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Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History
Gastropolis: Food and New York City
Whether you're digging into a slice of cherry cheesecake, burning your tongue on a piece of fiery Jamaican jerk chicken, or slurping the broth from a juicy soup dumpling, eating in New York City is a culinary adventure unlike any other in the world.
An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of cuisine combinations, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat.
Touching on everything from religion, nutrition, and agriculture to economics, politics, and psychology, Gastropolis tells a story of immigration, amalgamation, and assimilation. This rich interplay between tradition and change, individual and society, and identity and community could happen only in New York.
An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of cuisine combinations, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat.
Touching on everything from religion, nutrition, and agriculture to economics, politics, and psychology, Gastropolis tells a story of immigration, amalgamation, and assimilation. This rich interplay between tradition and change, individual and society, and identity and community could happen only in New York.
368 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2008
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211 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 12, 2009
Is it wrong to give yourself five stars?
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September 8, 2009i gave one of the editor/contributors a ride to montpelier once!
April 23, 2012
Interesting, but most essays are poorly written (either too academic or written by those who do not generally write) and I found the main editor to be insufferable.
September 4, 2018
This book is a collection of essays from a variety of writers including historians, collectors, and social scientists. Each essay is focused on food traditions, histories, and voices in New York City but each approaches the topic in a different way. I enjoyed the chapter on Native American foodways which delved into the study of environmental history to help tell the food traditions of the pre-contact Lanape. I also found the chapter on Chinese-American restaurants interesting as it was written by a collector who analyzed his collection of menus which covered over 100 years of restaurants. The book is a collection of stories of how we understand our history, culture, and selves through food. (Disclosure: I read this book for an MA course titled "Immigrant Foodways of NYC".)
January 19, 2012
A Veritable Feast for the Senses and the Soul: An Eclectic Culinary History of New York City
A passionate literary celebration of New York City's smorgasbord of cuisines, "Gastropolis" is worthy of top billing on the bookshelves of anyone interested in reading about New York City's culinary history as told by a most capable group of writers. Edited by the likes of professional chef and food studies professor Jonathan Deutsch and food and nutrition professor Annie Hauck-Lawson, "Gastropolis" is part memoir, part history, and part travelogue amidst global ethnic cuisines that have found a home here in New York City, America's most internationally-oriented city. "Gastropolis" is divided into four parts: "Places", "People", "Trade", and "Symbols", which incorporate everything from culinary history to memoir and iconographic celebrations of New York culinary staples such as bagels.
"Places" traces New York's culinary history from the perspectives of anthropology and memoir. Anne Mendelson traces the roots of that history from the perspective of the region's earliest known inhabitant, the Algonquin Lenapes. Andrew Smith follows with a terse, informative, and intriguing account, noting how New York City cuisine was transformed from its earliest Dutch and British settlers to those of later arrivals, most notably, German Jews, by the middle 19th Century, until, by the time of the creation of greater New York City in 1898, the city had become a culinary metropolis whose tastes reflected that of the entire globe. Nan Rothschild describes archaeological studies of 18th and 19th Century New York, providing a more extensive look at the food that was grown locally and eaten by Manhattan's residents. And then finally, in a unique, quite personal, voice, Annie Hauck-Lawson describes her almost idyllic childhood with her parents, among the first New York City urban dwellers to raise vegetables in their Park Slope brownstone backyard.
"People" explores the astonishingly vast variety of Asian cuisines present in New York, a brief overview of New York City Afro-American cuisine, and the current enthusiasm for avant-garde cuisine. Martin Manalasan takes us on a riveting excursion through Queens following the route of the Flushing "7" subway line, making brief "stops" along the way to discuss Filipino cuisine, pan-East Asian cuisine in Flushing, and Jackson Height's Little India. Jessica Harris offers a heartfelt, quite personal, memoir of her Afro-American culinary youth that is, along with Annie Hauck-Lawson's account, among the finest instances of memoir and self-reflection collected in this volume. Fabio Parasecoli's overview of the current trends in New York City avant-garde cuisine is yet another riveting account, and one more fascinating than what I see all too often in the culinary reviews of some of New York's most notable magazines and news weeklies. Last, but not least, Harley Spiller traces the rise of Chinese cuisine in New York City, especially in Manhattan's historic Chinatown, and in the "satellites" that have taken root in Brooklyn.
In the remaining sections of "Trade" and "Symbols", one of the finest contributions is yet another memoir courtesy of Mark Russ Federman of his family's specialty food store, Russ & Daughters, a Lower East Side legend still notable for its fish. While Federman's account is truly a most memorable valentine to his family's business, Annie Rachelle Lanziletto's own personal recollection of her life-long love of Italian cuisine is by far the most hilarious.
