The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture

by Rebecca L. Spang

Book Overview

Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating to be an enjoyable leisure activity or even a serious pastime? To find the answer to these questions, we must accompany Rebecca Spang back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a thing to eat: a quasi-medicinal bouillon that formed an essential element of prerevolutionary France's nouvelle cuisine. This is a book about the French Revolution...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674006852
• ISBN13: 9780674006850
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Illuminating and fascinating

This is an eminently readable piece of scholarlship. The information is well-organized, well-expressed, and utterly fascinating. Congratulations to the author. Well done!