Notes

Amuse Bouche

MasterChef judge William Sitwell: “Square plates are an ‘abomination,’ says MasterChef judge William Sitwell,” Daily Telegraph (Food and Drink), 13 May 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10828052/Square-plates-are-an-abomination-says-MasterChef-judge-William-Sitwell.html.

when I met him in 2015: I had the “pleasure” of being on a double bill with Michael on his home turf at a literary festival held in the middle of Dartmoor National Park (“The Perfect Meal,” Professor Charles Spence and Michael Caines MBE in conversation, Chagford Literary Festival, 15 March 2015).

1. Taste

a popular North American psychology textbook: D. P. Hanig, “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes” [On the psychophysics of taste], Philosophische Studien 17 (1901): 576–623; E. G. Boring, Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Appleton, 1942).

“Mugaritz is not only the restaurant”: A. L. Aduriz, Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking (New York: Phaidon, 2014), 25.

Different patterns of brain activation: S. M. McClure et al., “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,” Neuron 44 (2004): 379–87.

“very stinking herbe”: J. Gerard, The Herball or General Historie of Plants (1597; Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1974).

the famous disagreement: O. Styles, “Parker and Robinson in War of Words,” Decanter, 14 April 2004, www.decanter.com/wine-news/parker-and-robinson-in-war-of-words-102172.

“a robust predictor for Machiavellianism”: C. Sagioglou and T. Greitemeyer, “Individual Differences in Bitter Taste Preferences Are Associated with Antisocial Personality Traits,” Appetite 96 (2016): 299–308; A. Sims, “How You Drink Your Coffee ‘Could Point to Psychopathic Tendencies,’” Independent, 10 October 2015, www.independent.co.uk/news/science/psychopathic-people-are-more-likely-to-prefer-bitter-foods-according-to-new-study-a6688971.html.

2. Smell

protect the gases released from the beer’s surface: H. T. Fincks, “The Gastronomic Value of Odours,” Contemporary Review 50 (1886): 680–95.

PepsiCo applied for a patent: C. Morran, “PepsiCo Thinks Its Drinks Aren’t Smelly Enough, Wants to Add Scent Capsules,” Consumerist, 17 September 2013, https://consumerist.com/2013/09/17/pepsico-thinks-its-drinks-arent-smelly-enough-wants-to-add-scent-capsules.

Go back to the 1930s: F. T. Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, trans. S. Brill (1932; San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1989), 43.

“He lay back for a little in his bed thinking”: E. Waugh, Vile Bodies (London: Chapman & Hall, 1930), 80–81.

“all that’s left is eating without eating”: S. Cuozzo, “Bland Cuisine and Atmosphere Don’t Boost Eat’s Silent Dinners,” New York Post, 23 October 2013.

while they were eating a tomato soup: M. G. Ramaekers et al., “Aroma Exposure Time and Aroma Concentration in Relation to Satiation,” British Journal of Nutrition 111 (2014): 554–62.

optimal dispersion of their signature smell: S. Nassauer, “Using Scent as a Marketing Tool, Stores Hope It—And Shoppers—Will Linger: How Cinnabon, Lush Cosmetics, Panera Bread Regulate Smells in Stores to Get You to Spend More,” Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2014, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303468704579573953132979382.

“a small bulb soaked in synthetic chocolate, cod, or peanut butter scent”: A. Robertson, “Ghost Food: An Art Exhibit Shows How We Might Eat After Global Warming,” The Verge, 18 October 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/10/18/4851966/ghost-food-shows-how-we-might-eat-after-global-warming.

3. Sight

inviting the public to “taste the color”: Just take C. S. Peirce, writing almost 150 years ago: “Sight by itself informs us only of colors and forms. No one can pretend that the images of sight are determinate in reference to taste. They are, therefore, so far general that they are neither sweet nor non-sweet, bitter nor non-bitter, having savour nor insipid” (“Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” Journal of Speculative Psychology 2 (1868): 140–57). Or take Helmholtz, who, a decade later, wrote: “For example, one cannot ask whether sweet is more like red or more like blue” (The Facts of Perception: Selected Writings of Hermann Helmholtz [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1878]). And for the opposite position, see, e.g., B. Miller, “Artist Invites Public to Taste Colour in Ten-Day Event with Dancers and Wine at the Oval,” Culture 24, 3 February 2015, www.culture24.org.uk/art/art516019-artist-invites-public-to-taste-colour-in-ten-day-event%20with-dancers-and-wine-at-the-oval.

