Rebecca L. Spang
The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture
Two of my favourite sentences in this book. The first on the 18th century view of restaurants:
The miracles of digestion were not unfailing, however, and so vital a bodily process could easily be deranged by ill-prepared foods, intellectual exertion, or emotional anguish.
The second, a gem about the transformation of the institution of the restaurant in the 19th century:
In a restaurant, the ostentatious potlatch of baroque expenditure was replaced by the equally conspicuous and significant economy of rationalized calculation.
And so for day 3092
30.05.2015