Eating places

Usage examples of restaurants.

The Platzl, these ethnically German restaurants became popular in the late eighteenth century, often rivaling much older and established eating houses.

Although restaurants were sparse in the rural lands, the urbanized German Americans built massive, ornate restaurants featuring Old World foods such as weisswurst, sauerbraten, dark breads, and Wiener schnitzel, washed down with beer.

Instead, restaurants served an almost infinite number of foods under the broad banner of American cooking.

In addition to the endless array of ethnic restaurants in the cities, an even greater number of regional foods were available to diners across the nation.

Accordingly, around the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of restaurants grew rapidly, feeding people from all classes, ethnic groups, and regional tastes and resulting in a seemingly limitless number of menus and styles.

Similar to the approach of other ethnic restaurants, Italian proprietors reinvented their offerings to appeal to the buying public, once again creating a hybrid ethnic cuisine.

Instead it examines nineteenth-century American eating habits in regard to both types of restaurants and diversity of foods.

Opened in New York in 1845 by a Swiss immigrant, Lorenzo Del-monico, it soon developed a following of wealthy patrons and became the standard by which all restaurants in the nineteenth century were compared.

By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, most of the true restaurants were still reserved for those with disposable income and leisure time.

Since dining in restaurants as recreation was a rare luxury, few Americans ever had the experience.

Similar to the strict class division in other areas and activities of daily life, restaurants catered almost exclusively to specific class clienteles.

Such restaurants usually offered a menu consisting of basic meats and other simply prepared dishes.

Although restaurants were numerous, this middle-class group generally preferred either to dine at home or, occasionally, to visit the more expensive urban restaurants.

The restaurant industry as a whole expanded around the turn of the century, with the greatest proliferation of restaurants in the urban ethnic enclaves.

German restaurants were among the earliest of the successful ethnic eateries.