Food Studies Matter, Meaning, Movement Case 'Reading' Menus, L Sasha Gora

CASE ' MENUS SASHA GORA TODAY SPECIAL READING MENUS AS CULTURAL TEXTS Sasha Gora is a cultural historian and writer with a focus on food and contemporary art . She is an environmental humanities at the the Humanities and Social Change at Ca University of Venice , where she is researching culinary reactions to climate change . In 2020 , she received a from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Rachel Carson Center on the subject of Indigenous restaurants in Canada . Learning Outcomes SASHA GORA 115

After reading and discussing this text , students should be able to Analyze restaurant menus as cultural artifacts . Identify how menus represent culinary points of view and reveal cultural norms . Recognize the assumptions and expectations associated with restaurant menus . INTRODUCTION The dirty comes with bacon and sausages , the tall chef explained . And the clean is hummus and It was my first day as a weekend cook and he was walking me through the basics The Dirty Brunch and The Clean I was the only woman in the kitchen , probably because my name had led him to believe otherwise . In addition to ing how to season potatoes and when to pancakes , was taught that men tend to order the dirty and women the This begins to reveal the assumptions behind the names of dishes on even the shortest of menus . A restaurant menu is about a lot more than food . Menus reveal more than the daily specials and how much a burger costs . Like other forms of print media , they are narrative devices . Menus tell stories . They plants and animals as edible . They resent a restaurant owners and cooks , its neighbourhood and region . They tell tales about class and race , about wealth and value , about immigration and identity , about culture and . Menus set forth our culinary options , writes sociologist Priscilla Ferguson , and they evoke the meals that express food as a distinctive attribute of a given social They are also archives . Menus document historic lost . Ferguson 2005 , 689 . 116 READING MENUS

to forgotten transformations in taste . They are memories of appetites past . This makes them rich primary sources , and so a menu analysis is a compelling research method for food studies . A SEAT AT THE TABLE To study a menu , one must first consider its history . As historian Paul Freedman makes clear , even though many of us take rants for granted , most prosperous , commercial societies in the past managed quite well without From taverns and inns to market stalls and , eating out has taken a myriad of forms , but the term restaurant emerged in Paris around the . The first called a restaurateur room their name with the dish they served , a healthful Offerings expanded and the restaurant a particular protocol a printed menu announced dishes , tables were separate instead of shared , and diners no longer had to eat at a single time . From at least the , Paris restaurants advertised their culinary options with a carte . Before this , a menu listed what was served as opposed to options from which to choose . These new menus granted diners the ability to order a meal of their own . The first menus featured printed folio text enclosed by leather borders or wooden frames . The text was tiny , packed , and , at the beginning of the nineteenth century , resembled a newspaper . But styles changed , keeping pace with other literary productions and , by , because of their looks , menus now bled novels . Although the text was French , it spoke a dialect of its . Freedman 2016 , Spang 2000 , 173 . For earlier examples , like street food and imperial China dining options , see and Shore , 2019 . SASHA GORA 117

own , requiring what historian Rebecca Spang calls menu . Restaurants straddle both public and private space . Historically , many have also upheld ( or challenged ) racial , gender , and segregation , policing who can dine where and with whom . Writing about nineteenth century Boston , for example , historian Kelly acknowledges this exclusivity , clarifying that not every restaurant welcomed women , African Americans , or The model of the restaurant as an exclusive ing venue , serving French food prepared largely by male pean chefs , carried on into the first decades of the century in North America . Then the rise of restaurants transformed dining out into a more egalitarian practice . Ever since , many different types of restaurants have continued to open , as well as Cecilia Chang the Mandarin ( which in 1961 introduced San Francisco to northern rather than southern Chinese fare ) to Harlem soul food icon , Sylvia Restaurant ( opened in 1962 and still running ) and from Mother Courage , New York City first feminist restaurant ( which opened in 1972 ) to the Eureka Continuum , first Indigenous restaurant ( opened in 2000 ) But a restaurant is not a restaurant is not a restaurant . Some eateries bear the burden of wearing the label ethnic which the cuisines of some cultures are naturalized , while others are . What makes a restaurant ethnic ?

Even though everyone has an ethnicity , the dominant culture never wears this label , which makes ethnic a relational marker and a politically charged label . This demonstrates how eating habits distinguish one culture from another . Food erects borders , constructs . 186 . 2016 , For ethnic food see 2011 and Ray 2014 . 118 READING MENUS

ence , and administers value . It is central for making and identity . Menus trace these negotiations . HOW TO SPEAK MENU With this history in mind , how can you look beyond your own appetite in order to read menus as cultural texts ?

