Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920

by Andrew P. Haley

From the publisher: 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.

Andrew P. Haley is associate professor of American cultural history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

2012 James Beard Foundation Book Award in Reference and Scholarship
Finalist, 2012 International Association of Culinary Professionals Book Award in Culinary History

University of North Carolina Press, 2011