The book you’re holding came into being by a fairly circuitous route. My employer, the International Culinary School at Art Institutes International Minnesota determined that my admittedly spotty résumé could use some better credentials in the EDUCATION area and kindly sent me off to graduate school. My profound thanks for that. Having been out of college since the Pleistocene, however, I found that there was no exact fit for me in any traditional course of study. I tried out the Master of Education program, but it was filled with dispirited K-12 public school teachers comparing strategies for controlling fifth graders. Not my style.
The University of Minnesota beckoned me back with the Master of Liberal Studies (MLS) program. This course of study is for nontraditional students who construct their own interdisciplinary curriculums. The program requires the writing of a thesis, and mine was intended to be some tome about the transformational power of restaurants through the ages. As I researched this thinly documented subject, I kept coming across people and events that mirrored my own experiences. Once I started poking around in my own recollection repository, I felt the need to include some of my favorite colleagues as well. Luckily for me, my liberal studies professors approved the idea.
My thanks go out to Sarah Dennison, my advisor and taskmaster, who kept me on track during the composition of the thesis. Jeffrey M. Pilcher, a University of Minnesota professor of history by trade and a food historian of the first rank, happily pointed me in the right direction on the origins of restaurants. I’m also overwhelmingly indebted to Jack Johnson, the director of the MLS program, who reviewed the manuscript and urged me to publish the thing. Not only did he urge me, but he actually arranged for my publisher to review the finished product. Thanks, Jack, and thanks also to Jo Ellen Lundblad and Connie Hessburg of the MLS for helping me navigate through academic terra incognita.
Greg Britton, then director of the Minnesota Historical Society Press, was willing to take a flier on this book and get it into print. Greg left town shortly after offering me a publication contract, which I’m sure is purely coincidental, but he left me in the supremely capable hands of Mike Hanson, my boy wonder editor. Mike is not only a great editor but also a pho connoisseur, and I’ve learned much from him in both areas.
Though I had to delete all the citations from the body of this text when it went from academic thesis to whatever it is now, it would be unfair not to thank the authors of some of my sources for their diligence and hard work. Readers should seek out books by Jean-Paul Aron, Leslie Brenner, Duff Cooper, Auguste Escoffier, Priscilla Pankhurst Ferguson, Katherine Strand-Koutsky and Linda Koutsky, Patric Kuh, Harvey Levenstein, Stephen Mennell, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Timothy Shaw, Rebecca Spang, Laura Shapiro, Reay Tannahill, and Barbara Ketchum Wheaton for the real story.
Finally, I must make mention of my family. You’ve met my wife, Ann, and my son, Sandy, in these pages, but my parents, Wally and Margaret, were instrumental in me just being here. They’re still here too, in robust health and attitude. They gave my siblings and me a great upbringing. Never once did they criticize my career choices, though my mother was less than enthusiastic about the complete eight-place setting of pilfered Ambassador Motor Hotel china that I gave her for Christmas in 1968.
Fried was designed & set in type by Percolator, Minneapolis.
The typefaces are Filosofia, Trade Gothic, and Dorchester Script.
Printed at Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania.