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 <i>Turning the Tables</i> 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.