3: Eating Out In The City Today
The present day city, and likely every city from the beginning of civilization, is a space of consumption and spectacle. It is not merely a place where people exist, but a place in which they put themselves on display to others, as a declaration of their identity. Being urban entails being urbane, to model and demonstrate cultural sophistication, to adopt, conform to, and demonstrate one's sense of what is sophisticated and debonair, and to shun the commonplace and the banal.
Sociologically, the city is a microcosm of the larger society, modeling not only the habits and tastes of the upper classes, but those of the middle classes as well. The masses in the rural areas of society look to the city for their models of taste, sometimes with contempt, but even then with the tacit acknowledgement that the city is the crucible of culture.
Within the city, there is a ceaseless struggle of manners, tastes, and lifestyles as individuals of all walks of life encounter one another and seek to distinguish themselves from one another. In this struggle, the author considers the bourgeoisie, specifically the upper-middle class, to be the most powerful players in terms of setting tastes by choosing among that which is offered them. This class represents the largest volume of discretionary income (less wealthy but far more numerous than the upper classes): producers cater to their whim, and advertisers attempt to influence their tastes.
Cosmopolitan dining
A city is "one huge eating-out adventure" that offers a bounty of choices. The notion of being cosmopolitan means that the city offers choices from "the earth's four corners." In rural areas, people eat what is cheap and convenient out of necessity - there is a great deal of uniformity and very few options for the unusual or the foreign simply because there is not a sufficient number of consumers to make serving unusual tastes economically viable.
(EN: This is a good point to make - if 1% of the population is interested in something, there are only 100 customers in a town of ten thousand, but 100,000 customers in a city of ten million, not to mention the rural folk who come to the city for the purpose of shopping for items not available in their locale.)
(EN: At the same time, this seems an outdated perspective. Communication and logistics, namely the Internet and package delivery, have made unusual goods accessible from any location to any other location. This was true of catalog merchants even before the electronic age. Traditionally, durable goods were more often sold in this manner rather than perishables, though it stands to note one of the earliest e-commerce sites sold Maine lobster that was shipped overnight to any location.)
There is some consideration of novelty, from the same perspective: urbanites gravitate toward the new and the unusual in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile to provide. However, what is "new" is subjective - and can often be observed that it is a matter of changing fashions in that what was disdained by one generation is desired by the next. Consider the resurgence of farmers' markets in the present day - it is not that fresh vegetables is a new concept, but a return to a previous taste for local and seasonal produce, abandoned by a generation that value year-round variety of canned and preserved ingredients.
One study (Martens and Olsen 1999) describe the dining habits of the middle class as "omnivorous," but ascribe this to a sense of anxiety. The modern market presents an overwhelming number of choices, and consuming a wide variety of options is an expression of anxiety and the inability to make a choice. That is, if "you are what you eat" holds true, it is difficult to make a right choice among so many options and a perpetual fear of making the wrong choice.
In essence, the variety of the modern palate is described as a kind of disorder: "the compulsion to eat everything, to be open to everything, to chow down on it all, in the hope that the 'best bits' can then be assembled into a new you - or, rather, a better, more accurate reflection of the real you."
(EN: This seems entirely overblown and melodramatic. It is entirely possible that there are individuals who are this obsessed with conspicuous consumerism and whose dietary habits are constantly fluctuating. However, most people quickly identify the things that they enjoy and develop everyday routines that rotate among a small number of options. They are motivated to try something different once in a while, out of a boredom with the cycle rather than anxiety over what food choices best express their personality.)
Eating, and particularly dining out, is a social statement - such that the author also suggests people are wary of being shamed for showing a preference for dining choices that are not appropriate to their class - to consume, or worse to demonstrate a preference for, options that are not appropriate to their class signals that the individual is an impostor or a pretender whose aberrant tastes do not match those of his group.
It should not be forgotten that while the city represents the height of opulence and sophistication, it is also a place in which various classes exist - not merely the wealthy and middle classes, but also the poor and recent immigrants, whose are more utilitarian and less adventurous in their food choices: the poor eat what they can afford, and the immigrant who has not yet assimilated to his new land clings to the familiarity of his former one.