Sweetness without the calories: J. Johnson and F. M. Clydesdale, “Perceived Sweetness and Redness in Colored Sucrose Solutions,” Journal of Food Science 47 (1982): 747–52.

blue foods would never sell: For instance, Lyall Watson writing at the start of the 1970s: “We have a deep-seated dislike of blue foods. Take a trip through a supermarket and see how many blue ones you can find. They are rare in nature and equally rare in our artificial hunting grounds. No sweet manufacturer ever successfully marketed a blue confection, and no blue soft drink or ice cream appeared on sale for very long” (The Omnivorous Ape [New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971], 66–67).

one of my favorite “evil” experiments: J. Wheatley, “Putting Colour into Marketing,” Marketing, October 1973, 24–29, 67.

Cadbury decided to update the shape: C. Spence, “Assessing the Influence of Shape and Sound Symbolism on the Consumer’s Response to Chocolate,” New Food 17, no. 2 (2014): 59–62.

influenced the rated sharpness: D. Gal, S. C. Wheeler, and B. Shiv, “Cross-Modal Influences on Gustatory Perception” (unpublished manuscript, 2007, https://ssrn.com/abstract=1030197).

baristas in Australia: G. Van Doorn et al., “Latte Art Influences Both the Expected and Rated Value of Milk-Based Coffee Drinks,” Journal of Sensory Studies 30 (2015): 305–15.

served on a “sweeter”-looking plate: See C. Michel, C. Velasco, and C. Spence, “Cutlery Matters: Heavy Cutlery Enhances Diners’ Enjoyment of the Food Served in a Realistic Dining Environment,” Flavour 4, no. 26 (2015).

“the term blue plate special became popular”: B. Crumpacker, The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006), 143.

La Merde has an Instagram site: See www.instagram.com/chefjacqueslamerde/; D. Galarza, “Revealed: Instagram Sensation Jacques La Merde Is . . . ,” Eater, 28 January 2016, www.eater.com/2016/1/28/10750642/revealed-instagram-sensation-jacques-la-merde-is.

“French presentation was virtually non-existent”: J. Yang, “The Art of Food Presentation,” Crave, 2011, cited in C. Spence and B. Piqueras-Fiszman, The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 113.

“costly ($20.00) exercise in gastro-porn”: A. Cockburn, “Gastro-Porn,” New York Review of Books, 8 December 1977, www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/12/08/gastro-porn.

“I’m sure some restaurants are preparing food now that is going to look good on Instagram”: Quoted in E. Saner, “Plate Spinning: The Smart Chef’s Secret Ingredient,” Guardian, 12 May 2015, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/may/12/plate-spinning-smart-chefs-secret-ingredient-food-on-plate.

“Cuisine is a feast for the eyes”: J. Prynn, “Age of the Insta-Diner: Restaurants Drop Ban on Phones as Foodie Snaps Become the Norm,” Evening Standard, 28 January 2016, 27.

tips on how to make your food photography more visually attractive: A. Victor, “Keep Your Background Blurry, Never Use a Flash and Don’t Overuse Filters: How to Turn Your Dull Food Images into Instagram Food Porn in 12 Simple Steps,” Daily Mail Online, 28 April 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-3050116/12-tricks-help-beautiful-food-photos-Instagram.html.

this increase in eye-appeal: C. Spence, Q. (J.) Wang, and J. Youssef, “Pairing Flavors and the Temporal Order of Tasting,” Flavour 6, no. 4 (2017).

it’s called mukbang: C. Duboc, “Munchies Presents: Mukbang,” Munchies, 17 February 2015, https://munchies.vice.com/videos/unchies-presents-mukbang.

watching a 7-minute restaurant review: The increase in this case was in the region of 10%–15%; C. P. Herman, J. M. Ostovich, and J. Polivy, “Effects of Attentional Focus on Subjective Hunger Ratings,” Appetite 33 (2009): 181–93.

“Eating is not only triggered by hunger”: L. Passamonti et al., “Personality Predicts the Brain’s Response to Viewing Appetizing Foods: The Neural Basis of a Risk Factor for Overeating,” Journal of Neuroscience 29 (2009): 43–51, 43.

those who have systematically analyzed the TV chefs’ recipes: S. Howard, J. Adams, and M. White, “Nutritional Content of Supermarket Ready Meals and Recipes by Television Chefs in the United Kingdom: Cross Sectional Study,” British Medical Journal 345 (2012): e7607.

consuming more calories: F. M. Kroese, D. R. Marchiori, and D.T.D. de Ridder, “Nudging Healthy Food Choices: A Field Experiment at the Train Station,” Journal of Public Health 38 (2016): e133–e137.

a typical U.K. at-home meal: C. Michel et al., “A Taste of Kandinsky: Assessing the Influence of the Visual Presentation of Food on the Diner’s Expectations and Experiences,” Flavour 3, no. 7 (2014).

reducing the size of the plate or bowl we eat from: T. M. Marteau et al., “Downsizing: Policy Options to Reduce Portion Sizes to Help Tackle Obesity,” British Medical Journal 351 (2015): h5863.

imagined consumption of food can reduce actual consumption: C. K. Morewedge, Y. E. Huh, and J. Vosgerau, “Thought for Food: Imagined Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption,” Science 330 (2010): 1530–33.

