming) is carried out with technology (Zappers and Phantom-ware). Nine undercover sting operations in and around Manhattan and the Bronx by investigators working for New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance (NY-DT&F) have identified the SSaaS variant of modern skimming.A striking example of SSaaS may be unfolding in the $1 million sales suppression case against Congressman Michael Grimm (R-NY). It is alleged that Grimm skimmed sales from his Healthalicious restaurant in Manhattan, and it appears at this early stage that SSaaS was the skimming method used. Starting in Buffalo, NY in March 2009, and ending in the Bronx by September of that year, approximately 23 stings were set up by the NY-DT&F looking for Zappers and Phantom-ware. Sting locations were in Buffalo, Schenectady, Albany, Dutchess County, and the Bronx. False restaurants, manned by undercover agents, invited point of sale (POS) system salesmen. Almost all offered to show owners how to suppress sales. The preferred suppression technique was SSaaS. This paper recaps the author’s keynote address at the California Board of Equalization’s Sales Suppression & Detection Techniques Symposium in Pasadena California, April 28-29, 2014. The paper draws five observations from the NY stings, finds a disturbing conclusion about the extent of this fraud in the NY retail sector, and presents the technological solution that has been adopted in VAT jurisdictions. The solution essentially treats all businesses as an Apple Store. The key to preventing sales suppression fraud is to obtain secure, encrypted transactional sales data from the moment of a sale. The most advanced solution on the market today for accomplishing this was demonstrated at the California Sales Suppression & Detection Techniques Symposium – the Avatar-DTI system. It is explained here.

Patients Who Avoid Wheat and Gluten: Is That Health or Lifestyle?

In a New York restaurant, a celiac patient requesting a gluten-free menu was asked by the server if the diet was for health or for lifestyle. This increasingly common exchange exemplifies the clinical conundrum clinicians face regarding the use of a gluten-free diet (GFD). Although humankind has likely existed in some form for 2.5 million years, it is only in the last 10,000 years that humans have been exposed to wheat, which was originally cultivated in the Fertile Crescent from *9000 BC to 4000 BC. Thus, wheat and therefore, gluten is a relatively novel component of the human diet. The globalization of wheat production, and subsequently its increased worldwide consumption, has increased the incidence and clinical recognition of gluten-related disorders [1]. The most notable gluten-related disorder is celiac disease (CD), a state of heightened immune response to ingested gluten in genetically susceptible individuals. Initial reports in the 1950s suggested this to be a rare condition affecting 1 in 8,000. Nevertheless, more recently, its prevalence in the United States and elsewhere is 0.71 % or 1 in 141 [2]. The sole effective treatment for CD is lifelong adherence to a strict GFD. More recently, a few case reports and series published in the 1980s described individuals intolerant to gluten, by way of experiencing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) type symptoms, but in whom CD serologies and small intestinal biopsies were normal. Since the diagnosis or explanation for these symptoms was lacking and possibly dismissed, such patients were unclassifiable and untreatable [3]. Nonetheless, over the last few years, mounting media reports have speculated that the use of a GFD is rapidly growing to the point that it is now a big business, seemingly greatly exceeding the demand predicted from CD subjects alone. This media pressure finally prodded the scientific community into a response, led by an Australian group, who performed a landmark double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study reporting that gluten from two slices of bread and one muffin indeed induced gastrointestinal symptoms in subjects without CD [4]. Subsequently, a consensus of experts has introduced the term ‘‘non-celiac gluten sensitivity’’ (NCGS) to describe such subjects [5]. A subsequent flurry of research papers raised the ratio of publications for NCGS:CD from 1:438 to 1:10, to the point that NCGS is considered the new frontier of gluten-related disorders [6]. The pathophysiology of NCGS has not yet been fully elucidated. Whereas the innate and adaptive immune response to gluten is responsible for the manifestations seen in CD, only the innate immune system is seemingly triggered in NCGS. There have been promising reports of altered small bowel intestinal permeability, proliferation of peripheral blood monocytes, the presence of antigliadin antibodies, enhanced cytokine induction, and induction of basophil activation in NCGS, although these findings have not yet been confirmed [6]. Gluten is only one of the complex milieu of nutrients present in wheat, which also contains fructans, which are fermentable, poorly absorbed, short chain carbohydrates, also termed FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols). FODMAPS provoke gastrointestinal symptoms in IBS patients through mechanisms involving gut microbiota, gas production, and fermentation [7]. There is also emerging evidence that wheat-amylase trypsin inhibitors are also associated with intestinal symptoms [8]. Since it is unclear which component of wheat-based products is I. Aziz (&) D. S. Sanders Department of Gastroenterology, Room P39, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Sheffield S10 2JF, UK e-mail: imran.aziz@sth.nhs.uk

