Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A 2017 James Beard Award Nominee: From the breweries of New Amsterdam to Brooklyn’s Sweet’n Low, a vibrant account of four centuries of food production in New York City.
New York is hailed as one of the world’s “food capitals,” but the history of food-making in the city has been mostly lost. Since the establishment of the first Dutch brewery, the commerce and culture of food enriched New York and promoted its influence on America and the world by driving innovations in machinery and transportation, shaping international trade, and feeding sailors and soldiers at war. Immigrant ingenuity re-created Old World flavors and spawned such familiar brands as Thomas’ English Muffins, Hebrew National, Twizzlers, and Ronzoni macaroni.
Food historian Joy Santlofer re-creates the texture of everyday life in a growing metropolis—the sound of stampeding cattle, the smell of burning bone for char, and the taste of novelties such as chocolate-covered matzoh and Chiclets. With an eye-opening focus on bread, sugar, drink, and meat, Food City recovers the fruitful tradition behind today’s local brewers and confectioners, recounting how food shaped a city and a nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York City, the mecca of finance, fashion, and musicals, has an earthier past as the world's greatest food-producing settlement, according to this sprawling history. The (now deceased) Santlofer, former New York University professor and editor-in-chief of NY FoodStory, surveys four centuries of food processing in New York, a typical Gotham tale of prodigies with piquant local flavorings. After the Erie Canal made the city the global outlet for Midwest agricultural bounty in the early 19th century, flour and hardtack made in New York fed the Union Army in the Civil War and much of Europe, vast herds of cattle and pigs were herded through the streets to reeking slaughterhouses near Times Square, Brooklyn and Manhattan refineries made most of the nation's sugar, and neighborhood kosher butchers, bakers, and Italian pasta-makers perfected immigrant delicacies that became American staples. This is an industrial saga: New York's food sector was capitalism's hideous underbelly, with 16-hour days, sweltering temperatures, periodic explosions, stomach-turning filth, and bitter strikes. But it also became one of capitalism's marvels as it pioneered giant mechanized factories with antiseptic cleanliness. The book rambles as if through a Delancey Street market, stopping often for colorful anecdotes; there's not much of a thesis, but Santlofer's vivid, lively exploration of this forgotten history makes for a great browse. Photos.
