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The Dairy Restaurant
Ben Katchor retells the history of where we choose to eat--a history that starts with the first man who was allowed to enter a walled garden and encouraged by the garden's owner to enjoy its fruits. He examines the biblical milk-and-meat taboo, the first vegetarian practices, and the invention of the restaurant. Through text and drawings, Katchor illuminates the historical confluence of events and ideas that led to the development of a "milekhdike (dairy) personality" and the proliferation of dairy restaurants in America, and he recollects his own experiences in many of these iconic restaurants just before they disappeared.
PART OF THE JEWISH ENCOUNTERS SERIES
PART OF THE JEWISH ENCOUNTERS SERIES
497 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
13 people are currently reading
606 people want to read
About the author
Ben Katchor
25 books89 followersBen Katchor (born 1951 in Brooklyn, NY) is an American cartoonist. His comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer paints an evocative picture of a slightly surreal, historical New York City with a decidedly Jewish sensibility. Julius Knipl has been published in several book collections including Cheap Novelties: The Pleasure of Urban Decay and The Beauty Supply District. Other serialized comics by Katchor include The Jew Of New York (collected and published as a graphic novel in 1998), The Cardboard Valise and Hotel & Farm. He regularly contributes comics and drawings to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Metropolis magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
September 24, 2020
This was a really disorienting book to read. I'm not sure if it was the start of the narrative in a garden of Eden recast as a restaurant, but I spent much of the book wondering if what I was reading was history, fantasy, or satire. Katchor's art style is both loose and evocative, detailed and scribbly and I really enjoyed it but much of the detail washed over me because I didn't feel like I had the context or mental set to really understand and process it.
**Thanks to the artist, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
**Thanks to the artist, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 2, 2024
This book was technically a history of the Jewish dairy restaurants of New York City, but it covered much more than that. Katchor makes a compelling presentation of the intertwined histories of eating as one of the first biblical acts, the origins of Kosher dietary law and its link to vegetarianism, the invention of restaurants, and the migration of traditional Eastern European cuisine to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. All of these topics are interesting to me standing alone, so I enjoyed reading how these histories shaped each other. However, the book’s biggest flaw is its organization. I felt that the chapters jumped from tangential topic to tangential topic with a bumpy and sometimes incoherent flow. I think this is a large reason why it took me so long to read. That being said, I flew through the back half of the book that covers all the long-gone dairy restaurants of lower Manhattan. Katchor’s words paint clear enough images for me to feel nostalgic about these shuttered institutions that I never got to visit, and his illustrations are a bonus visual.
I ultimately enjoyed this but it was a slog to get through at times, and I don’t think it’s for everyone. 2.5 stars.
I ultimately enjoyed this but it was a slog to get through at times, and I don’t think it’s for everyone. 2.5 stars.
June 8, 2020
This exploration and celebration of the iconic American dairy restaurant is both enlightening and entertaining. These once popular restaurants flourished in New York City and elsewhere in the late 1800s and were at the height of their popularity in the early part of the 20th century. They catered for the 2 million East European Jews who had immigrated to the United States and offered a mix of regional cuisines from Russia, Poland, Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This cuisine had evolved over hundreds of years to adapt to Jewish dietary laws and the dairy restaurant thrived as it was forbidden to mix meat and milk, so their menus consisted of dairy, vegetables, grains and fish. This history shows that they weren’t just places to eat but an integral part of Jewish cultural life. They are still to be found in Hasidic neighbourhoods today but their glory days are pretty much over. The author’s meticulous research brings them back to life – along with his cartoon-style illustrations. Much of the book I found fascinating, not least because this was a subject new to me. I especially enjoyed the many historical snippets that pepper the text, such as that Trotsky, a vegetarian, when he visited NYC in 1917, had most of his meals at one of the city’s many dairy restaurants. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the cuisine and the types of dishes served. Many of the restaurants have now disappeared as the proprietors in many cases wanted their children to aim higher in life. There’s certainly a nostalgic air to the narrative, not least because sometimes all that remains is a postcard or matchbook of a once busy eatery. The book also examines Jewish dietary laws and their origin, and Jewish culinary history – right back to the Garden of Eden. So it’s a wide ranging study. One drawback for me was that some of the book consists of lists of the restaurants, much as in a directory, which is excellent from an historical point of view, but slows down the narrative and becomes somewhat tedious. Overall, however, it’s a wonderful work of social history, which opened a previously unknown world to me.
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May 20, 2021(A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.)
