Brandon ’s Reviews > Ten Restaurants That Changed America > Status Update

All revolutions have to create a grim image of the past or the status quo against which they are revolting. Every “Renaissance” has to manufacture its own “Gothic” period or “Dark Ages,” that came before it, and the American food transformation that began in the early 1970s is no exception.

interesting friction between the social activists who considered fine dining too bougie and the kind of work Waters does in terms of localization and de-corporatization

I want the Four Seasons cookbook with glamour shots such as a lobster in a vase and a soup tureen staged on a snowbank

maybe it’s just how im reading it (erratically), but I feel like there’s some structural issues here, that make it repetitive or backstepping

weird how Howard Johnson’s and Four Seasons both turned into hotels

This chapter felt like it was about The Mandarin only tangentially, as opposed to Schraffts and HJ’s being the focus of their respective chapters. Also I couldn’t shake the judgement that Cecilia Chiang just gives off an elitist vibe….idk. He really kind of tries to tell the entirety of Chinese immigrant history in USA and can’t quite do it.

Something something white-American love of “exotic” food while simultaneously enacting systemic and social racism on the immigrants connected with it. thinking about (marxist?) alienation and also double-think / cognitive dissonance.

Classism vs racism once again

sometimes u forget italian immigrants were racialized to hell and back