Kavod on the Road: Virtual The Ten Restaurants That Changed America

Paul Freedman is a professor of history at Yale University where he has taught since 1997. His talk “Ten Restaurants that Changed America” is based on a book with that title that looks at the history of American food and cuisine through restaurants that are the basis for how we eat today and exemplify different trends and fashions beginning with the first real restaurant in the United States, Delmonico’s in New York City (founded in the 1830s). This is not a list of the most famous or elegant establishments but rather of those that were most influential. It includes ethnic restaurants (“The Mandarin” in San Francisco; “Mamma Leone’s in New York”), French haute cuisine (“Le Pavillon”) and also the pioneer in roadside franchise operations, “Howard Johnson’s. The aim is to answer the question “what is American cuisine” through these examples.