“DePaula-Santos told me”: A. Swerdloff, “Eating the Uncanny Valley: Inside the Virtual Reality World of Food,” Munchies, 13 April 2015, https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/eating-the-uncanny-valley-inside-the-virtual-reality-world-of-food.

“To those watching, what they saw was almost unbearable”: Quoted from M. Ehrlich, The Edict (London: Severn House, 1972), 173.

4. Sound

a microwaved meal at a dinner party: “How Microwave Meals Are Now on the Menu at Dinner Parties,” Daily Mail Online, 22 May 2016, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3603849/Third-guests-claim-not-bothered-served-ready-meal.html.

career composing with these sorts of food preparation sounds: P. Samuelsson, “Taste of Sound: Composing for Large Scale Dinners,” keynote presentation given at the Sensibus Festival, Seinajoki, Finland, 13–14 March 2014; see also C. Spence, “Music from the Kitchen,” Flavour 4, no. 25 (2015).

recently recorded in an anechoic chamber: See “The Sounds of Massimo Bottura by Yuri Ancarani and Mirco Mecacci,” video, New York Times Style Magazine, 2016, www.nytimes.com/video/t-magazine/100000004708074/massimobottura.html.

changing people’s biting sounds: M. L. Dematte et al., “Effects of the Sound of the Bite on Apple Perceived Crispness and Hardness,” Food Quality and Preference 38 (2014): 58–64.

“The single word ‘crispy’ sells more food”: M. Batali, The Babbo Cookbook (New York: Random House, 2002), cited in J. S. Allen, The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), 8.

a top science journal called (you guessed it) Science: G. Weiss, “Why Is a Soggy Potato Chip Unappetizing?,” Science 293 (2001): 1753–54.

disagree with Mario Batali: Batali, The Babbo Cookbook, cited in Allen, The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food, 8. There is simply more that people want to label innate than can possibly be so.

“The particular sound and feel of the crunch was identifiably Kellogg’s”: M. Lindstrom, Brand Sense: How to Build Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound (London: Kogan Page, 2005), 12.

“eliminated the plastic wrapping”: E. Byron, “The Search for Sweet Sounds That Sell: Household Products” Clicks and Hums Are No Accident; Light Piano Music When the Dishwasher Is Done?,” Wall Street Journal, 23 October 2012, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578074671598804116.

put on some heavy metal: Indeed, over and above what it does to the diners’ experience, background music also plays an important, if often unacknowledged role in helping to motivate the serving staff. As Colin Lynch, the executive chef of Barbara Lynch Gruppo, which comprises restaurants such as Menton and No. 9 Park, puts it: “I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a kitchen that didn’t have some form of music in it. The whole energy of the kitchen changes. The speed at which people work changes depending what we listen to. During prep, you zone out. You’re doing one thing for 45 minutes straight. It helps you keep that rhythm.” See D. First, “Music to Prep By: The Tunes They Name Can Lighten or Quicken the Mood Before Service,” Boston Globe, 27 July 2011, www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2011/07/27/food_and_music_are_complements_in_most_kitchens___before_its_time_to_focus_on_service.

“Gastronomy is a sensual experience and noise prejudices this pleasure”: G. Keeley, “Spanish Chefs Want to Take the Din Out of Dinner,” Times, 4 May 2016, 33, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spanish-chefs-want-to-take-the-din-out-of-dinner-cr3fpcg7p.

“very present but it’s never overpowering”: Quote from hotel manager Edwin Kramer, of London’s Edition Hotel, in L. Eriksen, “Room with a Cue,” Journal (Autumn 2014): 26–27.

5. Touch

“a fart from the kitchen”: Quoted in G. Berghaus, “The Futurist Banquet: Nouvelle Cuisine or Performance Art?,” New Theatre Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2001): 3–17, 15.

“Surfaces made from natural materials are often preferable”: I. Crawford, Sensual Home: Liberate Your Senses and Change Your Life (London: Quadrille, 1997).

whether any of the spoons do an especially good job: W. Welch, J. Youssef, and C. Spence, “Neuro-Cutlery: The Next Frontier in Cutlery Design,” Supper Magazine 4 (2016): 128–29.

“The first time I went to an Indian restaurant”: Y. Martel, Life of Pi (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 7.

“Rather optimistic to say they’re resting”: See S. Poole, You Aren’t What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture (London: Union Books, 2012), 44–45.

“Good chefs go to great lengths to add texture contrast”: B. Stuckey, Taste What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good (London: Free Press, 2012), 93.

