Restaurants That Changed America – clip

Paul Freedman / Yale University

Would the great gatekeepers of the “old” media, Walter The history of our nation’s restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. In this fascinating talk, food historian and professor, Paul Freedman, will chart the birth of our first restaurant, Delmonico’s in New York, the rise of our love of Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled The Mandarin, the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone’s, the rise and fall of French haute cuisine through Henri Soulé’s Le Pavillon, and more, by using each restaurant to tell a wider story of race and class, immigration, and assimilation. He’ll even treat us to a scintillating history of the then-revolutionary Schrafft’s, a chain of convivial lunch spots that catered to women, and that bygone favorite, Howard Johnson’s, which pioneered on-the-road dining–only to be swept aside by McDonald’s.