This book is very interesting to read for those who like both history and cooking. An award - winning research, it helps you travel through time and space on the issue of the creation of the restaurant as it is today, in France and around the world as well.
Some questions, though, remain unaswered by this research. The first one is the amount of different food-selling houses there has been and their names and functions. Nowadays, to my recollection there are still several, apart from restaurants themselves. In order to help readers, the author should have had listed all of them, such as brasserie, charcuterie, patisserie, boulangerie, bar, bistrot etc, along with their formal menus, that were commanded by the State. It lacks a little information on the economic value of the restaurant -graphs containing meal prices through time should have helped us get a glimpse of its importance within the social public space of XIXTH Century France. It makes us wonder why the author states that the restaurant lost its political value as a public space at the end of the 1800's, was it a comparison with its fashionable wave during the French Revolution as she makes us believe? She surely forgot the role of the famous Maxim's Restaurant on the future of European rulers and nobleman at the turn of the XXth Century.
Although a good research, there are still more research left to do about this issue, and surely people like me who would love to read them through, trying to find thorough answers about the past.
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