Customer Reviews

The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: The Coming of Age of American Restaurants

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

While the idea of a history of restaurant culture in the US is a fascinating one, this book doesn't really do it justice.

The author's intent was quite obviously to produce a lush story, interlaced with meaningful personal vignettes. Unfortunately it comes off as flordily purple prose interspersed with bewildering switches to first-person. To make matters worse, the personal stories are often seemingly unrelated and quite often self-serving (Kuh's tale of his decision to become a writer is oddly placed in his chapter on Wolfgang Puck, where the connection is tenuous and strained). Stylistically, this was apparently supposed the feature the same sort of rich descriptiveness that the cuisine itself often garners, but instead the reader is bombarded by adjective-heavy sentences and repeated references to famous names (and dishes), often with little to no actual explanation.

Some segments are given short shrift while others are beaten into the ground. Henri Soule's labor management tactics and personal quirks are referenced again and again, while Julia Child's television series and the "democritization" of french cooking (arguably some of the more important factors in the development of Amercan cuisine) are given a mere page - the rest of the chapter is devoted to her left-leaning politics. M.F.K. Fisher's influence is occasionally referenced, but more time is devoted to her husband's illness and her depression after his death - all of which would be important character points if they actually lead somewhere.

While this is a book ostensibly about Haute Cusine, I can't help feel that Kuh overemphasizes the importance of French cooking in the development of "american" culinary tradition. There is some discussion of ethnic influence, but it's fairly limited in scope to Italian chefs and MFK Fisher eating beans in Mexico. To read this, american restaurant cuisine consisted of nothing but roast beef, bread and water before Soule's arrival in the late 30's. With a culinary melting-pot culture as varied as the US, the book's focus on classic french cooking's arrival in the US seems to not do justice to a much richer history.

This is a book that could've been.

I wanted some light reading for a vacation & grabbed this book. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. There I was, on vacation, doing just what I could have done at home -- reading a book.

Though many chefs and restauranteurs are profiled or interviewed, it's definitely not a collection of celebrity interviews. Nor is it about kitchen philosophies or tips for success. Rather, it's a social analysis of the entire idea of cuisine. Food is only a third of it: economics, class, socio-political movements, entrepreneurship, and the immigrant experience make up the rest of Kuh's subject. He tracks the changes in top-tier American restauranting from the eyes of owners, chefs, patrons, food critics, cookbook writers, and economic statistics. What emerges is a portrait of a cyclic symbiosis of purveyor and audience. Restauranteurs challenge the notion of what food is to be; the public absorbs the notion and changes it in a uniquely American way, which then facilitates the next generation of restaurants. It might sound dry (and there are indeed a few dry spots), but overall it's engaging, personal, and interesting.

As others have noted, occasionally an overly-abstract sentence might leave you scratching your head, but that wasn't nearly enough for me to knock off a star. I thought this was a fine book.

The usefulness of this well-written--if uneven--book lies in its description of the emergence of the modern American concept of a restaurant. The story of the emergence of Restaurant Associates and the company's influence on today's restaurants is a story that has not been told before. From a restaurant model imposed from France (ultimately untenable), and all of the poorly executed imitations in every regional city in America, has emerged the American synthesis balancing innovation, profitability,and popularity. The real thread of Kuh's story is not about food enthusiasts or how Julia Child changed home cooking or how M.F.K. Fisher became a spiritual guru to foodies everywhere. It is about the change in the profession of restaurant management and the emergence of celebrity chefs, in the beginning two unique American innovations, now widely imitiated. Go back and read Joseph Wechsberg's essay on La Pyramide in Blue Trout and Black Truffles and you'll be reminded how cutting edge the American restaurant concept pioneered by Restaurant Associates once was, and how different the celebrity chef is from his predecessors, like the overinflated Paul Bocuse. Kuh's chapter on Wolfgang Puck is solidly in the tradition of the great Wechsberg, and this portrait and others make this a delightful and fascinating exploration of an exciting time. Kuh deftly draws contrasts between his own overseas and American immigrant experiences and those of Restaurant Associates' partners (who would have thought that the concept for the Four Seasons dining room in New York, the opening of which brought Julia Child to tears, was worked at a New Jersey airport restaurant owned by Restaurant Associates?), themselves products of the school of hard knocks. There are many suggestive directions here for others to take up in writing about the evolution of American cuisine.

