Over the years, Boston has been one of America’s leading laboratories of urban culture, including restaurants, and Boston history provides valuable insights into American food ways. James C. O’Connell, in this fascinating look at more than two centuries of culinary trends in Boston restaurants, presents a rich and hitherto unexplored side to the city’s past. Dining Out in Boston shows that the city was a pioneer in elaborate hotel dining, oyster houses, French cuisine, student hangouts, ice cream parlors, the twentieth-century revival of traditional New England dishes, and contemporary locavore and trendy foodie culture. In these stories of the most-beloved Boston restaurants of yesterday and today—illustrated with an extensive collection of historic menus, postcards, and photos—O’Connell reveals a unique history sure to whet the intellectual and nostalgic appetite of Bostonians and restaurant-goers the world over.
Table of Contents
Preface • Acknowledgments • Boston’s Restaurant Tradition • Dining Out from 1800 until the Civil War • Development of the Dining Culture • Restaurant Niches Proliferate: The Civil War to Prohibition • Dining in the Emerging Modern Age • The 1950s and 1960s • The Culinary Revolution • Twenty-First-Century Dining: Creative and Casual • Appendix: Locations of Historic Boston Hotels and Restaurants • Notes • Index