6. The Atmospheric Meal

“If it weren’t for the atmosphere, I couldn’t do nearly the business I do”: Or as another restaurateur put it: “Customers seek a dining experience totally different from home, and the atmosphere probably does more to attract them than the food itself.” “More Restaurants Sell an Exotic Atmosphere as Vigorously as Food,” Wall Street Journal, 4 August 1965, 1, as cited in P. Kotler, “Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool,” Journal of Retailing 49 (Winter 1974): 48–64, 58–59.

“only a small part of the total consumption package”: Kotler, “Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool,” 48–64, 48.

“musical accompaniments matched to menus”: M. Sheraton, Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life (New York: Harper, 2004), 172.

Chris Golub, the man responsible for selecting the music: Quoted in C. Suddath, “How Chipotle’s DJ, Chris Golub, Creates His Playlists,” Businessweek, 17 October 2013, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-17/chipotles-music-playlists-created-by-chris-golub-of-studio-orca.

“[T]he Hard Rock Café had the practice down to a science”: C. Buckley, “Working or Playing Indoors, New Yorkers Face an Unabated Roar,” New York Times, 19 July 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/nyregion/in-new-york-city-indoor-noise-goes-unabated.html.

“When music in a bar gets 22 percent louder, patrons drink 26 percent faster”: Quoted in T. Clynes, “A Restaurant with Adjustable Acoustics,” Popular Science, 11 October 2012, www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/restaurant-adjustable-acoustics.

McDonald’s has been doing this for years: A. Shelton, “A Theater for Eating, Looking and Thinking: The Restaurant as Symbolic Space,” Sociological Spectrum 10 (1990): 507–26, 522.

“great food, great service, great wine, great comfort”: Quoted in Stuckey, Taste What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good, 85–86.

“an experience in codes”: Shelton, “A Theater for Eating, Looking and Thinking,” 507–26, 525.

the self-styled engineers of the experience economy: “Welcome to the Experience Economy,” Harvard Business Review 76, no. 4 (1998): 97–105, 104.

“Any chef who says he does it for love is a liar”: Quoted in C. Rintoul, “The Next Chef Revolution,” Food Is the New Internet (blog), https://medium.com/food-is-the-new-internet/the-next-chef-revolution-dfe75f0820d2.

“each dish is accompanied by a carefully choreographed set of sounds”: J. Bergman, “Restaurant Report: Ultraviolet in Shanghai,” New York Times, 10 October 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/travel/restaurant-report-ultraviolet-in-shanghai.html.

“but it didn’t make the food taste any better”: M. Steinberger, Au Revoir to All That: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 78.

“A red light makes everything look red; a green light makes meat look gray and spoiled”: E. Lampi, “Hotel and Restaurant Lighting,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 13 (1973): 58–64, 59.

“In the short time I have been in the business of designing restaurants”: David Ashen of D-Ash design, quoted in R. S. Baraban and J. F. Durocher, Successful Restaurant Design (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 236.

7. Social Dining

on the occasion of his 93rd birthday: S. Cockcroft, “That Really Is a Happy Meal! McDonald’s Staff Throw a Surprise Birthday Party for a Lonely 93-Year-Old Widower Who Has Gone to McDonald’s Almost Every Day Since 2013,” Daily Mail Online, 20 November 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3327184/That-really-Happy-Meal-Lonely-93-year-old-gone-McDonald-s-day-death-wife-thrown-surprise-birthday-party-restaurant.html.

“eating alone is something you can do one-handed”: N. Frizzell, “Dinner for One—Now That’s My Kind of Date,” 14 April 2016, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/dinner-for-one-date-solo-dining-eat.

“[A] good meal tastes better if we eat it in the company of friends”: H. F. Harlow, “Social Facilitation of Feeding in the Albino Rat,” Journal of Genetic Psychology 41 (1932): 211–20, 211.

“hard-wired to feel close to those with whom we share food”: C. Steel, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (London: Chatto & Windus, 2008), 212–13.

“The act of eating together triggers the endorphin system”: K. Davey, “One in Three People Go a Week Without Eating a Meal with Someone Else, Oxford University Professor Finds,” Oxford Mail, 13 April 2016, www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/14422266.One_in_three_people_go_a_week_without_eating_a_meal_with_someone_else__Oxford_University_professor_finds.

since we last shared a meal with our parents: H. Rumbelow, “Tired of Takeaways? Try Supper in a Stranger’s Home with the Airbnb of Dining,” Times (Times2), 19 November 2015, 6–7.

“The table is the original social network”: Camille Rumani, co-founder of the VizEat site.

