Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Restaurant
The tiki civilization has a surprisingly broad literature. Read more >>
A passionate connoisseur’s choice of the greatest survivors
How sex, rum, World War II, and the brand-new state of Hawaii ignited a fad that has never quite ended.
All across America there are restaurants that serve up the spirit and conviviality of eras long past
Mr. Henry Erkins had a flash of inspiration in 1908. He could see every detail of it in his mind. Read more >>
You’ve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. Each of them is a big reason why your world today is so different from anyone’s world in 1954
For want of nails, kingdoms are won and lost. We all know that. The shoe slips, the horse stumbles, the army dissolves in retreat. But who designed the nails? Who hammered the nails? Who invented the nail-making machinery? Read more >>
A restaurant critic who’s a food historian and the fortunate recipient of an Italian grandmother’s cooking follows the course of America’s favorite ethnic fare in its rise from spaghetti and a red checked tablecloth to carpaccio and fine bone china
Should the Smithsonian Institution ever wish to display an example of a prototypical Italian-American restaurant, it could do no better than to move Mario’s, lock, stock, and baròlo, from the Bronx to Washington, D.C. Read more >>
It began with a few people trying to get hamburgers from grill to customer quicker and cheaper. Now it’s changed the way Americans live. And whether you like it or hate it, once you get on the road you’ll eat it.
When I was ten, my brother was accepted into a college in Kansas. My parents decided to drive him out from New Jersey, using the opportunity to show both of us the countryside as we went. The year was 1963. Read more >>
Americans have been doing just that since the days of the California gold rush—and we’re still not full
A photograph taken in New York’s Chinatown in 1933 seems to sum up the special place of Chinese restaurants in American culture. Read more >>
The restaurant that changed the way we dine—
When Charles Dickens first came to the United States in 1842, he did not like our clothes, our speech, or our manners. But he reserved perhaps his deepest scorn for our dining habits. Read more >>
A last look at an American institution
DINERS used to be everywhere. Since the turn of the century the long, low, oddly cheery buildings have been the restaurants of the working class. Read more >>