In the Restaurant

Society in Four Courses

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Pub Date 19 Jun 2018 | Archive Date 16 Mar 2018

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Description

The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli

What does eating out tell us about who we are? The restaurant is where we go to celebrate, to experience pleasure, to see and be seen - or, sometimes, just because we're hungry. But these temples of gastronomy hide countless stories.

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.

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 cafés 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.
The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli

What does eating out tell us about who we are? The restaurant is where we go to celebrate, to experience...

Advance Praise

'A playful story, most entertaining, and wonderfully documented.' - Ferran Adrià of El Bulli

'An entertaining smorgasbord of tasty stories that build into a deeper picture of the places where we eat, from fast food joints and cafés to the temples of gastronomy.' - Hattie Ellis 

'Fascinating, multi-layered, audacious and unique . . . mixes fact and fancy so compellingly that I read it in a single sitting.' - Russell Norman, author of Polpo 

"Glorious stuff along the way ... we are unquestionably gripped by the stories... Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant." -- Giles Coren, The Times

"Knowing and nourishing in equal measure, the short, sharp chapters arrive like delectable hors d'oeuvres." -- Monocle

"A brilliant, provocative, wonderful, satisfying book. A proper gallimaufry of anecdotes that has been a real pleasure to lose myself in." -- Desperate Reader (blog)

'A playful story, most entertaining, and wonderfully documented.' - Ferran Adrià of El Bulli

'An entertaining smorgasbord of tasty stories that build into a deeper picture of the places where we eat...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781782273080
PRICE CA$33.95 (CAD)
PAGES 224

Average rating from 7 members


Featured Reviews

In the Restaurant, by Christoph Ribbat and translated by Jamie Searle Romanelli, is one of the strangest nonfiction books I’ve ever read. Most nonfiction books are set up chronologically. It’s the most logical way to tell a lot of stories. In the Restaurant, however, is served up to readers like tapas. It jumps from topic to topic, telling the story of restaurants with side dishes of sociology, literature, crime, and commentary about what the institutions show us about society.

While the short segments that comprise In the Restaurant seem disjoined, I noticed that they slowly develop a theme of high versus low. For every scene or short discussion of restaurants becoming the realm of ultra-high class eating and service, there is a look at the rough, dirty conditions in lower restaurants (or sometimes the same ones) that dish up barely acceptable fare for the punters. Back and forth, Ribbat uses this tension to explore the dichotomies that the food industry reveals under close scrutiny.

A history of restaurants, one would thinks, would be all about food. There is a lot of food in this book—discussions of molecular gastronomy at El Bullí, the development of nouvelle cuisine—but Ribbat is equally interested in the way that food service is also about more than plates of food. When a customer arrives at a restaurant, they have certain expectations. They expect that they will, for lack of a better word, be catered to. The waiter is expected to make any substitutions the customer wants, to deliver the food at the right temperature, and so on. By referencing sociologists who studied restaurant workers, Ribbat also covers the discovery of emotional labor.

I was completely hooked by In the Restaurant. I loved the way it was told, most likely because it is organized a bit like my brain is. One fact is connected to another in a seemingly tangential way, except, the more to read, the more one realizes that looking at disparate things can create a larger picture. Stepping back to think about why, for example, front of house staff in restaurants are almost all white or how long it took to solve a series of doner kebab vendor murders show us how segregation is still alive and well in food service.

In the Restaurant was an incredible read, entertaining and enlightening.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration

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A fascinating, enlightening, and breezy dive into the history and importance of restaurants. Great read!

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