Over the last forty years, going back to the earliest issues of Art Spiegelman’s RAW Magazine, Ben Katchor has lovingly and even obsessively documented the rich and particular Jewish culture of 20th Century New York. He does so with a distinct drawing style, similar to that of no other artist from his “second generation” of Underground Comix: boxy sketchy line drawings most often shaded with grey wash. The color of newsprint and dust and faded photos. In strips such Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and Cheap Novelties, Katchor depicts the everyday lives of his everyday city dwellers with both the wistful nostalgia and the canny humor that are hallmarks of the New Yorker’s worldview. (If you are a true New Yorker, you are at least a little bit Jewish.)
I opened his new book, The Dairy Restaurant, fully expecting to find more of the same fare—Katchor comics with a cafeteria twist, perhaps—and was surprised to find it was not at all what I thought I had ordered. (Warning: this book invites wordplay as much as it dishes it out.) The Dairy Restaurant is, instead, an illustrated prose (not comic) history of, well, eating. It is a culinary history that also manages to be a history of human culture—after all, we are what we eat. Katchor starts literally at the beginning: the Garden of Eden was, he asserts, the original restaurant, with, of course, in the third Chapter of Genesis’s accounting of Adam and Eve’s eating of the fruit, “the first recorded instance of a couple splitting a single dish.”
Over 500 pages Katchor serves up a history of gastronomy and degustation, with the second half of the book focused mostly on New York and that specific type of restaurant of the book’s title. Dairy restaurants flourished starting in the late 19th century but were pretty much extinct by the start of the 21st. (Katchor offers some theories why.) In order to conform to kosher rules they serve no meat, instead offering spreads of cheese blintzes, egg salad, smoked fish, cabbage soup or borscht, and even vegetable cutlets. Toward the end of the book, in classic Katchor style, the dairy restaurant is brought to life via ephemera from long-gone establishments: menus, advertisements, matchbooks, and so much more. Reading this book was like stepping into a Yiddish time machine, and it left me hungry for Nova lox and cream cheese on a bialy. I am grateful to Katchor for introducing me to the dairy restaurant and teaching me so much about the history of food and dining, and for doing so via what might be called “Jewish Magical Realism”: a longing not for what might be, but for what was, and what has been lost.
Over the last forty years, going back to the earliest issues of Art Spiegelman’s RAW Magazine, Ben Katchor has lovingly and even obsessively documented the rich and particular Jewish culture of 20th Century New York. He does so with a distinct drawing style, similar to that of no other artist from his “second generation” of Underground Comix: boxy sketchy line drawings most often shaded with grey wash. The color of newsprint and dust and faded photos. In strips such Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and Cheap Novelties, Katchor depicts the everyday lives of his everyday city dwellers with both the wistful nostalgia and the canny humor that are hallmarks of the New Yorker’s worldview. (If you are a true New Yorker, you are at least a little bit Jewish.)
I opened his new book, The Dairy Restaurant, fully expecting to find more of the same fare—Katchor comics with a cafeteria twist, perhaps—and was surprised to find it was not at all what I thought I had ordered. (Warning: this book invites wordplay as much as it dishes it out.) The Dairy Restaurant is, instead, an illustrated prose (not comic) history of, well, eating. It is a culinary history that also manages to be a history of human culture—after all, we are what we eat. Katchor starts literally at the beginning: the Garden of Eden was, he asserts, the original restaurant, with, of course, in the third Chapter of Genesis’s accounting of Adam and Eve’s eating of the fruit, “the first recorded instance of a couple splitting a single dish.”
Over 500 pages Katchor serves up a history of gastronomy and degustation, with the second half of the book focused mostly on New York and that specific type of restaurant of the book’s title. Dairy restaurants flourished starting in the late 19th century but were pretty much extinct by the start of the 21st. (Katchor offers some theories why.) In order to conform to kosher rules they serve no meat, instead offering spreads of cheese blintzes, egg salad, smoked fish, cabbage soup or borscht, and even vegetable cutlets. Toward the end of the book, in classic Katchor style, the dairy restaurant is brought to life via ephemera from long-gone establishments: menus, advertisements, matchbooks, and so much more. Reading this book was like stepping into a Yiddish time machine, and it left me hungry for Nova lox and cream cheese on a bialy. I am grateful to Katchor for introducing me to the dairy restaurant and teaching me so much about the history of food and dining, and for doing so via what might be called “Jewish Magical Realism”: a longing not for what might be, but for what was, and what has been lost.
May 11, 2020
I love how this book took me down the lanes of history, beginning from the Bible- the Garden of Eden- giving an historical and Biblical account of Jewish tradition of dairy eating- and the laws that influenced the dishes they made and the various times and places they lived in.
