Turning the Tables

In the nineteenth century, restaurants served French food to upper-class Americans with aristocratic pretensions, but by the turn of the century, even the best restaurants cooked ethnic and American foods for middle-class urbanites. In Turning the Tables, Andrew P. Haley examines how the transformation of public dining that established the middle class as the arbiter of American culture was forged through battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, cosmopolitan cuisines, unescorted women, un-American tips, and servantless restaurants.