Anthology: food, people and cooking: an anthology of literary and other observations

Organised both chronologically and systematically, this concise anthology examines the theme of the restaurant and eating. It contains excerpts from John Evelyn, Marcel Proust, Honoré de Balzac and others. One aspect is the perception of foreign urban cultures and their customs of food presentation and consumption, as exemplified by a passage of the report by the journalists Ilja Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow, describing American eating habits, and Mark Twain’s reflections on the time one reserves for eating in France. In another text, three years after the 1851 World Exhibition, John Surtees colloquially equals a visit to a London middle class restaurant to purgatory. Texts by Leon-Paul Fargue, Ilja Ehrenburg and Henri Beraud celebrate particular restaurants in Berlin and Paris from the first half of the twentieth century.