We all eat. But we do not eat the same food in the same places and we do not all share the
same sense of taste. To help figure out why that is we will chronicle the development of
restaurant dining in the United States, examining historical and current eating habits and
culinary influences. We will look at cooks as workers, as artists, business entrepreneurs,
professionals, and manual laborers. Similarly, we will look at restaurant menus and dining
rooms as invitations for eating and as social artifacts that reveal much about who we are,
individually and as a society