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New York is the greatest restaurant city the world has ever seen.
In Appetite City, the former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes leads us on a grand historical tour of New York’s dining culture. Beginning with the era when simple chophouses and oyster bars dominated the culinary scene, he charts the city’s transformation into the world restaurant capital it is today. Appetite City takes us on a unique and delectable journey, from the days when oysters and turtle were the most popular ingredients in New York cuisine, through the era of the fifty-cent French and Italian table d’hôtes beloved of American “Bohemians,” to the birth of Times Square—where food and entertainment formed a partnership that has survived to this day.
Enhancing his tale with more than one hundred photographs, rare menus, menu cards, and other curios and illustrations (many never before seen), Grimes vividly describes the dining styles, dishes, and restaurants succeeding one another in an unfolding historical panorama: the deluxe ice cream parlors of the 1850s, the boisterous beef-and-beans joints along Newspaper Row in the 1890s, the assembly-line experiment of the Automat, the daring international restaurants of the 1939 World’s Fair, and the surging multicultural city of today. By encompassing renowned establishments such as Delmonico’s and Le Pavillon as well as the Bowery restaurants where a meal cost a penny, he reveals the ways in which the restaurant scene mirrored the larger forces shaping New York, giving us a deliciously original account of the history of America’s greatest city.
Rich with incident, anecdote, and unforgettable personalities, Appetite City offers the dedicated food lover or the casual diner an irresistible menu of the city’s most savory moments.
Praise for Appetite City:“The latest book [from William Grimes] is a chronicle of New York’s transformation from a Dutch village at the edge of the wilderness to what he sees as the most diverse restaurant city in the world . . . As for today’s ‘era of the entrepreneurial superchefs,’ this vivid and vastly entertaining history positions it as the latest but hardly the final chapter in the culinary saga of the city with the bottomless appetite.” —Dawn Drzal, The New York Times
“If H. G. Wells had decided to send his Time Traveler to report on the early restaurants of New York, I doubt he could have provided us a much better description of the city’s rich culinary history than the one William Grimes has just written. Grimes, a longtime food writer for The New York Times . . . looks back, tracing [New York’s] bewildering maze of food cultures and traditions, from its early markets and oyster bars to today’s molecular-gastronomy-influenced restaurants . . . he touches on an amazing breadth of subjects—beautifully, thoroughly, and with a depth of research . . . Join the author on his time-traveling journey through New York’s rise as an appetite city, and you will be richer for the experience.”—Julie Gunlock, National Review
“[New York] is not the most important restaurant city in the world, one could argue, but that’s not the right argument, Grimes suggests. He walks us from restaurant-free streets of the early 1900s to open kitchens of 2004, and through a brisk, fun study of how a culinary afterthought became the most complex and irritating restaurant city on the planet.” —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
“In his fascinating Appetite City, William Grimes shows us how New York became, arguably, the best food city in the world. This is a wonderful book!” —Jacques Pépin, author of The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen
“Appetite City, as all books on New York should be, is rich in social conflict and fun. The paradox makes for great food history.” —Mark Kurlansky, author of The Big Oyster and The Food of a Younger Land
“Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Appetite City is a must-read for anyone who thinks they already know everything there is to know about the New York restaurant world.” —Tom Colicchio, chef/owner, Craft Restaurants
“William Grimes is a certified expert on New York’s culinary world. I can’t think of another person who could have achieved what he has in this engrossing and enlightening book.” —Bobby Flay, executive chef, Mesa Grill
“William Grimes has written a masterful and engrossing culinary history of New York. It’s a veritable feast of anecdotes that will satiate foodies for years to come.” —Drew Nieporent, restaurateur (Corton, Tribeca Grill, Nobu, and Centrico)
“Appetite City is a rollicking tale of big spenders, outsized appetites, and the way high rollers in New York made spectacles of themselves. Telling a story of celebrity restaurateurs, local delicacies, and New York’s rapidly changing taste and complex social rituals, Grimes has made an important contribution to the social history of New York.” —Eric Homberger, author of The Historical Atlas of New York City
William Grimes was the restaurant critic for The New York Times from 1999 to 2003. He is the author of Straight Up or On the Rocks (NPP, 2001) and My Fine Feathered Friend (NPP, 2002), and the coauthor of The New York Times Guide to New York City Restaurants 2004.
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The City Without a Restaurant
In the late 1820s, a Columbia College student by the name of Sam Ward often stepped into a small café in lower Manhattan for a bite to eat. Ward, the son of a prominent banker, would later achieve fame as a big political fixer in Washington and eventually go out in a blaze of scandal. This was no mean feat in the lax moral atmosphere of the Gilded Age, but Ward had great flair.
Author of Appetite City, William Grimes, is interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC.
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