“You go to restaurants to be social”: R. Cornish, “Din and Dinner: Are Our Restaurants Just Too Noisy?,” Good Food, 13 August 2013, www.goodfood.com.au/good-food/foodnews/din-and-dinner-are-our-restaurants-just-too-noisy-20130805-2r92e.html.

46% of people: The study, conducted by OpenTable, was quoted in A. Victor, “Table for One, Please! Number of Solo Diners Doubles in Two Years as Eating Alone Is Viewed as Liberating Rather than a Lonely Experience,” Daily Mail Online, 13 July 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-3156420/OpenTable-study-reveals-number-solo-diners-doubles-two-years.html.

“I suppose solo diners really aren’t solo any more at all”: W. Smale, “Your Solo Dining Experiences,” BBC News (Business ), 31 July 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28542359.

“I’m not worried about anyone thinking I’m a sad bastard”: Frizzell, “Dinner for One—Now That’s My Kind of Date.”

recommendations for solo diners in their restaurant reviews: A. S. Levine, “New York Today: Where to Eat Alone,” New York Times, 11 February 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/nyregion/new-york-today-where-to-eat-alone.html.

“I noticed that in our society, there is no room for being alone in a public space, unless you are going somewhere”: Van Goor also says that “eating alone is the most extreme form of feeling disconnected in our culture.” Note that dining at Eenmaal does not seem to be about stopping by for a bite to eat, but rather actually making a statement by deliberately booking to eat alone. Both quotes from B. Balfour, “Tables for One: The Rise of Solo Dining,” BBC News Online, 24 July 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28292651.

“I remarked with astonishment numerous tables placed one beside another”: A. J. N. Rosny, Le Péruvian à Paris (1801), quoted in R. L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 64.

“In enacting Mella Jaarsma’s piece”: S. B. Mendelsohn, “I Eat You Eat Me,” Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (blog), 7 February 2012, https://blogs.uchicago.edu/feast/2012/02/i_eat_you_eat_me.html.

“a feeling of being in something together”: M. Vogelzang, “Sharing Dinner,” Studio Marije Vogelzang (blog), http://marijevogelzang.nl/portfolio_page/sharing-dinner.

“I don’t feel that I shared food with them”: Quoted in R. Comber et al., “Not Sharing Sushi: Exploring Social Presence and Connectedness at the Telematic Dinner Party,” in J. H. -J. Choi, M. Foth, and G. Hearn (eds.), Eat, Cook, Grow: Mixing Human-Computer Interactions with Human-Food Interactions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 65–79, 71.

8. Airline Food

when the government-owned airline came under criticism from Parliament: K. Kovalchik, “11 Things We No Longer See on Airplanes,” http://mentalfloss.com/article/51270/11-things-we-no-longer-see-airplanes; A. Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970), 206–11.

9. The Meal Remembered

“[Sticktion] refers to a limited number of special clues”: L. P. Carbone and S. H. Haeckel, “Engineering Customer Experiences,” Marketing Management 3, no. 3 (1994): 8–19, 8.

fifty people living with dementia: O. Franklin-Wallis, “Lizzie Ostrom Wants to Transform People’s Lives Through Their Noses,” Wired, 3 October 2015, www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/11/play/lizzie-ostrom-smell; J. Morton, “How Ode, a ‘Food Alarm Clock’, Is Enforcing Appetite Stimulation in Dementia Patients,” Med-Tech Engine, 6 January 2016, https://medtechengine.com/article/appetite-stimulation-in-dementia-patients.

“they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss”: J. A. Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût [The philosopher in the kitchen/The physiology of taste] (Brussels: J. P. Meline, 1835); published as A Handbook of Gastronomy, trans. A. Lazaure (London: Nimmo & Bain, 1884), 14.

10. The Personalized Meal

morphed into the delivery of a more personalized experience for the diner: J. A. Heidemann, “You’ve Been Googled—Bon Appetit!,” Chicago Business, 29 June 2013, www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130629/ISSUE03/306299997/youve-been-googled-bon-appetit; S. Craig, “What Restaurants Know (About You),” New York Times, 4 September 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/dining/what-restaurants-know-about-you.html.

“Roller discovers it’s a couple’s anniversary”: Quotes from A. Sytsma, “Hardcore Coddling: How Eleven Madison Park Modernized Elite, Old-School Service,” Grub Street, 9 April 2014, www.grubstreet.com/2014/04/eleven-madison-park-foh-staff-detailed-look.html.

40% of North Americans said that it was OK: “Lunchtime Poll: Investigating Patrons,” CNN, 10 August 2010, https://cnneatocracy.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/lunchtime-poll-investigating-patrons.

“point them in the direction of that white Burgundy”: Craig, “What Restaurants Know (About You).”

