Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York
William Grimes, . . North Point, $28 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-86547-692-9
“Paris has better French restaurants, Madrid has better Spanish restaurants, and Tokyo has better Japanese restaurants,” Grimes concedes, but “no city... offers as many national cooking styles, at all price ranges, as New York does.” It wasn't always this way. As Grimes points out, it wasn't until the early 19th century that Manhattan and Brooklyn's culinary offerings extended beyond boardinghouse and tavern. His lively, profusely illustrated history veers in one fascinating direction after another, from the proliferation of oyster houses in the 1800s to the original recipe for chop suey. Grimes hits all the obvious high points—Delmonico's, the Automat, Le Pavillion, etc.—but also puts a spotlight on forgotten venues like Forum of the Twelve Caesars, an outsized theme restaurant from the same company that owned the Four Seasons. He gets personal in the final chapter, describing the scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s from his front-line perspective as the restaurant critic for the
Reviewed on: 08/24/2009
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 384 pages - 978-1-4299-9027-1
Paperback - 384 pages - 978-0-374-53249-9