What makes this an appealing read are the drawings as well- you cannot help but be drawn into the story by the pictorials accompanying it.
At the end of the story, I could not help but understand the impact that society, laws, changing times have on people and more so on food. It got me thinking about the dishes we prepare today- and how my parents and grandparents prepared it.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.
What makes this an appealing read are the drawings as well- you cannot help but be drawn into the story by the pictorials accompanying it.
At the end of the story, I could not help but understand the impact that society, laws, changing times have on people and more so on food. It got me thinking about the dishes we prepare today- and how my parents and grandparents prepared it.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.
September 17, 2022
I was so into this in the beginning and it started to lose me toward the end. I felt like there were these multiple ideas that I couldn’t wait to see how they were brought together, and that ended up being like one sentence at the end. I’m glad I read it though.
June 8, 2023
Bought this on a visit to Athen, GA at Bizarro-Wuxtry Comics, Toys, & Stuff. I read "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories," which the Bang on a Can collective used for their oratorio "The Carbon Copy Building." I don’t read graphic novels very often, but this is a book about restaurants. I’ve written about food, so it seems a good choice to read.
"The Dairy Restaurant" is not a graphic novel, but an illustrated history of dairy restaurants, part of the Jewish Encounters series from Schocken/Nextbook Press. Because I was expecting something more along the lines of a graphic novel, I thought that there would be more illustrations and less text, but this is a text-heavy book with an illustration on every page or two-page spread. Which is fine. It is a detailed, well-researched, cross-disciplinary history of the phenomena of the dairy restaurant, told primarily, although not exclusively, through diasporic Jewish history from the middle east to Europe, Eastern Europe, and the U.S. Katchor uses Biblical scholarship, Judaica, food studies, restaurant studies, agriculture studies, European and East European histories, US history, political science, primary sources (e.g., city directories), philosophers, artists, and writers. He pulls on Jewish writers like Franz Kafka and I.L. Peretz, and he make extensive use of Sholem Alecheim(“Tevye the Milkman” and other stories). All to trace the development of the dairy restaurant.
Close to a thesis: “Of all the eating places, it’s the Twentieth century Jewish dairy restaurant, possibly due to its utilitarian design and lack of picturesque ethnic qualities, that’s least memorialized and preserved” (234). Katchor’s purpose in this book is to remember the dairy restaurant at length and in as much detail as he can manage.
The book has a huge scope. It begins with an illustration of primordial borscht (75 cents a bowl), which then becomes the ancient continents, Gondwanaland and Laurasia and the Tethys Sea. From there, Katchor is off to an all-encompassing and minutely detailed account of the dairy restaurant. Based on evidence from Sumerian oasis pleasure gardens, Katchor reframes the Garden of Eden as a kind of restaurant, with an employer/owner (God), a waiter (devil/snake), and customers, like Adam and Eve, who sit in the shade of fruit trees and eat the fruit. Expelled for non-payment and/or breaking restaurant rules, Adam and Eve and their progeny find themselves in a world split between meat and non-meat. For Katchor, this leads to a history of perpetual conflict and humanity’s attempts to manage it. He turns to Jewish dietary laws, particularly focusing on the split between meat and milk, but also speaking at length about the complicated consequences of that split.
Katchor spends much time on Biblical history and then moves fairly quickly out of the Middle East to the Mediterranean, Europe, Eastern Europe, and the US. In other words, he follows the diaspora. He turns to the beginnings of restaurants–or it might be better to say eating outside the home–in Europe/Eastern Europe and finds Kosher milk cuisine an integral part. Thus, dairy restaurants/milk halls become a way that diasporic Jewish culture integrates and assimilates into European culture while also maintaining a separate existence. Katchor looks closely at different cities–London, Paris, Warsaw, etc.--for the presence of dairy restaurants and kosher restaurants (meat and non-meat). Katchor is very good at research and reproduces directories of such restaurants. He also explores, if you will, the milk culture of such restaurants and the clientele that they attract: intellectuals, artists, writers, revolutionaries, vegetarians. Katchor spends much time linking dairy restaurants to the rise of vegetarianism in Europe and Eastern Europe. Besides historical data, he uses writers like Sholem Alecheim, Franz Kafka, and Leo Tolstoy to reinforce the importance of vegetarianism and the milk restaurant in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Katchor offers an intriguing reading of “The Metamorphosis” based on Kafka’s own preference for milk foods: although Gregor would love to eat the clean, healthy bowl of milk and bread (his favorite food) his sister brings him, he cannot; as a bug, though, can eat the leftover, rotten, abject foods she leaves.