“a guest walks through the front doors at Ping Pong Dim Sum”: S. Miles, “6 Tools Restaurants Can Use for Better Guest Intelligence,” Streetfight, 22 July 2013, http://streetfightmag.com/2013/07/22/6-tools-restaurants-can-use-for-better-guest-intelligence.

the better the venue, the smaller the number of options: Based on an analysis of a huge number of restaurant menus posted online, linguist Dan Jurafsky notes that “expensive restaurants ($$$$) have half as many dishes as cheap ($) restaurants.” D. Jurafsky, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu (New York: Norton, 2014), 12.

“Menus without choice blaspheme against the doctrine of dining”: T. Hayward, “Menus Without Choice Blaspheme Against the Doctrine of Dining,” FT Weekend Magazine, 23 January 2016, 12.

how airlines ended up selling far more cheap tickets: Sutherland’s talk is summarized at www.warc.com/Content/News/N34910_Behavioral_economics_is_effective__.content.

once a certain marketing executive: Not just any old marketing executive, either: it was Ernest Dichter, one of Louis Cheskin’s long-term collaborators. Both were émigrés who fled the chaos and persecution in central Europe in the middle of the last century. For a history of the period, see L. R. Samuel, Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America (Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

“dishes will be designed which take into account sex, character, profession, and sensibility”: F. T. Marinetti, “Nourishment by Radio,” in Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, 67.

11. The Experiential Meal

“what one felt when eating at elBulli”: Quote from Aduriz, Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking, 18.

“The steakhouse, opened two years ago, is described on its website”: J. Simpson and J. Mattson, “TV Chef’s Grubby Steakhouse Mixed Raw and Cooked Meat,” Times, 26 May 2014, 18, www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4100051.ece.

all the rage among the chefs that you find jostling for position: Quotes from L. Collins, “Who’s to Judge? How the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Are Chosen,” New Yorker, 2 November 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/whos-to-judge.

“one day diners would demand to eyeball the cooking team at work”: J. Kinsman, “Give Us a Butcher’s . . . For Diners, Seeing Is Believing,” Independent on Sunday, 7 June 2015, 59. J. R. Walker, The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011), 53.

“a loudspeaker barks ‘Dive! Dive!’”: S. K. A. Robson, “Turning the Tables: The Psychology of Design for High-Volume Restaurants,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1999): 56–63, 60.

“completely different in its configuration, design elements, lighting, even aroma”: G. Ulla, “Grant Achatz Plans to ‘Overhaul the Experience’ at Alinea,” Eater, 23 November 2011, www.eater.com/2011/11/23/6634549/grant-achatz-plans-to-overhaul-the-experience-at-alinea.

“Chefs play to the list”: Quoted in Collins, “Who’s to Judge? How the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Are Chosen.”

“intensify the focus on the food, not distract from it”: Bergman, “Restaurant Report: Ultraviolet in Shanghai.”

“You can’t escape from what I’m trying to convey”: Quoted in M. Joe, “Dishing It Out: Chefs Are Offering Diners a Multisensory Experience,” South China Morning Post, 10 January 2014, www.scmp.com/magazines/style/article/1393915/dishing-it-out-chefs-are-offering-diners-multisensory-experience.

“Dinner starts dramatically”: S. Pigott, “Appetite for Invention,” Robb Report, May 2015, 98–101, 99.

“an emotional ‘theater of the senses’ . . . a night of gastronomy, mixology and technology”: Roncero boasts that his is “the first gastronomic show in the world.” Quoted in B. Palling, “Fork It Over: Are the World’s Priciest Restaurants Worth the Expense?,” Newsweek, 4 December 2015, www.pressreader.com/usa/newsweek/20151204/282089160685916. See also A. Jakubik, “The Workshop of Paco Roncero,” Trendland: Fashion Blog and Trend Magazine, 23 July 2012, http://trendland.com/the-workshop-of-paco-roncero.

a cellist sat down next to you and played a specially composed piece of music: This was one of Grant Achatz’s ideas when he talked about reinventing the experience at Alinea in 2011 (Ulla, “Grant Achatz Plans to ‘Overhaul the Experience’ at Alinea”).

“sell cooking as a sort of abstract art or experimental storytelling”: J. Gordinier, “A Restaurant of Many Stars Raises the Ante,” New York Times, 27 July 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/dining/eleven-madison-park-is-changing-things-up.html.

“Fat Duck is about storytelling”: Quotes from J. Rayner, “Blue Sky Thinking,” Observer Food Monthly, 23 August 2015, 18–22, 21–22.

at the click of a waiter’s fingers: J. Gerard, “Heston Blumenthal: My New Alice in Wonderland Menu,” Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/restaurants/5700481/Heston-Blumenthal-my-new-Alice-in-Wonderland-menu.html.

“the most satisfying performance in town”: K. Sekules, “Food for Thought: Copenhagen’s Coolest Dinner Theater,” New York Times, 19 January 2010, http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/food-for-thought-copenhagens-coolest-dinner-theater.