There is brief mention of "industrial food," as it was introduced as a osculation to social problems that made food cheap and available to the masses, and its reward for having solved that problem is consternation for dragging down the standards of society.
This author also considers the celebrity status of chefs, and the disdain and envy many show to the few who have become popular among the masses. However, he does not see this as particularly surprising, given that cuisine has always been more about entertainment than sustenance it seems only natural that cooking has become a matter of some interest to the entertainment industry.
It's also noted that the elevation of cuisine as entertainment has also produced a lot of half-witted consumers, whose superficial exposure to the food industry has given them overconfidence in their paltry amount of knowledge ... which is to say consumers are highly opinionated and only semi-literate.
Eating 'other' spaces
Within cities, ethnic groups tend to cluster into neighborhoods - most cities of size have a "Little Italy" and a "Chinatown" district where recent immigrants establish a pocket of familiarity in a strange location, and in doing so create pockets that are inviting to local residents who are interested in sampling foreign culture without the need for travel.
However, the same is true for other groups: certain neighborhoods develop reputations as being "working class" or "gay" or populated by members of a certain profession ("artists" live in a certain area and "dock workers" in another). Whether by happenstance or by design, the identification of a neighborhood belonging to a certain group draws other members of that group or those who aspire to identify themselves as affiliated with such.
The "cultural capital" of such districts is often evanescent - the non-members of a group may develop a fascination with one culture or another, but this passes quickly. The desire to experience "Japanese food" in the district where recent immigrants have assembled rises and falls as a fashion. As such a given neighborhood may have an influx of patrons for a time, and fall out of fashion the next. There's also the implication that foreign cuisines adapt, whether intentionally to appeal to domestic tastes or by matter of the absence of authentic ingredients, and this adaptation mutes their unique character.
In the suburban supermarket, the same can be witnessed in the "ethnic aisle" of a supermarket, which reflects current trends and tastes. If a given cuisine is in fashion, it will make an appearance there, and the amount of shelf space devoted to products of a given cuisine are a barometer of its popularity. It can also be seen that certain foreign cultures become absorbed into the mainstream when their ingredients migrate from the ethnic aisle into the regular inventory - consider that ingredients such as olive oil and sauerkraut are stocked along with standard categories rather than being relegated to the ethnic ghetto of the suburban supermarket.
The author mentions that "newspapers tell us" that the Italian government was considering a certification program for Italian restaurants abroad, to maintain the integrity of the domestic cuisine in light of the fact that the term "Italian cuisine" has been so broadly misused (particularly in the USA) that it has lost its identity. (EN: This smelled like an urban legend, so I looked into it, and it turns out there are several certification programs for Italian restaurants and Italian chefs, few of which actually originate from Italy. So it's entirely likely this was intended but never had sufficient strength to become recognized or demanded by consumers.)
There is also a mention of the 1990s trend of "fusion food" which purposefully attempted to incorporate elements of different ethnic cuisines as a means to differentiate a restaurant by means of culinary novelty. The author regards this is cultural inauthenticity, merely toying with ingredients and cooking techniques as a playful experiment rather than representing the cultural identity. This most often results in a "clash of tastes" - the "fusion" becomes "confusion" that does not have a long tenure or a lasting effect on culinary culture.
While this has largely been focused on the assimilation of foreign cultures into Western dining there is also expansion of western, chiefly American, cuisine into foreign cultures - though it's noted with some derision that it is often a re-importation of domestic fare that has been corrupted by foreign influences: consider the Taco Bell in Mexico, Pizza Hut in Italy, and the like.
Conclusion
The urban dining scene, like the city itself, can be seen as a microcosm of culture, tending to be fickle and flighty, but the origin and reflection of domestic culture in those trends that demonstrate longevity.
In that way a "restaurant map" of a city reflects not merely the taste of the domestic population for unusual cuisine, but a map of the relative "cultural power" of different groups, particularly in their rise, fall, and integration into the mainstream - either in a fiercely-defended natural state or mutated through the domestic culture.