It is the 200 or so final pages, when Katchor turns to the US, in particular New York, that he really seems to be in his element. For Jewish immigrants, dairy restaurants are a sign of home as well as achieving a foothold in the new country. Both the US temperance movement and the diet regimens of Sylvester Graham and the Kellogg brothers take up the new phenomena of the dairy/vegetarian restaurant. What Katchor spends most of these final pages doing, though, is creating a historical directory of dairy restaurants from the nineteenth century to the present, focused primarily on New York but extending to other regions/cities. Sometimes, Katchor gives only the name and address of a restaurant. Other times, Katchor dedicates considerable commentary to the importance of a particular restaurant. He clearly wants to be as inclusive and complete as possible. This directory took a lot of work–a lot of research–clearly fueled by a nostalgia for restaurants lost, for Katchor is tracking the demise of the dairy restaurant. I imagine that a long time New Yorker would find this section absolutely fascinating, a giant Proustian memory trigger. As a non-New Yorker, I skimmed this section and was simply impressed by the quantity of these restaurants, their dominance and demise.
I have two favorite illustrations. The first is of the Fillmore East, with Frank Zappa, The Mothers of Invention, and Chicago on the marque. The second is of Bill Graham and Frank Zappa next door at Ratner’s. According to Katchor, Bill Graham is explaining the importance of gefilte fish to Zappa.
"The Dairy Restaurant" is not a graphic novel, but an illustrated history of dairy restaurants, part of the Jewish Encounters series from Schocken/Nextbook Press. Because I was expecting something more along the lines of a graphic novel, I thought that there would be more illustrations and less text, but this is a text-heavy book with an illustration on every page or two-page spread. Which is fine. It is a detailed, well-researched, cross-disciplinary history of the phenomena of the dairy restaurant, told primarily, although not exclusively, through diasporic Jewish history from the middle east to Europe, Eastern Europe, and the U.S. Katchor uses Biblical scholarship, Judaica, food studies, restaurant studies, agriculture studies, European and East European histories, US history, political science, primary sources (e.g., city directories), philosophers, artists, and writers. He pulls on Jewish writers like Franz Kafka and I.L. Peretz, and he make extensive use of Sholem Alecheim(“Tevye the Milkman” and other stories). All to trace the development of the dairy restaurant.
Close to a thesis: “Of all the eating places, it’s the Twentieth century Jewish dairy restaurant, possibly due to its utilitarian design and lack of picturesque ethnic qualities, that’s least memorialized and preserved” (234). Katchor’s purpose in this book is to remember the dairy restaurant at length and in as much detail as he can manage.
The book has a huge scope. It begins with an illustration of primordial borscht (75 cents a bowl), which then becomes the ancient continents, Gondwanaland and Laurasia and the Tethys Sea. From there, Katchor is off to an all-encompassing and minutely detailed account of the dairy restaurant. Based on evidence from Sumerian oasis pleasure gardens, Katchor reframes the Garden of Eden as a kind of restaurant, with an employer/owner (God), a waiter (devil/snake), and customers, like Adam and Eve, who sit in the shade of fruit trees and eat the fruit. Expelled for non-payment and/or breaking restaurant rules, Adam and Eve and their progeny find themselves in a world split between meat and non-meat. For Katchor, this leads to a history of perpetual conflict and humanity’s attempts to manage it. He turns to Jewish dietary laws, particularly focusing on the split between meat and milk, but also speaking at length about the complicated consequences of that split.
Katchor spends much time on Biblical history and then moves fairly quickly out of the Middle East to the Mediterranean, Europe, Eastern Europe, and the US. In other words, he follows the diaspora. He turns to the beginnings of restaurants–or it might be better to say eating outside the home–in Europe/Eastern Europe and finds Kosher milk cuisine an integral part. Thus, dairy restaurants/milk halls become a way that diasporic Jewish culture integrates and assimilates into European culture while also maintaining a separate existence. Katchor looks closely at different cities–London, Paris, Warsaw, etc.--for the presence of dairy restaurants and kosher restaurants (meat and non-meat). Katchor is very good at research and reproduces directories of such restaurants. He also explores, if you will, the milk culture of such restaurants and the clientele that they attract: intellectuals, artists, writers, revolutionaries, vegetarians. Katchor spends much time linking dairy restaurants to the rise of vegetarianism in Europe and Eastern Europe. Besides historical data, he uses writers like Sholem Alecheim, Franz Kafka, and Leo Tolstoy to reinforce the importance of vegetarianism and the milk restaurant in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Katchor offers an intriguing reading of “The Metamorphosis” based on Kafka’s own preference for milk foods: although Gregor would love to eat the clean, healthy bowl of milk and bread (his favorite food) his sister brings him, he cannot; as a bug, though, can eat the leftover, rotten, abject foods she leaves.
It is the 200 or so final pages, when Katchor turns to the US, in particular New York, that he really seems to be in his element. For Jewish immigrants, dairy restaurants are a sign of home as well as achieving a foothold in the new country. Both the US temperance movement and the diet regimens of Sylvester Graham and the Kellogg brothers take up the new phenomena of the dairy/vegetarian restaurant. What Katchor spends most of these final pages doing, though, is creating a historical directory of dairy restaurants from the nineteenth century to the present, focused primarily on New York but extending to other regions/cities. Sometimes, Katchor gives only the name and address of a restaurant. Other times, Katchor dedicates considerable commentary to the importance of a particular restaurant. He clearly wants to be as inclusive and complete as possible. This directory took a lot of work–a lot of research–clearly fueled by a nostalgia for restaurants lost, for Katchor is tracking the demise of the dairy restaurant. I imagine that a long time New Yorker would find this section absolutely fascinating, a giant Proustian memory trigger. As a non-New Yorker, I skimmed this section and was simply impressed by the quantity of these restaurants, their dominance and demise.
I have two favorite illustrations. The first is of the Fillmore East, with Frank Zappa, The Mothers of Invention, and Chicago on the marque. The second is of Bill Graham and Frank Zappa next door at Ratner’s. According to Katchor, Bill Graham is explaining the importance of gefilte fish to Zappa.
November 22, 2020
Katchor, although he’s older than I am, had much the same experience with dairy restaurants in New York - by the time he discovered them, they were almost gone, or closed soon after. I remember going to Ratner’s once in the late 1990s, finding out it was where my parents went for their first or second date, and then it closed. A few years after I moved back from Hungary, I heard about a dairy restaurant in midtown that had some Hungarian dishes, but by the time I got around to planning to go there, it was closed. Like Katchor, I once expected the institutions of one’s parents’ and grandparents’ New York to last forever, but by now, we should know better.
My husband the foodie, who didn’t move to NY until 2011, knew better, and knew his only experience with most of these institutions would be to read about them - hence, he bought Katchor’s book, and I read it after he did. We had been reading a scholarly book about coffeehouses in Europe, and we expected that this book, on a lighter level, would bring us vicariously into another prewar institution.
But it was an unsatisfying literary dish, and the last two pages explain why. When Katchor initially decided to write about the topic, others recommended him where and how to do research. But in the end, he didn’t want to - he just gradually, without direction, collected interview and anecdotes and records here and there and spun them into a stream of consciousness narrative about Jewish eating habits, dairy food, and several famed and lesser-known institutions. This didn’t work - much of it wasn’t interesting, or felt incomplete or confusing. The drawings were uninspired. Given Katchor’s abilities and reputation, I felt this project could have been so much more.
My husband the foodie, who didn’t move to NY until 2011, knew better, and knew his only experience with most of these institutions would be to read about them - hence, he bought Katchor’s book, and I read it after he did. We had been reading a scholarly book about coffeehouses in Europe, and we expected that this book, on a lighter level, would bring us vicariously into another prewar institution.
But it was an unsatisfying literary dish, and the last two pages explain why. When Katchor initially decided to write about the topic, others recommended him where and how to do research. But in the end, he didn’t want to - he just gradually, without direction, collected interview and anecdotes and records here and there and spun them into a stream of consciousness narrative about Jewish eating habits, dairy food, and several famed and lesser-known institutions. This didn’t work - much of it wasn’t interesting, or felt incomplete or confusing. The drawings were uninspired. Given Katchor’s abilities and reputation, I felt this project could have been so much more.
August 11, 2020
Given the title of this book and my interest in culinary history, I was definitely looking forward to reading this book. There is a saying that you should never judge a book by its cover. That is definitely true in this case. I did not enjoy this book. While reading through the beginning pages, I had the impression that it was geared toward a particular audience with a particular outlook and I did not fit either.
The book starts out with the account of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. While that is fine, given the type of meal eaten and it being the first consumed meal on record, I had a challenge with the way the information was presented. The author’s tone appeared to be somewhat acidic and information seemed to be presented with a sarcastic attitude. The tone and attitude of the author had me skipping past several pages to see if actual historical and well-presented information was provided elsewhere in the book. The amount of pages I had to turn to find that information made me wonder why the author could not have provided this information earlier or to have presented the earlier information in a better way. That would have made it more enjoyable for all audiences who are interested in the topic and not just some. I would also add that some of the illustrations were not to my liking but art is subjective. Therefore, as I stated earlier, I can see that it was geared toward a particular audience with a particular outlook. I would hope that someone else would decide to write on this topic but in a better way.
I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book provided by the publisher and Net Galley. However, the thoughts expressed are totally my own.
The book starts out with the account of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. While that is fine, given the type of meal eaten and it being the first consumed meal on record, I had a challenge with the way the information was presented. The author’s tone appeared to be somewhat acidic and information seemed to be presented with a sarcastic attitude. The tone and attitude of the author had me skipping past several pages to see if actual historical and well-presented information was provided elsewhere in the book. The amount of pages I had to turn to find that information made me wonder why the author could not have provided this information earlier or to have presented the earlier information in a better way. That would have made it more enjoyable for all audiences who are interested in the topic and not just some. I would also add that some of the illustrations were not to my liking but art is subjective. Therefore, as I stated earlier, I can see that it was geared toward a particular audience with a particular outlook. I would hope that someone else would decide to write on this topic but in a better way.
I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book provided by the publisher and Net Galley. However, the thoughts expressed are totally my own.
June 4, 2023
I became a fan of Katchor after reading Hand-Drying in America. I knew this book wouldn't be quite like that one but I went for it anyway because I enjoy his idiosyncratic illustrations and figured I'd learn something as well.
And I definitely learned things because it's extremely thorough. This thoroughness can become tiresome, however, especially in the section cataloging past dairy restaurants from various parts of New York City. Up until that point there's a basic sense of chronology guiding the book, but then we pinball to and from different points in the 20th century. It made me wonder if an index would have been useful, or at least a brief introduction stating what prompted Katchor to write this and why it's structured like it is.
I still appreciate his scratchy, even somewhat grotesque drawings, and they also bolster reader interest during the dry parts. So it's unfortunate that some of these are partially obscured by the crease between pages (at least in my edition this was so). There are also several scanned restaurant ads written in Hebrew, which he translates, but they don't seem to add much visually.
Near the end, Katchor incorporates some of his personal experiences in dairy restaurants, and I found these to be some of the strongest passages, supporting his wistful retrospective of a bygone beloved institution.
And I definitely learned things because it's extremely thorough. This thoroughness can become tiresome, however, especially in the section cataloging past dairy restaurants from various parts of New York City. Up until that point there's a basic sense of chronology guiding the book, but then we pinball to and from different points in the 20th century. It made me wonder if an index would have been useful, or at least a brief introduction stating what prompted Katchor to write this and why it's structured like it is.
I still appreciate his scratchy, even somewhat grotesque drawings, and they also bolster reader interest during the dry parts. So it's unfortunate that some of these are partially obscured by the crease between pages (at least in my edition this was so). There are also several scanned restaurant ads written in Hebrew, which he translates, but they don't seem to add much visually.
Near the end, Katchor incorporates some of his personal experiences in dairy restaurants, and I found these to be some of the strongest passages, supporting his wistful retrospective of a bygone beloved institution.
September 12, 2020
A surprisingly quick read for a nearly 500 page book.
The book begins in the Garden of Eden and is a retelling of Genesis from the perspective of food. It eventually becomes a history of kosher and non-kosher foods and the dairy-meat separation, then ofrestaurants, then of vegetarianism and the dairy-as-health-food craze that swept 19th Century Europe.
This all comes together in late 19th Century Manhattan as the dairy restaurant. It's staggering how many there were. The book has a long section detailing every such restaurant the Katchor could find a record of, with discussions of menus, popular foods, the characters who ran them, famous customers, restaurants in other boroughs of New York and other cities.
The book ends with Katchor's personal experiences during the period that these restaurants were in decline and eventually disappearing. Every page of the book has one of Katchor's illustrations, which add a lot to the narrative. I was frustrated at times because much of the Yiddish in the illustrations is not translated. The same is true for the foreign language signage which appears in the European section.
Overall, a thoroughly researched, beautifully illustrated, highly entertaining book.
The book begins in the Garden of Eden and is a retelling of Genesis from the perspective of food. It eventually becomes a history of kosher and non-kosher foods and the dairy-meat separation, then ofrestaurants, then of vegetarianism and the dairy-as-health-food craze that swept 19th Century Europe.
This all comes together in late 19th Century Manhattan as the dairy restaurant. It's staggering how many there were. The book has a long section detailing every such restaurant the Katchor could find a record of, with discussions of menus, popular foods, the characters who ran them, famous customers, restaurants in other boroughs of New York and other cities.
The book ends with Katchor's personal experiences during the period that these restaurants were in decline and eventually disappearing. Every page of the book has one of Katchor's illustrations, which add a lot to the narrative. I was frustrated at times because much of the Yiddish in the illustrations is not translated. The same is true for the foreign language signage which appears in the European section.
Overall, a thoroughly researched, beautifully illustrated, highly entertaining book.
February 28, 2021
Enjoyed it a lot, would have enjoyed it more history of restaurants and interviews and historical artifacts. The book I wish he had written would be like he was the Curator of a Museum of the Dairy Restaurant.
I very much liked the beginning, with the history of restaurants in general and dairy restaurants in Central and Eastern Europe specifically. When he moves to New York, I wish the list of restaurants had been moved to the back and he had saved the juicy bits like menus and ads and other historical artifacts for the middle of the book.
I sort of want to criticize him for, as he says at the end, just turning in what he had because the publisher wanted the project to be done. Maybe he would've done more research with more time, and put the tangents he wrote on Christianity and aestheticism and the milkhidike personality into a more cohesive setup. But I also sort of envy that he researched what he wanted to and put together a story with so many interesting details on each page with fun drawings to boot. And, as he notes at the end, this is just the start of the understanding of dairy restaurants, and there's a lot more to be done and said. Any way I would literally kill for some blintzes rn
I very much liked the beginning, with the history of restaurants in general and dairy restaurants in Central and Eastern Europe specifically. When he moves to New York, I wish the list of restaurants had been moved to the back and he had saved the juicy bits like menus and ads and other historical artifacts for the middle of the book.
I sort of want to criticize him for, as he says at the end, just turning in what he had because the publisher wanted the project to be done. Maybe he would've done more research with more time, and put the tangents he wrote on Christianity and aestheticism and the milkhidike personality into a more cohesive setup. But I also sort of envy that he researched what he wanted to and put together a story with so many interesting details on each page with fun drawings to boot. And, as he notes at the end, this is just the start of the understanding of dairy restaurants, and there's a lot more to be done and said. Any way I would literally kill for some blintzes rn
February 4, 2024
A book of fascinating catalogs and minute detail, including menus from many New York dairy restaurants, but weak on structure and coherence. Katchor, whose comics I have always admired, has a great eye for detail, but in the frame of a weekly comic it is used sparingly. Here it is overwhelming; he seems to have gotten lost in his collection. The strongest sections are the historical origins of the dairy restaurant, which necessarily signposts the history of restaurants; and Katchor's personal recollections of eating in dairy restaurants and his interviews with restauranteurs. His memories are from the last days of these establishments, when they already belonged to the past and, no longer turning a profit, would soon be closed or pushed out of the market. I wish I could have rated it higher, but it strained to hold my interest (noting I stopped reading and reshelved over the course of three years).
June 26, 2020
Starts with a fascinating modern re-telling of the expulsion of Adam & Eve from Paradise. Proceeds through the evolution of the restaurant with a strong focus on Jewish dietary rules. And finishes with a restaurant by restaurant summary of the various New York dairy restaurants which have come and mostly gone. Katchor's evocative drawings at times don't do much to enliven the text. And the summaries of restaurant details at times seem beyond the interest of even the most motivated readers. Ultimately, it is a highly personal book that sheds light on an all but forgotten feature of American, or at least New York, society.
June 27, 2020
A tasty scrapbook of Jewish food lore and dietary practices, powered by obsessive research in New York's newspaper archives and stuffed with illustrations in Katchor's signature ink wash style. At times, it can be challenging to follow the chronology, and one wishes for a proper index and notes, but that's not the story that Katchor is telling.
My favorite story concerns the "knish wars" of 1916 between Max Green's Knishery of 150 Rivington Street vs. M. London's United Knish Factory at number 155: price cuts from five cents to three, gift coupons, and a German band. By 1920, both proprietors had left Rivington Street (pp. 362-364).
My favorite story concerns the "knish wars" of 1916 between Max Green's Knishery of 150 Rivington Street vs. M. London's United Knish Factory at number 155: price cuts from five cents to three, gift coupons, and a German band. By 1920, both proprietors had left Rivington Street (pp. 362-364).
June 10, 2020
As exhaustive as Katchor's fascinating museum cafeteria lectures, you'll read Saul Bellow's compare of NY and Chicago dairy/deli (I concurred long ago..), and look at menus containing tomato herring salad, lekvar blintzes, and the star of stars, strawberry cheese pie (the only item Juniors declines to ship; you must BRING..).
Be sure to linger on page 375:
"The beautiful has no value unless it brings some use...to society at large, to all humanity, or at the very least, to the Jews."
and
"As already observed, saying the name of a dairy dish in Yiddish changes its taste."
Nu?
Be sure to linger on page 375:
"The beautiful has no value unless it brings some use...to society at large, to all humanity, or at the very least, to the Jews."
and
"As already observed, saying the name of a dairy dish in Yiddish changes its taste."
Nu?
June 25, 2020
I absolutely loved this comprehensive review of the concept of the dairy restaurant. The book really fascinated me and helped me through some long days of covid19 quarantine. I am not quite finished reading the entire book , but not hailing from New York, the extensive list of the myriad dairy restaurants of Manhattan, that no longer exist, is nice, but not essential reading for me.
I even managed to watch several IGTV episodes featuring Ben Catcher, talking about this book. Thank you to zoom, and #netgalley, its been a great experience.
I even managed to watch several IGTV episodes featuring Ben Catcher, talking about this book. Thank you to zoom, and #netgalley, its been a great experience.
February 16, 2024
The beginning of the audiobook whetted my appetite for discussions about the connections between Judaism and the dairy restaurant culture. The sections with descriptions of the people, places, and foods were interesting, but the telephone book type listings of restaurant names, locations, and owners weren't helpful.
One thing is certain: I wish dairy restaurants were currently in existence in my city. Life would be so delicious.
I listened to the audiobook and will switch to that edition when it is added to the Goodreads listings.
One thing is certain: I wish dairy restaurants were currently in existence in my city. Life would be so delicious.
I listened to the audiobook and will switch to that edition when it is added to the Goodreads listings.
April 21, 2024
Before reading this I didn't really know a lot about kosher food requirements, and had no idea that interpretation of them had eventually evolved into fully separate restaurants instead of just places with separate kitchens and preparation areas. In this book Katchor traces the evolution of Jewish dietary rules, their changing interpretations over the years, and the ways in which they impact the lives of people who follow them.
Very educational, and witty, but occasionally a dense, slow read.
Very educational, and witty, but occasionally a dense, slow read.
July 2, 2020
The first fifty pages of this book comprise a truly clever and often hilarious retelling of the history of food choices and restaurants starting with the garden of Eden. Then Katchor gets down to it and the rest of this nearly 500 page book is comprised of history, menus, who bought and ran what restaurant when and where and for how long and often even why, if he can discover that. Truly the most exhaustively researched book on the subject.
July 20, 2020
Ridiculously detailed, yet surprisingly funny. One man’s obsession has led to almost 500 pages of drawings, insights (“The Garden in Eden is the first private eating place open to the public that’s mentioned in the Bible.“), and digressions (e.g., The Vegetarian Restaurant and Radical Politics). The reproduced menus alone deserve an award. The secret recipe for Katchor’s mother’s “milekhdiker spaghetti” must be seen to be believed.
April 25, 2020
Actually bought it for my spouse. Lots of interesting info but the lack of chronology and feeling that the author ran out of steam disappointed. Also, in a history of restaurants, no mention of women being restricted from public places seems an oversight that skews the entire point of view and indeed history at times.
February 7, 2021
The tragic story of the rise and fall of the Jewish dairy restaurant--a world within a world of New York's restaurant history. Katchor's prose is a perfect match for his quirky, expressive cartoons. You will meet a lot of characters and not a little learning. What I wouldn't give for a matzo brei (scrambled)!
May 19, 2020
Huh. I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The Dairy Restaurant starts with a retelling of bible stories related to food, with accompanying cartoon drawings, then travels through time ending with a history of dairy restaurants in NYC, complete with addresses and menus.
July 6, 2020
Disappointed in this book which was a much more exhaustive history of dairy restaurants, listed one by one at the end of the book. Don't know what I was expecting but I learned that I was less interested in the history of Jewish restaurants than I had thought. The cartoons/drawings are wonderful.
February 18, 2024
One of the few nonfiction comics that truly uses the medium and maybe the only great long form one. By adding illustration, it attempts (and based on my limited familiarity succeeds) to capture their flavor.
October 7, 2020
Interesting, if a bit of a slog.
October 25, 2020
Sorry, Ben. Really good research, enthusiasm and drawing. The prose is like stream of consciousness and not scholarly. Scattershot and difficult to read.
December 14, 2020
This is unlike anything else I've read. Lots of interesting facts and fresh takes on old ideas. I skipped most of the latter third of the book (descriptions of NYC dairy restaurants).
December 26, 2020
not what i was hoping really. good for what it is
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