One could find other, more extensive, and most likely, more pedantic culinary histories of the Big Apple. However, "Gastropolis" is a most unique contribution to it, and one that truly excels on every page. Without a doubt, its editors have crafted an enduring example of New York culinary history worthy of remembrance.
(Reposted from my 2011 Amazon review)
A passionate literary celebration of New York City's smorgasbord of cuisines, "Gastropolis" is worthy of top billing on the bookshelves of anyone interested in reading about New York City's culinary history as told by a most capable group of writers. Edited by the likes of professional chef and food studies professor Jonathan Deutsch and food and nutrition professor Annie Hauck-Lawson, "Gastropolis" is part memoir, part history, and part travelogue amidst global ethnic cuisines that have found a home here in New York City, America's most internationally-oriented city. "Gastropolis" is divided into four parts: "Places", "People", "Trade", and "Symbols", which incorporate everything from culinary history to memoir and iconographic celebrations of New York culinary staples such as bagels.
"Places" traces New York's culinary history from the perspectives of anthropology and memoir. Anne Mendelson traces the roots of that history from the perspective of the region's earliest known inhabitant, the Algonquin Lenapes. Andrew Smith follows with a terse, informative, and intriguing account, noting how New York City cuisine was transformed from its earliest Dutch and British settlers to those of later arrivals, most notably, German Jews, by the middle 19th Century, until, by the time of the creation of greater New York City in 1898, the city had become a culinary metropolis whose tastes reflected that of the entire globe. Nan Rothschild describes archaeological studies of 18th and 19th Century New York, providing a more extensive look at the food that was grown locally and eaten by Manhattan's residents. And then finally, in a unique, quite personal, voice, Annie Hauck-Lawson describes her almost idyllic childhood with her parents, among the first New York City urban dwellers to raise vegetables in their Park Slope brownstone backyard.
"People" explores the astonishingly vast variety of Asian cuisines present in New York, a brief overview of New York City Afro-American cuisine, and the current enthusiasm for avant-garde cuisine. Martin Manalasan takes us on a riveting excursion through Queens following the route of the Flushing "7" subway line, making brief "stops" along the way to discuss Filipino cuisine, pan-East Asian cuisine in Flushing, and Jackson Height's Little India. Jessica Harris offers a heartfelt, quite personal, memoir of her Afro-American culinary youth that is, along with Annie Hauck-Lawson's account, among the finest instances of memoir and self-reflection collected in this volume. Fabio Parasecoli's overview of the current trends in New York City avant-garde cuisine is yet another riveting account, and one more fascinating than what I see all too often in the culinary reviews of some of New York's most notable magazines and news weeklies. Last, but not least, Harley Spiller traces the rise of Chinese cuisine in New York City, especially in Manhattan's historic Chinatown, and in the "satellites" that have taken root in Brooklyn.
In the remaining sections of "Trade" and "Symbols", one of the finest contributions is yet another memoir courtesy of Mark Russ Federman of his family's specialty food store, Russ & Daughters, a Lower East Side legend still notable for its fish. While Federman's account is truly a most memorable valentine to his family's business, Annie Rachelle Lanziletto's own personal recollection of her life-long love of Italian cuisine is by far the most hilarious.
One could find other, more extensive, and most likely, more pedantic culinary histories of the Big Apple. However, "Gastropolis" is a most unique contribution to it, and one that truly excels on every page. Without a doubt, its editors have crafted an enduring example of New York culinary history worthy of remembrance.
(Reposted from my 2011 Amazon review)
March 21, 2015
This is a beautifully put together book. Each chapter has a different style, covering a span from the detailed academic to the personal autobiographic. The chapters are grouped into sections; places (which is much about history), trade and symbols, and people. But, for me, the whole book is really about people and their relationship with food. It is an incredibly human book, with a clear warmth for the topics and the people involved.
The choice of chapters is an eccletic mix. It states from the start that it is not representative, nor is it a guidebook, a cookbook, or a textbook. It does not create a continuous narrative in any way, but that allows each chapter to explore each topic freely.
For me, this was a rich read, portraying aspects of the city in full colour.
The choice of chapters is an eccletic mix. It states from the start that it is not representative, nor is it a guidebook, a cookbook, or a textbook. It does not create a continuous narrative in any way, but that allows each chapter to explore each topic freely.
For me, this was a rich read, portraying aspects of the city in full colour.
September 18, 2024
As someone who is a very dedicated foodie and wannabe New York City historian, I appreciated this book on so many different levels.
full review is on my blog: https://www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com/...
full review is on my blog: https://www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com/...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews