What does eating out tell us about who we are? The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli.

What does eating out tell us about who we are? As this dazzlingly entertaining book shows, the restaurant is where performance, fashion, commerce, ritual, class, work and desire all come together. Through its windows, we can glimpse the world. This is the deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli.