MAR 23

17. MAR 23

Assigned Work (Heavy Reading Day)

• Gopnik, Adam, "Who Made the Restaurant?" from The Table Comes First, 2012, (pp. 13-57). (44)
• Ogle, Maureen, In Meat We Trust, C2, "We Are Here To Make Money" (26-44) (18)

In-class

• Re-imagining the restaurant

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?

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.

Ogle, Maureen, In Meat We Trust, C2, "We Are Here To Make Money"

• Tells the story of the rise of the "dressed beef" supply chain, and the fortunes of Swift, an innovator.

• Opens with Summer 1882 building of Swift's warehouse at the tip of Manhattan. Backs up to tell the story of the rail monopolies practices of overcharging for shipping costs of live beef. (29) details.

• Bringing animals into the city live was becoming impractical, a health hazard, and unsightly (also happenening in Europe, French in the lead in developing the modern abattoir). Note: old slaughterhouses could handle from 1-12 animals a day. But there were hundreds of them in a city like NY.

• Boards of Health moving against small butchers. Early modern abattoir: Communipaw. Communipaw abattoir [1]. Could handle 2,000 animals a day.

• Courts battles as butchers argued that regulation of their busines was unconstitutional. The "Slaughterhouse Cases" at the Supreme Court.

• Another version of this fight in the Vanderbilt’s proposal to build a big slaughterhouse in central Manhattan. NIMBY issue with local residents. Vanderbilt gets his stockyard and abattoir at West 59th Street, NYC.

• Live shipped animal also suffered in transit, meat damaged, lost 200 pounds.

• 34-35: initial account of slaughter process. We’ll see more of this in ethics unit.

• 36: Legal fights over forced closure of private slaughterhouses. Supreme Court “slaughterhouse cases” affirmed authority of municipalities to regulate slaughter and create municipal slaughterhouses.

• 40: Before Swift, other entrepreneurs tried shipping dressed beef. Hammond. Refrigertor cars (with ice, not compressors) in use and developing.

• Swift's success: read at 41. (get images of Chicago stockyards). Era of "cheap beef"

• Stop here for today. Part two of this reading for Monday, March 29

• 46: Philip Armour story -- not a meat guy, but understood how to corner the market with futures contracts. Went to Chicago to build a pork processing plant. Enters the New York market along with Swift.

• 50: Interesting point about meat culture and American culture: read. Choice meats available to all classes.

• Meat Ideology -- 19th/early 20th century idea that meat protein is special and accounts for European hegemony. (add notes: Japan responds by developing "Kobe" meat culture.)

• Meat Bubble - profits of 33%, era of free range livestock production with very low costs, ending. 1870: one steer per 5 acres, 1880: one steer per 50-90 acres, due to overgrazing. 52. Bubble bursts.

• Margins on dressed beef were actually very low. Demanded high volume to be profitable. Byproducts were important.

• Beef Trust -- already a focus on the Railroad Trusts, Congress investigates collusion in pricing. 57ff. 1888.

• 1890: Sherman Antitrust Act.