Ten Restaurants That Changed America, Paul Freedman
Ten Restaurants That Changed America, Paul Freedman
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Ten Restaurants That Changed America

Author: Paul Freedman, Danny Meyer

Narrator: Keith Szarabajka

Unabridged: 13 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/20/2016

Synopsis

From Delmonico’s to Sylvia’s to Chez Panisse, a daring and original history of dining out in America as told through ten legendary restaurantsCombining a historian’s rigor with a foodie’s palate, 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 the Mandarin, evoking the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone’s, or chronicling the rise and fall of French haute cuisine through Henri Soulé’s Le Pavillon, food historian Paul Freedman uses each restaurant to tell a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. Freedman also treats us to a scintillating history of the then-revolutionary Schrafft’s, a chain of convivial lunch spots that catered to women, and that bygone favorite, Howard Johnson’s, which pioneered on-the-road dining, only to be swept aside by McDonald’s.Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a significant and highly entertaining social history.

About Paul Freedman

Paul Freedman is a history professor at Yale University. The editor of the ICP Award–winning Food: The History of Taste and the author of Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination, he lives in Pelham, New York.

About Danny Meyer

Danny Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. His restaurants and their chefs have earned an unprecedented twenty-one James Beard Awards and perennially rank among New York City’s favorite restaurants in the Zagat survey. He lives in New York City.

About Keith Szarabajka

Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on March 25, 2021

Weighty, intense, and amazing. The author delivers exactly what the title promises - examinations of ten restaurants that - for whatever reason - changed America. Not the ten historically best, not the ten most famous, not the ten most influential, yet nevertheless ten fascinating stories. Every cha......more

Goodreads review by Karen on November 07, 2016

I wanted to like this book. Started off liking this book. Then ended up barely skimming the last 100 pages or so. The concept is not just about the ten restaurants the author identifies as being particularly influential in America, it's also a social history of times and places from long ago to the......more

Goodreads review by Ensiform on April 19, 2019

A chronological overview of ten of the most influential and important (not necessarily the best) restaurants in America, from the traditional to the start of a new cuisine. Freedman, surprisingly a professor of medieval history, delves into the development, food, and personalities behind the origina......more

Goodreads review by Steven on December 16, 2016

This is a very good book! It looks at a series of restaurants throughout American history. Paul Freedman, the author, says of his goal: "Reading about the ten restaurants gives me a sense of American diversity, and how these different experiments expressed a sense of love that is the basic ingredien......more

Goodreads review by David on November 12, 2016

This is a book that will keep giving for years to come. Do you want to remember all the flavors of Howard Johnson's ice cream? That information is here. The origin of the chop suey craze? Asked and answered. The original name for Baked Alaska? Alaska, Florida (impress your cruise tablemates with tha......more

Quotes

“Fascinating….Mr. Freedman’s book suggests that it’s not ultimately restaurants that change America―it’s the people in the kitchen.” Wall Street Journal

“A book as much about the contradictions and contrasts in this country as it is about its places to eat. It is designed to keep you up, thinking, and, as I did this summer, returning to its rich, and often troubling, pages.” New Yorker

“The restaurants Freedman features aren’t necessarily the finest, but they represent a range of pivots in the nation’s history. Howard Johnson’s, for example, appealed to families and pioneered franchising as a shrewd business plan. Chez Panisse’s focus on local ingredients continues to shape American taste.” New York Times Book Review

“Effectively makes the case that the story of America’s restaurants is one of changing immigration patterns, race relations, gender and family roles, work obligations, and leisure habits…[Freedman’s] insights are shrewd.” Washington Post

“Eminently readable…In a narrative that is intellectually delicious, Freedman presents a new way of thinking about ‘you are what you eat.’” Library Journal

“A robust historical trek through America’s restaurant cuisine over three centuries.” Kirkus Reviews

“Paul Freedman, one of the world’s most learned food writers, has focused his extraordinary scholarship on a deconstruction of American dining from the corner deli to Chez Panisse. If you enjoy a brown paper bag of fried clams as much as a fourteen-course tasting menu, and ever wondered how it all came to be a part of daily American life, this is the book for you. Ten Restaurants That Changed America is the most enlightening kind of history, as Freedman takes a fresh look at what we take for granted and reveals the extraordinary matrix of cultural and culinary currents that have made it all possible.” Frederick Kaufman, author of Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food

“The most important and entertaining book on the subject of food that I’ve read in years…Witty, sensitive, surprisingly sensuous―more, please!” Molly O’Neill, author of The Big Table

“Pleasure without snobbery: Paul Freedman’s book is itself exactly what the very best American food has always been.” Joyce E. Chaplin, professor of early American history, Harvard University

Awards

  • Washington Post Best Book
  • New York Times Book Review pick
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