Acknowledgments
Introduction
ONE / “Convenient to the New York Market”: Feeding New York City in the Early National Period, 1786–1830
TWO / “The Glory of a Plenteous Land”: The Transformation of New York’s Food Supply, 1825–1865
THREE / “Monuments of Municipal Malfeasance”: The Flip Side of Dietary Abundance, 1825–1865
FOUR / “To See and Be Seen”: Restaurants and Public Culture, 1825–1865
FIVE / “No Place More Attractive than Home”: Domesticity and Consumerism, 1830–1880
SIX / “The Empire of Gastronomy”: New York and the World, 1850–1890
Conclusion: From the Broadway Shambles to New Amsterdam Market
Notes
Index
New York Times
“[O]ne snapshot of New York in a century that brought enormous changes in eating and food production…. Through the lens of food, the book surveys changes in the culture, demographics and politics of the city.”
Choice
“Lobel uncovers the 19th-century roots of New York City’s claim to be the food capital of the world and its implications of diversity, abundance, and exoticism associated with the rising urban US. . . . The book's best sections cover the growing cultural expectations of urban restaurants in the rise of public culture that serviced specialized clienteles. Recommended.”
Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead
“Lobel’s fine book leads us on a fascinating tour of New York’s foodways past, letting us explore the farms and markets that supplied kitchens in the city’s homes and restaurants and introducing us to men and women who raised food, sold it, cooked it, and ate it.”
Owen Gutfreund | Hunter College, City University of New York
“Lobel’s accessible cultural history takes us on a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of New York’s food system, covering everything from the provisioning of family kitchens to the emergence of the greatest restaurant scene in the world. Scholars and policymakers have recently recognized that food systems are a key to cultural and environmental sustainability, making this is an ideal time for Lobel’s much-needed primer on the historic context for this essential human question. This is a must-read for all who hunger for a better understanding of how cities really work.”
Lisa Keller | Purchase College, State University of New York
"New York’s roots as the world’s greatest culinary center are firmly cemented in Cindy Lobel’s wonderful survey of the dazzling dining options of the nineteenth century. Her descriptions of markets, dining rooms, restaurants, and kitchens tell us not only what people ate but where they dined and how the city’s rich ethnic diversity influenced it all."
Food, Culture & Society
“Part food and part urban history, Urban Appetites traces New York’s simultaneous evolution into a cosmopolitan city, a commercial powerhouse, and, arguably most intriguing to Lobel, an empire of gastronomy.”
New York State Historical Association: Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize
Won
New York Academy of History: New York Academy of History Best Book Prize
Won
Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship
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