What stories does a menu tell about the cuisine it seeks to represent ?

What language does it use and what knowledge does it assume ?

Menus frame the relationships between chefs , servers , and diners . By setting forth options one can choose from , they establish , holding the kitchen accountable to what the menu describes . This makes them contracts of sorts printed by which customers pay a fixed price for a dish the menu lists . Although a menu the food , as Lily Cho points out , there is a gap between the food itself and its textual Nonetheless , menus use visuals and text to represent what a kitchen sells and serves . They are also ambassadors about larger cultural beliefs that expand beyond a single restaurant . For example , one menu might list dishes to share , which ages eating out as a collective experience , and another might only have individual dishes , which reflects ( especially at lunch time ) a busy person need to grab something on the go . One might offer some types of meat , like beef , but not other types , like seal . And like showing the option of a Dirty or a Clean brunch , menus can connect to assumptions about appetites . All of these examples reveal how the food on offer relates to larger societal norms , who eats what , with whom , when , where , how , and who is expected to pay . It is how menus represent choice ( or the lack thereof ) that makes them fascinating narrative devices and objects of study . A menu is an inventory of options and a timetable scheduling when a dish . Cho 2010 , 52 . SASHA GORA 119

appears . Does a menu adhere to the dessert ?

Or does it abolish a hierarchy between dishes ?

How does this keep culture culinary norms ?

Menus can work with or against time . They can shadow the seasons by serving asparagus in spring , an increasingly common practice sparked by Slow Food and the movement . They can equally can also challenge the seasons , however , serving the same dishes come rain or shine . To analyze a menu is to reframe how we look at everyday things , learning to approach them as cultural artifacts that represent specific times and places . A good place to start is with names . The process of designing a restaurant , writes sociologist Ray , can begin with the mere act of naming Names like Sylvia for example , identify the restaurant with a single person , making it a more intimate affair . Language is important . What language ( does the menu use ?

Does it assume the knowledge of any specific terms ?

What does this knowledge reveal about the diner the menu targets ?

Le ion , New York City seminal French restaurant from 1941 to 1966 , presented diners with a menu in French , listing the likes of Coeur de au and aux This is an example of the cultural capital required to eat at an upscale restaurant at the time . Such a menu expected diners to be both in French as well as in its cuisine ing techniques . Based on language , can you determine if a menu speaks to a , or clientele ?

The very first menus were long , but styles have since changed . For restaurants it was once fashionable to display a range of options while today , many , including Copenhagen NOMA , present a single menu for all . Ray . 120 READING MENUS Sociologists Wright and Elizabeth Ransom demonstrate how to connect reading menus in relation to social class . standing food as a source of conspicuous consumption for the wealthy ( referring to Theory of the Leisure Class ) and a means for the socially mobile to acquire and display cultural capital ( referring to Pierre Distinction ) Wright and Ransom share restaurant menus in relation to class and examine how these menus code economic and social Moving beyond a focus on class alone , a menu analysis should employ an intersectional and cultural approach . After all , a tidy division between ethnicity , race , class , and gender is not possible . A menu analysis should zoom both in and out , and ask broader questions about how a menu represents a specific form of who it includes and excludes . Like the word ethnic , authentic is a loaded term . Setting it aside , what can you read on a menu that reveals how a restaurant communicates cultural beliefs , norms , and negotiations between majority and minority cultures ?

A MENU OF ONE OWN What do these questions look like in action ?

For the course , California Cooking How the Golden State Changed the Way America Eats , students analyzed menus from either restaurants in California or ones elsewhere that market themselves as . One looked at the politics of prices at Burger . Another addressed how a Mexican restaurants bilingual includes dishes with names like A Taste of tory one family experience of migration , as well as pressure to assimilate and . Another considered the menu of the Los Angeles outpost of a ramen rant , and how the same practice in one . Wright and Ransom 2005 , SASHA GORA 121

10 . carry different associations in another ( cheap in a North American context but not so ) In a class about African American , students selected menus from restaurants that serve Southern or soul food . One looked at a 1949 menu from a theater cafe , outlining the between eating and entertaining , and , for African , the 10 Studying both historic and contemporary menus , and showing how they are artifacts the history of the Great Migration and eating as a means to go back home , several students wrote about Sylvia , ing in on the relationship between food , community , and ory . In a course surveying the global history of American food , dents mapped how restaurants around the world construct and represent American culinary cultures . Many confronted in order to think critically about the nation state , soft power , and cultural capital . One , for example , looked at the American chain Fridays in Ecuador , focusing on the prevalence of meat in tandem with transformations in social class . The larger the class , the bigger the appetite for meat . Writing about an bul restaurant that peddles Southern American food , another student considered the politics of naming fusion to Citing historian Donna claim about the American penchant to experiment with foods , to combine and mix the foods of many cultural traditions into blended or stews and to create , the essay ended by arguing that this restaurant might also one day include dishes of Turkish origins . One student looked at an American diner in Munich , Germany , and its use of English , an example of a menu For the history of the ' circuit music venues where African Americans could perform during the period of racial Opie 2008 . 2000 , 122 READING MENUS

that requires particular linguistic or culinary knowledge , just like New York City Le Pavilion once did . CONCLUSION THE LAST COURSE It is a challenge to not read menus too literally . Instead , a menu analysis requires both micro and macro read between the lines , to read images and design . Restaurants mirror the ebbs and of social and political transformations . To follow suit , a menu analysis needs to move beyond a summary of dishes and ask Why these dishes now ?

Why call bacon and sausages dirty and hummus and salad clean ?

By doing a close reading of a menu , you can learn about restaurant which animals and plants end up on plates to the construction of ethnicity and how eating salty before sweet fits into culturally specific social orders . To analyze a menu is , therefore , to analyze the culture and society that produces it . Discussion Questions How does analyzing a restaurant menu as a mary source your understanding of what a menu is and does ?

Beyond menus , what are some other primary sources related to restaurants ?

What similarities and differences do you see between restaurant menus and other forms of culinary literature , like cookbooks ?

Exercise SASHA GORA 123 To analyze a menu it is not necessary to have visited the restaurant or to have eaten its food . Instead , one can do a close reading of a text , design , and images , or lack a manner than is similar to studying other forms of print culture . Here are some questions to ask . What is context of the menu ?

Is the menu contemporary or historic ?

How does the menu represent a particular cuisine ?

How inclusive is this representation ?

Does it take a regional or national approach ?

Does it stick to the country culinary or does it include any unexpected dishes ?

Are there any obvious omissions ?

Does it try to localize any dishes from elsewhere ?

Is the menu coherent or eclectic ?

Do any of the dishes stick out ?

How prominent is meat ?

What role does language play ?

What knowledge is assumed ( of foreign words , ingredients , or particular nary techniques ) Does the menu include photographs or illustrations ?

If so , how do these images relate to the food ?

Do the images represent particular dishes , or are they more inspirational or atmospheric ?

Does the menu a particular season ?

Or is this food seasonless ?

How does the menu relate to the restaurants geography ?

Does it list producers ?

Does it mention , for example , what kind of meat it uses , or the names of farmers ?

What role do prices play ?

Is there a range that might ence what a customer might order ?

How do the drinks complement ( or clash with ) the rest of 124 READING MENUS the menu ?

What kind of customer does the menu target ?

Additional Resources More and more libraries are sharing their menu holdings online . For example , in the United States , the New York Public Library has an extensive digital collection of historic restaurant menus . The Conrad Hilton Library at the Culinary Institute of America has over historical menus , including international ones . University of Washington also has a digital menu collection , as does the Los Angeles Public Library . Although not yet available online , Library has an extensive collection . References , 1984 . Distinction A Social Critique of the judgment of Taste , trans . Richard Nice . Cambridge , MA Harvard University Press . Cho , 2010 . Eating Chinese Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada . University of Press . Republic The Rise of Public Dining in Boston . University of Minnesota Press . Ferguson , 2005 . Eating Orders Markets , Menus , and History 77 . Freedman , 2016 . Ten Restaurants That Changed America . New York . SASHA GORA 125

, 200 . We Are What We Eat Ethnic Food and the ing of Americans . Cambridge , Mass . Harvard University Press . Opie , 2008 . Hog Hominy Soul Food from Africa to America . New York Columbia University Press . 201 . Too Hot to Handle Food , Empire , and Race in Thai Los Radical History Review 110 108 . and Shore . 2019 . Dining Out A Global History of Restaurants . London Books . Ray , 2014 . Taste , Toil and Ethnicity Immigrant Restaurateur and the American 44 ( 14 . Ray , 2016 . The Ethnic Restaurateur . London and New York . Spang , 2000 . The Invention of the Restaurant Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture . Cambridge , MA , and London , UK Harvard University Press . 1912 1899 . Theory of the Leisure Class . New York Macmillan . Wright , and Ransom . 2005 . Stratification on the Menu Using Restaurant Menus to Examine Social Teaching ology 33 ( 126 READING MENUS