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Restaurant
Object Lessons (Related to this series)
- Author
- Brian Duff
- Narrator
- Chris Gaines
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 2 October 2025
- Run Time
- 3 hours 42 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
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, well-executed entrées go viral, dining out has become theater, plating has become art and ubiquitous Instagram content. But in recent years restaurants have faced crisis upon crisis.
Restaurant takes a deep dive into the drives, desires, and anxieties we bring to dining out at this time of uncertainty. It explores the meaning we find in good food and warm hospitality. It shows why the restaurant offers unique opportunities to change the quality of our engagement with others and to create shared meaning across the table
Critics Review
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A lyrical meditation on nourishment, conversation, and our fantasies that are all the more vital for being inevitably disappointed.
Rebecca L. Spang, author of The Invention of the Restaurant
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This wonderful book ventures into the belly of the beast: post-pandemic America's reckoning with its appetites. Duff artfully exposes the question of the restaurant's future to be one of the pressing problems of our time."
Margret Grebowicz, author of Rescue Me: On Dogs and Their Humans
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A smart and engaging account of what it means to eat in a restaurant today, what it doesn't mean, and what it can mean if we are careful and thoughtful enough.
Robert Appelbaum, author of Dishing It Out: In Search of the Restaurant Experience
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Duff draws on his extracurricular experience as a restaurant worker and local restaurant critic to provide a sweeping meditation on the restaurant as a phenomenon in this slim volume ... He does so with humor, profundity, and writerly ease.
Choice Reviews
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Brian Duff
- Narrator
- Chris Gaines
- Duration
- 3 hours 42 minutes
- Release Date
- 2 October 2025
- ISBN
- 9798216437376
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Semiotics / semiology, Philosophy: aesthetics, Material culture, Cultural studies: food and society, Travel guides: restaurants and cafes
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Restaurant by Brian Duff, read by Chris GainesObject 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, well-executed entrées go viral, dining out has become theater, plating has become art and ubiquitous Instagram content. But in recent years restaurants have faced crisis upon crisis.Restaurant takes a deep dive into the drives, desires, and anxieties we bring to dining out at this time of uncertainty. It explores the meaning we find in good food and warm hospitality. It shows why the restaurant offers unique opportunities to change the quality of our engagement with others and to create shared meaning across the table
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