Reading this book, I find that the author's ego interferes often with the documentation of how America went from Haute cuisine to the modern "American" restaurant. One particular passage paints his mother (a cook) in the same light as Elizabeth David and M.F.K.Fisher, and leaves me wondering why, if she was so enlightened, do I not see her book on the shelf. Throughout the book, he comes off as an average cook that could no longer take the heat, and left the kitchen to write.

With about 30 pages left to go, I cringe each time I reach for the book to attempt to finish it as what the author must perceive as colorful writing becomes more laborious with each page.

That said, there is definitely some interesting information, and if you can indeed labor through some of its issues, and weave around the author's bias, you will be somewhat rewarded. (I especially found some of the La Pavillion information interesting after finishing Jacques Pepin's autobiography.)

Bottom line - if you are seriously interested in reading about American gastronomy, this might we worth a look if you can pick a copy up cheap. I only wish someone with more skill had taken on the project, as it was, in fact, an excellent idea for a book.

Why should pointing out the very glaring editing errors, awkward syntax, and confusing organization in a book be seen by other readers as harsh and uncalled for? Like some other reviewers, I very much want to like "The Last Days of Haute Cuisine," but I find myself tripping over clumsy, wordy sentences far too often, causing me to re-read whole paragraphs and lose a sense of continuity as I read the book. Frankly, I was happy to have my frustrations in reading the book confirmed by other readers. (And I'm delighted that I can still do this via Amazon.com, which creates a community of writers that 5 years ago was simply not possible.) But that doesn't negate all of the moments in which I am dazzled by Kuh's nearly poetic depictions of restaurant life and his fascinating anecdotes about the history of the restaurant business. Since Kuh spent most of his formative years in Ireland and admits to his troubles with French when he worked in restaurants there, I'm suspecting that he didn't write this initially in French or another language. I'm suspecting that he wrote this more as a series of casual anecdotes that an editor should have done far more with in terms of organizing and streamlining the prose. My French is poor, and I am more than a little put off by the liberal sprinkling of French phrases that aren't followed by any sense of translation, literal or paraphrased. I get the sense that Kuh is committing just the sort of snobbery that he accuses restaurateurs of committing in American restaurants before 1960. In a sense, Kuh's use of insider language, vague references, and untranslated French creates the effect of a kind of literary "le standing," and as I read the book, I feel like a poor, aspiring gourmande sent back out onto the street where I can only coo and whimper at the fur-wrapped dignitaries dining on toast points slathered in caviar. I was hoping that Kuh would have opened the door to restaurant history a bit wider for more readers to enter.

I just finished this book and was SHOCKED by the completely harsh and undeserved reviews this book received by some of the previous reviewers. These folks must not have read the same book as I read! I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book. Patric Kuh did a fabulous job bringing "The Last Days of Haute Cuisine" to life. This is a man who knows the restaurant industry and so who better to interview the likes of Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Sirio Maccioni, etc.? Who better to share the wonderful history of the first restaurants in America? I loved every moment of it and so appreciated the humor and irony he shared throughout the book. For anyone interested in reading about American restaurant history, I strongly recommend you give this book a read!

In this book, chef and author Patric Kuh explores the rich history of fine restaurants in the United States throughout the twentieth century. It is a story that takes you from La Pavillon to the Four Seasons, Lutéce, and all the way to Le Cirque, Chez Panisse, and Stars. More importantly, it tells the interesting story of the chefs and matre d's who have produced high cuisine in this country.

I wanted to read it for a few reasons. First, I hoped that it would help connect the dots for me. Any time you pick up a French cookbook, the authors tend to reminisce about restaurants and chefs they liked, but wasn't able to place them in any sort of context. Second, I was interested in seeing where the author went with the book's subtitle: America's culinary revolution. To me, the title implies that haute cuisine is dead.

For me, the book was successful on both accounts. After reading it, I can finally place many great names and restaurants into their appropriate historical and cultural contexts. For example, I knew that Troisgros was a great chef, but I didn't know where he fit into things.

As for Kuh's second point, I thought that his analysis was interesting, insightful, and subtle. This doesn't mean that I agree with him. If he wanted to show that haute cuisine is dead in this country, I don't necessarily think that he's correct. The food hasn't changed terribly much, but the atmosphere of the gastronomical restaurant has undergone a revolution. The exclusivity of haute cuisine, combinant with the notion that dining is meant to demonstrate class rather than seek pleasure, are two ideas that have lost popularity over time.

There are some things that I don't particularly like about the book. Unlike other reviewers, I don't mind the manner in which the narrative is presented. Yes, it might seem like rambling, but it does enrich the story. What I don't like:

1. There's so much French in the beginning. If you feel the need to understand everything Kuh says, be prepared to read the book with your copy of the Larouse Gastronomique (what? you don't already have a copy? get one!) close at hand. Specifically, many dish names are not translated. This, of course, serves a point. Earlier in the twentieth century, restaurants had menus primarily in French. Today, many gastronomical restaurants have menus in English.

2. I think the book would have been better if it had been longer. In many instances, Kuh gives a glimpse of a name or a restaurant but then never explores it. It leaves me wanting to know a lot more than the author gives me. If you're reading the book for its historical narrative (rather than the foodie angle), you'll probably be frustrated that the author doesn't cast his net wider and deeper. However, this book is ostensibly meant for ordinary people. It isn't meant to be an academic work, and so it can't be criticized for not delivering.

All in all, this is a good book. Don't be discouraged mid-course; the real gem of the book is the last chapter.

I really wanted to like this book. There was a blurb about it on NPR and it sounded really good. Unfortunatley, though, at times it is almost impossible to read.

The problem? I am absolutely convinced that it was written in a language other than English (my guess is French), translated very literally, and received precious little editing ("The last kitchen job I had in France, before coming to the America, was working at an all-night brasserie in Paris on the Boulevard des Italiens." p 19). Prepositional phrases are misplaced ("Up in the room, she admired that the maids had already laid out her nightgown on the bed with a pinched-in waist, the way the maids had done at the Ritz or at the Trois Couronnes in Vevey." p. 114) , commas are missing("Meanwhile, at his table, Joe Kennedy is tucking into his favorite order of veal chops Orloff, a dish that as proof that le standing could survive two world wars had been served by Escoffier himself to the ship-fixated kaiser aboard the Imperator in 1913." p 17), verbs are split with one word in the middle of a sentence and the second word at the end. ("A 1978 event held at Tavern on the Green to which Alice Waters brought her little rocket lettuces with their roots still in soil and her chef, Jean-Pierre Moulle, carried in the Dal Porto Ranch lamb over his shoulder is, in the chronology of the movement, generally acknowledged to be the moment when New York got to see what the new Californian food was all about" p. 162) The editor has allowed far too many passive constructions, leaving the reader to wonder "WHO did this?" Readers come across pronouns with no clear antecedents. Infinitives and forms of "to be" appear FAR too often. (The first sentence of chapter 13 reads: "To ask that question of restaurant people in San Francisco and Berkeley is to enter into a hermetic world in which positions were taken long ago." p 149)

It's an interesting story - good history and a few nice anecdotes - but the editing (or lack thereof) makes it unintelligible in some places and graceless in others ("At Lutece, one has always been able to convince oneself that one has happened on a very happy corner of France." p. 85). Were I the author, I would be VERY upset by the lack of editing. The publishers (Viking) should be ASHAMED of this product bearing their name. If an editor signed-off on this, he or she should resign in shame. To people interested in reading this book: wait for a second, revised edition.

Books are like restaurants - memories of great ones remain with you forever, bad ones make you sick to your stomach.

I enjoyed reading this book. It admittedly suffers from the paradoxical flaw of all such light feature writing: if it succeeds, it leaves you wishing that it were a more substantial book. The writing was stylistically ambitious, like poorly translated Proust or an undergrad's attempt to imitate late James. Yes, his editors did let him down, but Dr. John's pedantic inventory of errors is a bit much and, frankly, laughable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of contemporary usage.
My most serious criticism is that the book is too short; had I bought it new at full cover price, I would feel cheated.
All in all, it allowed me to spend a couple of hours in the company of a lively, chatty fellow who knows things that I don't about things which nonetheless interest me.

If you've ever worked in a commercial kitchen, or thought about it, you'll love this book! Despite the above comments (never punched a work-clock?), one will learn of the recent history of the American restaurant scene, written with affection and wit.