Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920

by Andrew P. Haley

Overview

In the nineteenth century, restaurants served French food to upper-class Americans with aristocratic pretensions, but by the turn of the century, even the best restaurants cooked ethnic and American foods for middle-class urbanites. In Turning the Tables, Andrew P. Haley examines how the transformation of public dining that established the middle class as the arbiter of American culture was forged through battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, cosmopolitan cuisines, unescorted women, un-American tips, and servantless restaurants.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807877920
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/30/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Andrew P. Haley is associate professor of American cultural history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Haley's book is a lively, engagingly written, and well-researched examination of the origins of dining and the restaurant as we know it. It's a true pleasure to read.—Warren Belasco, author of Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry

Many scholars have viewed the transformation in dining near the turn of the century as an inevitable result of modernizing attitudes, but Andrew Haley successfully argues that these changes instead represent a contest over cultural influence. Turning the Tables restores agency to the middle class, providing an insightful exploration of how middle-class consumers exerted collective cultural and economic power that shaped the commercial marketplace and the material culture of dining.—Krishnendu Ray, author of The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households

Haley's innovative and valuable conceptualization of the cosmopolitan restaurant contributes significantly to our understanding of the development of food, class, and culture in the United States.—Jeffrey Pilcher, author of Food in World History

Editorial Reviews

“Turning the Tables is an engaging read.” — LA Weekly blog

“Turning the Tables is a significant contribution to existing scholarship on class, culture, and consumption.” — Journal of Illinois History

“Scholars of food, culture, and the middle class will find this book useful . . . . It offers diverse sources and avenues for future exploration while establishing the prominence of middle-class dining culture in urban America.” — H-SHGAPE

“[A] very interesting and useful study of the evolution of public dining in the United States.” — Journal of American History

“Haley’s book reinforces the importance of consumption as a vehicle for class formation and does immeasurable service in exploring restaurants as one of the important sites where this occurred.” — American Historical Review

“Haley makes great use of an astonishing collection of sources, such as menus, trade journals, popular magazines, and cartoons, to produce an engaging history that sheds fresh light on the creation and meaning of the American middle class and that will encourage readers to think more deeply about their decision about where to go for dinner.” — The Historian

“Turning the Table is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about the roots of the American passion for dining out.” — Journal of American Studies

“Haley’s superbly researched study of changes in America’s dining habits at the turn into the twentieth century explains much about shifting restaurant tastes in that century, and in ours.” — Studies in American Culture

“A sumptuous dish for anyone interested in middle-class culture of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, as well as an important contribution to the growing historiography around restaurant and food history.” — Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

“Like a good chocolate cake: rich, complex, and satisfying. . . . Haley stakes out bold, original claims. . . . A fine example of solid social and cultural history. . . [which] will help turn the tables on much established scholarship.” — Journal of Social History

From the Publisher