Neither Welcomed, Nor Refused

This article illuminates what it was like for African Americans dining at majority-white restaurants in New York City before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Primary sources include: records of the Committee on Civil Rights in East Manhattan (the CCREM, an organization that investigated New York restaurant and housing sector discrimination in the 1950s), the personal papers of the CCREM’s secretary, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of restaurant discrimination, and 1950s travel guides for African Americans. This article argues that unlike southern cities, where Jim Crow laws clearly demarcated color lines in public accommodations, color lines in New York City restaurants were more ambiguous. Although African Americans were frequently discriminated against in New York restaurants, they were seldom refused service outright. Rather, the discrimination they experienced was more oblique—though no less benign—than in the South.

Unsure Bet: The Future of Daily Fantasy Exchange Wagering

Fueled by technological change, fantasy sports have enjoyed incredible growth in the twenty-first century. Since 1980, when writer Daniel Okrent explained his invention of ‘‘Rotisserie’’ major league baseball (MLB) to a few friends in an eponymous New York restaurant, fantasy sports has grown into a global business with over 35 million participants in North America alone. As originally designed by Okrent and those who followed, a fantasy sports participant acted as a ‘‘make believe’’ general manager who selected real MLB or National Football League (NFL) players for his or her fantasy roster, made trades and other roster moves during the season, determined success from the input statistics generated by real MLB or NFL players in real games, and competed for pride and relatively small cash prizes awarded on a one-time basis at the end of the season. Since the enactment of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) and the ‘‘fantasy sports’’ exemption contained therein, a new model of fantasy sports has emerged: the ‘‘daily fantasy sports league’’ or ‘‘daily league.’’ Instead of engaging in trades and other transactions over the course of a full MLB or NFL season, a daily league—such as www.fanduel.com (FanDuel) and www.starstreet.com (StarStreet)—involves selecting players and receiving a payout or winnings at the end of just one day. Unlike the traditional fantasy sports model, a daily league exhibits the hallmark element of almost all other regulated markets—daily market action. Since April 22, 2013, Atlantic City casinos have been authorized to offer daily leagues or partner with current providers such as FanDuel to offer daily leagues pursuant to regulations promulgated by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement on March 18, 2013. Notwithstanding weak arguments

“Out to Eat”

Unheard of in the eighteenth century, restaurants became an integral part of New York City's public culture in the antebellum period. This article examines the emergence and development of New York's restaurant sector in the nineteenth century, focusing on three aspects in particular: the close ties between urbanization and the rise of New York's restaurants, the role restaurants played in enforcing the city's class structure and gender mores, and the role of restaurants in shaping the public culture of the growing metropolis.

Closure through Mock-Disclosure in Bret Easton Ellis’s <em>Lunar Park</em>

Closure through Mock-Disclosure in Bret Easton Ellis’s <em>Lunar Park</em>

Back of the house, front of the house: What a campaign to organize New York restaurant workers tells us about immigrant integration

Back of the house, front of the house: What a campaign to organize New York restaurant workers tells us about immigrant integration

Michelin in America

In November 2005, the venerable Michelin Guide crossed the Atlantic with its assessment of New York restaurants and hotels. Three models of food supply the context for the American reaction. The idiosyncratic judgments of the Judge, are those of critics from A.B.L. Grimod de la Reynièère in the early 19th century to reviewers and bloggers today. The next, dating from the advent of the Michelin in the 1920s, is the Tribunal, whose evaluations are the anonymous verdicts of trained inspectors. Zagat's, first published in 1979, is the Plebiscite, which tallies votes of any diner who fills out a ballot. The criticism leveled by New York media at the Michelin were inspired in part by anti-French sentiment but especially by resistance to what was perceived as an elitist, hence unwarranted cultural authority. Serving different purposes and fulfilling distinct needs, each type of guide has a place in today's volatile and fast-changing food world.

Trans fatty acids from partially hydrogenated oils banned from New York restaurants. What about ruminant trans fatty acids?

<b><i>Trans</i></b> fatty acids from partially hydrogenated oils banned from New York restaurants. What about ruminant <b><i>trans</i></b> fatty acids?

Foreword

Foreword J want, I want. It is one of the eternal themes of literature. We have the experience so many times, and recognize the truth so many times, you'd think we'd learn. Wanting is an illusion, because by the time we get what we want we are changed and we want something else. We want the past as much as the future to be different. We regret what we did or didn't do, we want what we think we need both tomorrow and yesterday, and we torture ourselves with longing. We are children under the Christmas tree after all the presents have been opened. Whether our hoard is small or large, already we are moving on to the next thing, imagining that it is the thing we truly need. As an editor of this magazine for years I imagined that if the Missouri Review had a circulation of 3,000, I'd be in heaven. Only the best literary magazines had circulations of 3,000. It would solve all of our problems. Now the Missouri Review has a circulation of 4,500, rapidly moving toward 5,000, and I didn't even notice when we had 3,000. Already I'm dreaming about ten thousand. The contributors to this issue speak of the mysteries and treacheries of wanting in several of its forms. Among the short stories, Keith Kachtick's "Those Who Can't" is about one seemingly quite decent fellow's slide into the perennial delusion and regret of backward longing. Tim Stark's "Waiter" is about a man who faces the problem of staying involved in a world of illusion—waiting tables and guarding the glass door of the Ambassador Room in a tony New York restaurant—after life has just dealt him major shock treatment. Christopher Mcllroy's "The Big Bang and the Good House" is about wandering betwixt the cactuses of lust and greed. Moira Crone's "Fever" is about lust, as well—lust doing combat with fidelity. Philip Graham's wonderful story "Angel" is about giving up one's pain, desire, and regret to the angels. In her essay "Rolex" Diane Johnson tells something of what happens to the dream of America in the lives of would-be immigrants— America, that shining happy place where all problems will be solved. Leonard Kriegel's essay "Wheelchairs" relates what may seem like a very simple desire—to walk—and what he has done to meet it. This issue's poets in some ways oppose each other. Sarah Gorham writes about living along the margins and forever reaching back towards the comfort of home, about diving into the water and losing the boat. "There is a scream," she writes, "I am to blame for everything after." On the other hand, Loretta Collins—our Tom McAfee Discovery Feature poet—seeks wisdom in the path of excess. She yearns to extend the boundaries of experience. One of her poems contains a strange epiphany. She calls the doctor, and the doctor speaks "the alleluia of leukemia." Somehow—in a way that most of us can't understand—that moment when wanting has become irrelevant is a moment of supreme clarity. Perhaps it can only be understood by those who have experienced it, however briefly—the dying, the seekers and holy ones, the remarkable few whose understanding reaches that far despite their "normal" lives. The fourteenth-century Persian mystic Rumi described it simply, recounting a dream that he had: 1 am desperately knocking and knocking at a door, wanting it to open. It opens and I realize I have been knocking from the inside. Our "History as Literature" offering concerns a person who had something of this kind of awakening. He was ruined, totally broken, and he ended up in jail. In the terms set forth by his own greed, he went from the heights to the depths, but in the terms that he grew to understand, he became a better, happier, and more reflective person. He learned a thing or two. The man was Robert Morris, and he had been one of the genuine patriots of the American War for Independence. A few years after he dropped out...

Discriminatory behavior in New York restaurants: 1950 and 1981

Survey techniques are combined with behavioral observations in this attempt to replicate a 1950 baseline study in order to examine trends in racial discrimination. In the 1950 study, treatment of black and white couples was compared in a sample of 62 restaurants drawn from a population of all restaurants in a large area of East Side Manhattan. In 1981 we carried out similar comparisons in a sample of 20 restaurants (plus four replications) drawn from the same area, following as closely as possible the procedures used in the baseline study. A substantial amount of discrimination was found in 1981, though somewhat less than in 1950. The difficult problems of determining when discrimination has and has not occurred are discussed from the standpoints of both black customers and social science investigators.

Legal Aspects of the Negro Problem

THROUGHOUT the history of the Negro in America, court decisions have clarified his relationship to the white race. The Dred Scott decision comes readily to mind as an event crystallising two forms of sentiment which later struggled for supremacy. Since the Civil War, hardly an important constitutional question has come before the Supreme Court which has not had some reference to the still vexed and disputed question of the Negro's status in this country. This is true to the extent that the entire question of states' rights, involving many court cases that had nothing directly to do with the American Negro, has hinged upon differences in attitude on these problems mainly sectional. The effect of the Negro, and his part in white America's legal fabric has occasioned a number of books and could easily be made the subject of an extended study. Such a study would show, we are convinced, that no single other set of problems has had such a profound effect in determining the structure and phrasing of American law, and court interpretation of the law, as the problems raised by the Negro's presence here. Our subject is necessarily more limited than this broad consideration of the form and tendency of democracy as expressed in the constitutional provisions and statutes. We are to consider primarily a few outstanding aspects of the Negro's legal status during recent years as showing something of his organic relations in the social structure of the country. The cases that have arisen for adjudication, and that will be considered here, touch democracy at its roots. They concern the right to participation in selfgovernment; the right to safety of the person and property; the right to due process of law; and questions of social procedure ranging from Jim Crow on southern railways to the right to dine in a New York restaurant or to sit in a