The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat by Bunny Crumpacker

The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat by Bunny Crumpacker

Author:Bunny Crumpacker [Crumpacker, Bunny]
Language: eng
Format: azw, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-03-31T16:00:00+00:00


Chapter 13

THE RESTAURANT

DEMOCRACY

Old joke:

Q: What’s the best thing to make for dinner?

A: Reservations.

Waiter: Your check, sir.

Driftwood: Nine dollars and forty cents!

This is an outrage! If I were you,

I wouldn’t pay it.

—Groucho Marx, in A Might at the Opera

We’re all created equal when we’re faced with a menu and a fork. Sure, some of us are more equal than others. Those are the ones who pay the check.

Restaurants are democracy in action, and the menu is a restaurant’s bill of rights. First amendment: You have the right to eat what you wish. It’s as simple as that. You may have your duck sliced rare on a bed of radicchio, or with cherries or oranges, or Peking with pancakes. You may have your steak sirloin, porterhouse, mignon, or rib. Rare or well-done? Baked, mashed, or french fries? At home, someone hands you a dish with potato pancakes on it, and if you don’t like potato pancakes, that’s your problem. But when you eat out, they ask you questions and you get to answer. You choose your potatoes. Freedom of choice is what menus are all about, and that’s the beginning, just the beginning, of why restaurants are—simply—fun.*

In restaurants, all the details are taken care of by other people, and for the most part, they’re invisible. The cook stays in the kitchen. The table is set before you arrive. The dishes are removed when they’re dirty, and for all you know they’re smashed after you’ve eaten from them.

You can’t see the cook or the pastry chef or the dishwasher, but all the people you can see love you. Good restaurants are nurturing—uncomplicating, uncomplicated, and, until you have to pay the bill, undemanding. You’re going to be pampered and cosseted, well fed and well cared for. They’re going to keep you warm. Restaurants are the perfect democracy: Your mother has been voted out of office, and somebody else’s is in charge.

Mothers rally, however. Mother’s Day is first of the ten busiest days of the year for restaurants, according to the National Restaurant Association. Mother’s Day is followed in order by Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving, Saint Patrick’s Day, New Years Day, Christmas, and—surprise?—Professional Secretaries Day. But the single day when most people eat out? On a birthday—their own or somebody else’s. Most popular day of the week? Saturday. Most popular month? August.

The American Restaurant Association has 60,000 members and lists 300,000 restaurants. Worldwide there are 8 million restaurants, employing 60 million people, and contributing 950 billion dollars annually to the global economy. In America, restaurants are the single largest private sector employer, and two out of every five adults has worked in a restaurant at some time in their lives. The restaurant share of the American food dollar is 46.5 percent. That’s almost half.

Plainly, we’re eating out almost as often as we eat at home. We’re also eating take-out food at unprecedented rates. There’s even a take-out menu organizer you can buy, if you need one. It offers “the first step toward a cohesive philosophy of menu management.



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