“fewer, less formal theatrical accompaniments to the catering”: A. Soloski, “Sleep No More: From Avant Garde Theater to Commercial Blockbuster,” Guardian, 31 March 2015, www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/31/sleep-no-more-avant-garde-theater-new-york. Felix Barrett is quoted in the article thus: “‘What we’re doing with the bar and the restaurant are experiments, research,’ he said. ‘How do you tell a story through food? How do you have a three-course meal that has a narrative?’” See also “Sleep No More Adds High-End Restaurant to Its New York Roster,” Guardian, 26 November 2013.

“from enchanted forests to a spaceship to a sunset beach”: S. Mountfort, “Like Heston Meets Crystal Maze,” Metro, 9 December 2015, 49.

“to transform dining into a type of performance art”: P. McCouat, “The Futurists Declare War on Pasta,” Journal of Art in Society, 2014, www.artinsociety.com/the-futurists-declare-war-on-pasta.html.

“as Mozart remains the same”: C. A. Jones (ed.), Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 19.

“Eight waiters (four men wearing surgical scrubs and masks and four women wearing masks, black tights, and leotards)”: J. Klein, “Feeding the Body: The Work of Barbara Smith,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 21, no. 1 (1999): 24–35, 25.

“where dining has been elevated to an event of extraordinary stature”: J. Finkelstein, Dining Out: A Sociology of Manners (New York: New York University Press, 1989), 68.

“Showmanship can be a tricky pursuit”: Quoted in Gordinier, “A Restaurant of Many Stars Raises the Ante.”

12. Digital Dining

in the kitchens of a few fancy modernist restaurants and in food innovation centers: Others have expressed similar reservations: “Media technologies theorist Henry Jenkins (2006) would be skeptical of the notion that a new technology such as the PFP [personal food printer] would displace current technologies, collapsing all kitchen appliances into a single almighty black box. Jenkins refers to this as the black-box fallacy.” Quoted in G. Hearn and D. L. Wright, “Food Futures: Three Provocations to Challenge HCI,” in Choi, Foth, and Hearn (eds.), Eat, Cook, Grow: Mixing Human-Computer Interactions with Human-Food Interactions, 265–78, 273–74.

“hands-on, high-touch, people-oriented business”: D. Meyer, Setting the Table: Lessons and Inspirations from One of the World’s Leading Entrepreneurs (London: Marshall Cavendish International, 2010), 93.

“seated in highchairs at interactive tables”: B. London, “World’s First Sensory Restaurant for Babies Complete with Digital Menus and Interactive Menus Opens Doors,” Daily Mail Online, 5 June 2014, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2649367/Worlds-sensory-restaurant-babies-complete-digital-menus-interactive-menus-opens-doors.html.

serving seafood from a tablet: C. Spence, “Multisensory Marketing” Presentation, Zeitgeist Curator, Berlin, 30 August 2012.

“grilled lemons with shrimp and patchouli”: Quoted in Pigott, “Appetite for Invention,” 98–101.

“As for Project Nourished, here’s the deal”: Swerdloff, “Eating the Uncanny Valley: Inside the Virtual Reality World of Food.”

staring intently out from the pages: B. Dowell, “Listen, This Food Is Music to Your Ears,” Sunday Times, 29 August 2004, www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article236417.ece.

the demise of DigiScents: C. Platt, “You’ve Got Smell,” Wired, 1 November 1999, www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/; A. Dusi, “What Does $20 Million Burning Smell Like? Just Ask DigiScents!,” StartupOver, 19 January 2014, www.startupover.com/en/20-million-burning-smell-like-just-ask-digiscents.

“watch robotic bartenders mix their cocktails”: S. Curtis, “Robotic Bartender Serves Up Drinks on World’s First ‘Smart Ship’: Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas Is the Most Technologically Advanced Cruise Ship in the World,” Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11198509/Robotic-bartender-serves-up-drinks-on-worlds-first-smart-ship.html.

robots don’t have very good tasting abilities: T. Fuller, “You Call This Thai Food? The Robotic Taster Will Be the Judge,” New York Times, 29 September 2014, A1, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world/asia/bad-thai-food-enter-a-robot-taster.html.

available early in 2018: R. Burn-Callender, “The Robot Chef Coming to a Kitchen Near You,” Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/11912085/The-robot-chef-coming-to-a-kitchen-near-you.html.

13. Back to the Futurists

“Heston’s forerunner”: B. McFarlane and T. Sandham, “Back to the Futurism,” The House of Peroni, 2016, http://thehouseofperoni.com/en-gb/lifestyle/back-futurism.

