Eating with others is a restorative activity. When dining in an historic restaurant, the setting, cuisine, and relics of the past take us back in time. We come to understand a people’s history through the restaurant, those who founded it, how it stayed afloat, special dishes, and past famous guests. Recipes featuring local foods prepared by distinctive chefs leave diners with a souvenir of a beloved restaurant. We may find ourselves swept away by the unique atmosphere, friendly waitpersons, and abundant information to inform our historic journey.

Looks at the social, political, and intellectual history of dining out, food culture, and gastronomy in Paris.

A global history of restaurants beyond white tablecloths and maître d’s, Dining Out presents restaurants both as businesses and as venues for a range of human experiences. From banquets in twelfth-century China to the medicinal roots of French restaurants, the origins of restaurants are not singular—nor is the history this book tells. Katie Rawson and Elliott Shore highlight stories across time and place, including how chifa restaurants emerged from the migration of Chinese workers and their marriage to Peruvian businesswomen in nineteenth-century Peru; how Alexander Soyer transformed kitchen chemistry by popularizing the gas stove, pre-dating the pyrotechnics of molecular gastronomy by a century; and how Harvey Girls dispelled the ill repute of waiting tables, making rich lives for themselves across the American West. From restaurant architecture to technological developments, staffing and organization, tipping and waiting table, ethnic cuisines, and slow and fast foods, this delectably illustrated and profoundly informed and entertaining history takes us from the world’s first restaurants in Kaifeng, China, to the latest high-end dining experiences.

This book follows the lives of Jacqueline, John Jr., Caroline, Robert, Ted, and Joseph Kennedy up to the present time. It includes relationships with Marilyn Monroe, Carly Simon, Aristotle Onassis, Richard Nixon and others. The interactions of each Kennedy after John Kennedy was assassinated are shocking, poignant, and heart-rending.

Chicago author, Greg Borzo, recalls the city's celebrated lost restaurants. Many of Chicago's greatest or most unusual restaurants are no longer taking reservations, but they're definitely not forgotten. From steakhouses to delis, these dining destinations attracted movie stars, fed the hungry, launched nationwide trends and created a smorgasbord of culinary choices. Stretching across almost two centuries of memorable service and adventurous menus, this book revisits the institutions entrusted with the city's special occasions. Noted author Greg Borzo dishes out course after course of fondly remembered fare, from Maxim's to Charlie Trotter's and Trader Vic's to the Blackhawk.

Finalist for the IACP Cookbook Award A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Smithsonian Best Food Book of the Year Longlisted for the Art of Eating Prize Featuring a new chapter on ten restaurants changing America today, a “fascinating . . . sweep through centuries of food culture” (Washington Post). Combining an historian’s rigor with a food enthusiast’s palate, Paul Freedman’s seminal and highly entertaining Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled Mandarin; evoking the poignant nostalgia of Howard Johnson’s, the beloved roadside chain that foreshadowed the pandemic of McDonald’s; or chronicling the convivial lunchtime crowd at Schrafft’s, the first dining establishment to cater to women’s tastes, Freedman uses each restaurant to reveal a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. “As much about the contradictions and contrasts in this country as it is about its places to eat” (The New Yorker), Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a “must-read” (Eater) that proves “essential for anyone who cares about where they go to dinner” (Wall Street Journal Magazine).

How old is Ethiopian cuisine and the unique way of eating it? Ethiopians proudly say their cuisine goes back 3,000 to 5,000 years. Archaeologists and historians now believe it emerged in the first millennium A.D. in Aksum, an ancient kingdom that occupied whats now the northern region of Ethiopia and the southern region of neighboring Eritrea. But regardless of when Ethiopians began to eat spicy wots atop the spongy flatbread injera, or when they first drank the intoxicating honey wine called tej, their cuisine remains unique in the world. Mesob Across America: Ethiopian Food in the U.S.A. brings together what respected scholars and passionate Ethiopians know and believe about this delectable cuisine. From the ingredients of the Ethiopian kitchen the foods, the spices, and the ways of combining them to a close-up look at the cuisines history and culture, Mesob Across America is both comprehensive and anecdotal. Explore the history of how restaurant communities emerged in the U.S., and visit them as they exist today. Learn how to prepare a five-course Ethiopian meal, including homemade tej. And solve the mystery of when Ethiopian food made its debut in America which was not when most Ethiopians think it did.