Reining in the Academics

The latest issue of PPC has a review of The Restaurants Book by Michele Field, reproduced in its entirety below.

T h e Re s t a u r a n t s B o o k : Ethnographies of Where We Eat
David Beriss and David Sutton, editors
Berg | 2007 | 240pp | £17.99

An uneven collection of 13 essays which in various ways ask whether restaurants are not the bulwark between us and the creeping standardization of food. The word ‘ethnographies’ shouldn’t scare you, as despite all the writers being American academics most have been reined in. Sutton’s ‘anthropological meditation on tipping’ spills over the reins – but is almost amusing when discussing why men tip women. MF

I am grateful, as always, to the editors for reining me in. You know that isn’t easy.