“pepper-spray our guests”: The dish in question was a chilled citrus soup, finished at the table by the waiter spraying a little togarashi mist over the bowl; see P. Vettel, Good Eating’s Fine Dining in Chicago (Chicago: Agate Digital, 2013).

“as much little plays as they are feasts”: S. Brickman, “The Food of the Future,” New Yorker, 1 September 2014, www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/food-future.

“elevating the chef to the rank of sculptor, stage designer, and director of a performative event”: Berghaus, “The Futurist Banquet: Nouvelle Cuisine or Performance Art?,” 3–17, 15.

“a mise-en-scène of food sculptures”: Ibid., 70.

was molecular gastronomy invented in the 1930s: This is the title of a recent article; see “Futurist Cooking: Was Molecular Gastronomy Invented in the 1930s?,” The Staff Canteen, 25 April 2014, www.thestaffcanteen.com/Editorials-and-Advertorials/futurist-cooking-was-molecular-gastronomy-invented-in-the-1930s.

have its roots back in the 1930s: Marinetti published his infamous “Manifesto of Futurist Cooking” in the Gazzetta del Popolo in Turin on 28 December 1930. Reprinted in Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, 33–40.

“A battery of scientific instruments in the kitchens”: S. Smith (ed.), Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2013), 35.

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”: D. MacHale, Wisdom (London: Prion, 2002).

“swallowed, not masticated”: D. Darrah, “Futurist’s Idea on Food Finds Italy Contrary,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 11 December 1931; H. B. Higgins, “Schlurrrp! The Case for and Against Spaghetti,” in Smith (ed.), Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, 40–47; McCouat, “The Futurists Declare War on Pasta”; R. Golan, “Ingestion/Anti-Pasta,” Cabinet 10 (2003): 1–5.

Futurist banquet in Tunis, c. 1931: Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, 65.

“as well as for the fingers, nose and ears”: Higgins, “Schlurrrp! The Case for and Against Spaghetti,” 40–47, 43.

“a dish I would not recommend for the hungry”: Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, 84.

“true style of nouvelle cuisine”: Berghaus, “The Futurist Banquet: Nouvelle Cuisine or Performance Art?,” 3–17, 8–9.

Allen Weiss explicitly draws parallels: In Le Poète assassiné (1916; Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 258–59, reprinted and translated in A. S. Weiss, Feast and Folly: Cuisine, Intoxication and the Poetics of the Sublime (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 114–15, 145–46.

Think of it as modernist “eatertainment”: T. Hayward, “The Cult of Inconsistency,” FT Weekend Magazine, 10 October 2014, www.ft.com/content/41cb3e4c-4e66-11e4-bfda-00144feab7de.

around six cents, apparently: C. Spence and J. Youssef, “Constructing Flavour Perception: From Destruction to Creation and Back Again,” Flavour 5, no. 3 (2016). The meal in question was coordinated by Kitchen Theory.

latest analysis of Indian recipes: Jurafsky, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu.

“this is not about machines outdoing humans”: Quote from J. Wakefield, “What Would a Computer Cook For Dinner?,” BBC News Online, 7 March 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26352743.

“a control test on restaurants”: Quoted in M. Wall, “From Pizzas to Cocktails the Data Crunching Way,” BBC News, 18 August 2015, www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33892409.

“asking the sound designer to pair his soundscapes to wine”: Miller, “Artist Invites Public to Taste Color in Ten-Day Event with Dancers and Wine at the Oval.”

the emergence of “sensploration”: D. Arroche, “Never Heard of Sensploration? Time to Study Up on Epicure’s Biggest Luxury Trend,” LuxeEpicure, 22 December 2015, www.justluxe.com/lifestyle/dining/feature-1962122.php.

“70 percent of United States-based Millennials”: Quotes from Y. Arrigo, “Welcome to the Booming Experience Economy,” Raconteur (Future of Events and Hospitality) 362 (2016): 2–3.

making our way toward the Gesamtkunstwerk: “Through reinventing the overall experience as Gesamtkunstwerk, high-end chefs truly claim their place, as Carême articulated, in the pantheon of great artists.” Quoted in J. Abrams, “Mise en Plate: The Scenographic Imagination and the Contemporary Restaurant,” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 18, no. 3 (2013): 7–14, 14.

the notion of “food hacking”: J. Wapner, “The Flavour Factory: Hijacking Our Senses to Tailor Tastes,” New Scientist, 3 February 2016, www.newscientist.com/article/2075674-the-flavour-factory-hijacking-our-senses-to-tailor-tastes.

“you don’t have to like something for you to enjoy it”: Aduriz, Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking, 42–43.

one excellent tip from Yogi Berra: N. Scott, “The 50 Greatest Yogi Berra Quotes,” For The Win (blog), USA Today, 23 September 2015, http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/09/the-50-greatest-yogi-berra-quotes.