Restaurant Culture

Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating alongside perfect strangers in a loud and crowded room to be an enjoyable pastime? To find the answer, Rebecca Spang takes us back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a quasi-medicinal bouillon not unlike the bone broths of today.

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the 2026 Gotham Book Prize The entertaining, irreverent, and surprisingly moving memoir by the visionary restaurateur behind such iconic New York institutions as Balthazar and Pastis. A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern...

Discover how professional chefs and restaurants can turn food waste into profit, sustainability, and culinary innovation. Every year, professional kitchens throw away tons of edible food, with wasted ingredients, wasted money, and wasted opportunities. The Professional Chef’s Guide to a Zero-Waste Kitchen is the first comprehensive manual that teaches chefs, restaurateurs, and hospitality managers how to cut food waste, reduce costs, and build a sustainable kitchen culture. In this practical and inspiring guide, you’ll learn: ✔ How to measure and reduce the true cost of food waste in ...

For readers of The Making of a Manager and Dare to Lead, a bold leadership philosophy from one of America’s most dynamic creative executives on why staying true to yourself is the secret to success in corporate America. For generations, success in corporate America has come with an unspoken...

Cameron Mitchell’s “dish room to boardroom story” began when he was 16-years-old and started working as a dishwasher at a local steakhouse in Columbus, Ohio. Two years later, when Mitchell was working as a line cook during a chaotic shift change, he had an epiphany. He realized he loved the restaurant business and set out to make it his lifelong career. He knew he wanted to be the president of a restaurant company, one day.

"Trained in acting and a lifer in the restaurant business, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina doles out opinions in the tone of an authentic New Yorker. He narrates with a good pace and rhythm. The inner workings of the restaurant world as revealed are exhilarating but often sordid and salacious....this is...

Bloomsbury presents No Reservations by Anthony Bourdain, read by Nathan Osgood. A behind-the-scenes travel journal of the beloved chef's global adventures. More than just a companion to the hugely popular Travel Channel show, No Reservations is Bourdain's journal of his far-flung travels. The...

Continuing with his successful Your Restaurant Sucks series, Donald Burns, The Restaurant Coach, digs down to the root of all business problems and that is culture. All restaurants can buy from the same vendors and hire from the same labor pool. What separates the good, from the great to the outstanding is culture!

"This is a slim and modest book, a volume of oral histories in the vein of Studs Terkel’s Working (1974), but everyone who eats out regularly should know about it...Voices From the Kitchen is an optimistic book — it reminds you that if many restaurant careers begin that way, they don’t...

Bloomsbury presents Restaurant by Brian Duff, read by Chris Gaines Object Lessons is a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In the last few decades, restaurants and food culture have achieved extraordinary cultural presence. Chefs are heroes and thought leaders...

The Economics of Fast Food: Supply Chains, Labor, Marketing, Psychology, and the Making of Modern Food Culture explains how a quick, inexpensive meal became the product of a highly organized economic system. Fast food is not just about cooking and selling burgers. It depends on franchising, commercial real estate, tightly managed supply chains, standardized kitchen design, low-cost labor, and marketing techniques built to increase frequency, spending, and habit. This book shows how the industry grew from local stands and drive-ins into a model copied across retail, logistics, and service ...

A waiter's job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door...is hell. Edward Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and right into its...

Leading a Restaurant With Rhythm is a restaurant leadership development book that blends real-world restaurant management with the structure, emotion, and timing of music. Written by longtime restaurant leader Timothy A Hoffman, the book presents the idea that successful restaurants operate much like a live performance, where communication, teamwork, consistency, accountability, and timing must work together in harmony.

Uncover the captivating culinary history behind everyday rituals, transforming how you experience your next meal out. Whether you are grabbing a quick coffee on your morning commute or navigating the butterflies of a first date, these shared public spaces shape our lives. Step into a warm...

Florence Fabricant—celebrated New York Times food writer for more than 50 years—recounts a life defined by the insatiable search for new dining experiences, tracing the evolution of food and restaurant culture in the United States and abroad, and her instrumental role in revealing it, along...

A wildly hilarious and irreverent memoir of a globe-trotting life lived meal-to-meal by one of our most influential and respected food critics. As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’t have the chance to become a picky eater. Living...

One of the most influential economists of the decade-and the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Stagnation-boldly argues that just about everything you've heard about food is wrong. Food snobbery is killing entrepreneurship and innovation, says economist, preeminent social...

Your Japan trip is a ticking time bomb of embarrassment and wasted cash. Let's defuse it. You've color-coded your itinerary. You've memorized the train map. You think you're smooth. You aren't. You are about to fly into a minefield of social faux pas and "Inbound" tourist traps. You are about to become the tourist that locals roll their eyes at: the one blocking the ticket gate, accidentally insulting the chef, and paying double for "viral" food that locals wouldn't touch. Let me throw you a life saver before you drown: Japan: You're Doing It Wrong. I’ve done the math, fought the crowds, ...

He was the first celebrity chef, the swashbuckling cook who crossed the high seas, on a BBC budget, communicating his love of food to millions of viewers. Make a wonderful dish and have a bloody good time: that was the criteria of Keith Floyd's mission (a mission that lasted several decades)...

Counter Culture is a must-listen for employees, managers, owners or even someone looking for their first job in counter service. Delight the customers you have, attract the customers you want, and make even a 2-minute interaction matter. This hospitality guide will help you get the job, understand the value of connecting with people, level up your skills and inspire you in your quest to provide exceptional service. Quick-hit essays and thought-provoking advice from leading counter service experts drive this book about making the customer experience vibrant for both employees and guests.