The Table Comes First

 
The Table Comes First by Adam Gopnik
William Leith8 November 2012

The Table Comes First
by Adam Gopnik
(Quercus, £12.99)

“I love to eat,” says Adam Gopnik. He may be the best food writer there is. He’s certainly the most thoughtful — the most philosophical. Here, he tells us about the history of eating, pretty much, and it’s full of ideas you’ll remember. Restaurants, he says, began in Paris, around the time of the Revolution. But not because the out-of-work chefs of toppled aristocrats needed to find work. It’s more complicated than that. Gopnik teases out the complications. It was about the rise of other types of shops, as well as a health fad, and social mobility. He considers the roles of servants and waiters. Mind you, he considers everything.

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