Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920

Haley, Andrew P.

ISBN 10: 0807834742 / ISBN 13: 9780807834749

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2011

About this Item

Hardcover with dust jacket. Pages unmarked, gentle wear.

Seller Inventory # 80072

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807834742
• ISBN 13: 9780807834749
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 23 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

In the nineteenth century, restaurants served French food to upper-class Americans with aristocratic pretensions, but by the twentieth century, even the best restaurants dished up ethnic and American foods to middle-class urbanites spending a night on the town. In Turning the Tables, Andrew Haley examines the transformation of American public dining at the start of the twentieth century and argues that the birth of the modern American restaurant helped establish the middle class as the arbiter of American culture. Early twentieth-century battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, ethnic restaurants, unescorted women, tipping, and servantless restaurants pitted the middle class against the elite. United by their shared preferences for simpler meals and English-language menus, middle-class diners defied established conventions and successfully pressured restaurateurs to embrace cosmopolitan ideas of dining that reflected the preferences and desires of middle-cl

About the Author

Andrew P. Haley is an associate professor of American cultural history at the University of Southern Mississippi.