MAR 25

17. MAR 25

Assigned Work (Heavy Reading Day)

• Shore, Eliott, "Dining Out" (263-292; 29)
• Ruhlman, "How the A&P Changed the Western World" (29-42) (13)

In-class

• Re-imagining the restaurant

Pre-supermarket culture in Italy

• [Digression on pre-supermarket food culture in Italy.]

• Some terms for pre-supermarket shops.
• Some images of Italian supermarkets and remaining small shops today:

• Herbs
• Traditional mercato in Bologna
• Remaining panificeria in Florence, Street food - tripe sandwiches!
• Traditional Pasta Fresca, Bologna.
• Typical Italian supermarket meat section: 1, 2.

Ruhlman, "How the A&P Changed the Western World"

• Modern supermarket: 40-50,000 items. Strong market pressure not to miss consumer preference. In '75 only 9,000.

• Some evidence that lots of choices undermines rational decision making 31. 15 types of eggs. not just small, med, large.

• Background of stores against which rise of "A&P tea company" took place. George Gilman, Great American Tea Company, then Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. Started with a brand of tea. Higher profit margin than groceries.

• Three innovations: brand, premiums (gifts for purchases made), trading stamps. baking powder a novel product (note, not in Italy). Other early competitors: Grand Union. Brands: consistency, purity (closed containers).

• Importance of branding. Old grocer sold unbranded staples, only competed on price. Canning and boxed foods allow for branding. (Commercial paper bag and cardboard box created during this time.) Also allows for centralized food processing. A&Ps opened at 7 stores a day for a while. Also led to modern supply chain.

• A&P: 1900: $5million, 1925: $350 million, Today: $4.8billion. Power of scaling up supply chains.

• Early 20th century: self-service. Piggly Wiggly. [1]
• 1930s: shopping cart.
• 1920s: refrigeration (allowed for meats and frozen foods). p 41: King Kullen -- sig: bigger store, located off main street. 1930. Depression era.

Shore, Eliott, "Dining Out"

• Last 50 years of restaurant history is different — explosion of venues, menus, and cuisines.

• Restaurants in China during Hangzhou - 1280. !!

• 264: defining traits of restaurant - follow. [A distinct kind of pleasure. Something only the wealthy would have been able to do “in house”. Connect to history of happiness.]

• vs. “Table d’hote”, coffee house, inn (ex from Don Quixote), “take away” existed in Paris, for example.

• 1st modern restaurants in Paris just before the revolution, 1760s…. = restoratif. Health food. Boullion based soups. (From Gratzer, Restuarants allowed women to go out unescorted.). “Cabinets particuliers allowed for secrete liaisons! (Restaurant connects to intimacy at the start.). “Private in public”. Also political liaisons.

• Nice description 271 of how a fancy French restaurant, La France Taverne de Londres, appeared to an American.

• The first food critics, gourmands, Grimod (and Brilliat-Savarin). The rise of gastronomy. Stickers on the windows started here.

• New York restaurant culture — The Del Monico.

Re-imagining the Restaurant

• Since the opening of the first modern restaurants in Paris around 1780, the concept of the restaurant has developed, especially in the 21st century. Think of the variety of eateries and restaurants we have now, from food trucks, to traditional fast food, to healthy concept fast food.

• Use your philosophical imaginations to think through a new combination of values that a new kind of restaurant might realize. During our discussion of the Gopnik piece we will develop a list of "restaurant values" -- both of the first modern restaurant and the ones that followed. Then, in group discussion, try to think about what you can't get from the contemporary array of restaurants, but something you would value. You ideas may range from things you would like to see more restaurants do to kinds of restaurants that do not exist.

Gopnik, Adam, "Who Made the Restaurant?" (13-57)

• from The Table Comes First

• opening description - follow -- illusion of dining room, relation to romance, difference from previous types: table d'hote, traiteur, caterer.

• Traits of modern restaurant: waiters, menus, tables, mirrors, closed kitchen, seduction, silences..(privacy in public)

• personal experiences -- HoJo to Paris - Grand Vefour -- restaurants and writers' scenes. (search "Howard Johnson's Simple Simon and the Pie Man—1950's images" to see the original HoJo restaurant sign.). Interesting how many of the characteristics are in common between the two restaurants.

• 19: account of origin of restaurant starts here:

• old story - post french revolution, displaced help from nobles. But restaurant starts 20 years earlier. Restaurant not like home service.

• three factors: intellectual causes (health and simplicity), commercial causes (new site for restaurants in/around Palais Royal), moral/social cause (breakdown of caste/class leading up to Rev)

• Mathrurin Roze de Chantoiseau -- first restauranteur. note root meanings of "restaurant" - associated with bullion and restoratives. Early restaurant served healthy foods that you couldn't source (22), not esoteric or exotic. Chantoiseau introduced more of a pleasure motive to the restaurant.

• Gender dimension to the new restaurant: Women could go together in public (!). Also, the restaurant can make you feel rich. Fancier than your stuff. Another early restauranteur, Vacossion, focused on simple foods that individuals could not source themselves. "nouvelle cuisine"

• French Revolution actually problematic for the early restaurant -- communalism of the table d'hote more suited to egalitarianism.

• Commercial scene of the Palais Royal -- first mall. 27: 1780-1830 -- period of growth of restaurants - reflected some international ethnic cusine, but points out that the southern provinces of France would seem as exotic to Parisians and North African cuisine might seem to us. "Provencal"

• The modern restaurant also developes alongside gastronomy. Among the first, Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste.

• Adopted “Russian service” (sequence of courses, dishes chosen by each diner) rather than French banquet service (piles of dishes on a sideboard from which waiters serve) (consider the individualism in this) -- note how this changes the motivations of restauranteurs to be entrepreneurial. (Wealth of Nations, 1776)

• Part two of the chapter: The French Cafe: compares the emergence of the restaurant to the newer cafe, which did come into being by post-revolution licensing law changes allowing coffee/alcohol in same place. alcohol a myopic drug / caffeine a far sighted drug. 33-37, importance of. (Digress to consider how we handle this now and in different places.) note Paris / London comparisons p. 33. The cafe is a hangout, unlike the more formal restaurant.

• Brings in Pierre Bourdieu and Priscilla Park Ferguson -- "social field" , like a "scene" (examples of "gastronomic scenes" -- craft beer, local roasted coffee....) features of a food scene: writing, end of famine, enjoyment of food not seen as a sin, but mark of cultivation.

• Brillat-Savarin, 1825 Physiology of Taste. introduces word "gastronomy" 42ff. defines the "gourmand" in terms of enthusiasm about one's appetite and taste for food. analogy to the pleasure of flirtation, which he also claimed was a french invention (!). "Soft power" (mention slow food, also a political movement). With greater food security, enjoying food for its own sake change form vice to virtue (mention Happiness history here)

• Rival, Grimod La Reyniere -- real foodie, spent the revolution eating great food, somewhat abstracted. Rated restaurants and gave them stickers for their windows. The discussion here suggests how the vocabulary of the French gastronomic moment developed.

• 54: Habermas' theory about "Enlightenment eating" -- creates social capital. Issue at the end: Is the restaurant a bourgeoisie trap or an instrument of enlightenment?