NOV 16

20: NOV 16

Gopnik, Adam, "Who Made the Restaurant?" from The Table Comes First, 2012, (pp. 13-57). (44)

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.

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. 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" --

adopted Russian services (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) -- not how this changes the motivations of restauranteurs. (Wealth of Nations, 1776, just saying.)

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.

brings in 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?

Here are some links to organizations in the "new food economy" in Spokane. The values in this supply chain give us a nice example of how a new kind of food enterprise can come about.

Another direction to think about is scratch-made local healthy food in a food delivery format. My favorite local example is still Jennifer Stuchell's (GU Hogan entrepreneur) Pantry Fuel

Here is a link from Main Market (which favors local suppliers) to get a sense of the local food supply scene:[2].

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 Gratzer 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.