The aim of Menus and the Media is to bring together chefs, food writers, media personalities, journalists, food studies scholars, media scholars, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists: (a) to provide a site of sustained interaction between the academy and a broader public to interrogate issues related to the culture of cooking in urban, metropolitan settings; and (b) to develop a research agenda that pays particular attention to emerging professions (such as chefs and food writers) and their publics as mediated by old and new media. We find that the roundtables, now in their third year, are producing the very public for discussing these issues and enabling us to develop a language to communicate across the barrier between the academy, and practitioners and commentators outside the academy.

The next session of Menus and the Media will take place next Tuesday, February 22, from 2 to 4 p.m. Please note the different location: food studies department, 35 W. 4th Street, 10th floor, in room 1078. You will need a photo ID to enter the building.

A couple of months ago, we asked Michael Laiskonis and Bob delGrosso to write brief essays highlighting current concerns they had as chefs....

Museums have long forbidden food and drinks on their premises; yet, displays of food and food-related artifacts and upscale food offerings at museum-restaurants such as the Modern are increasingly prevalent. The Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, and the MOMA, for example, have held exhibits that questioned the past, present, and future relations we have with what we cook, what we eat, and where and...

When we purchase cheeses, wines, meats, and other food products that have the protection of geographical appellations such as AOC or DOC, we witness the intervention of states, municipalities, and trade organizations in the allocation of legal protection to local products. This process consecrates craftsmanship and offers producers and consumers a terroir strategy to counter the power of...

We are in the middle of two apparently contradictory movements, one drawing us into anonymous networks of distant commodities and financial flows that we understand as markets, and the other pulling us towards place-based, face-to-face, local nodes of transactions, the markets we go to, such as the more than 5,000 farmers’ markets in the US in 2010. Are farmers’ markets and locales such as the...

Nota bene: This event was originally scheduled for February 26th at 20 Cooper Square but was postponed due to inclement weather. Please take note of the new meeting location, at 35 W. 4th Street.

Why do we want, or need, certain foods and cuisines to be authentic? What makes one cuisine more worthy of authenticity than another? Are claims of authenticity nothing but the embalming of...

Time and space are two elements that require crucial negotiations in the restaurant world, as the result of interactions between diners and servers, diners and cooks, cooks and diners, cooks and servers, and cooks and cooks. This session of Menus and the Media focuses on how these negotiations take shape in the kitchen―often out of sight of the diners themselves, but without them ever...

As dining out plays an ever-more important role in our social lives, the gastronomic discourse created by and around restaurant reviews has become essential to our construction of taste. Through his or her medium of expression, the restaurant reviewer becomes the palate against which taste is discussed, measured and even created. This is not a new phenomenon, as is already so clear in Craig...

Embodied knowledge, routine, and innovation are among the elements that allow us to practice our professions. In the kitchen, they must also reconcile the interest of two audiences: that of other cooks, particularly the ones who must be taught, and the diners who must be sated and pleased. With Richard Sennett, university professor at NYU and sociology at London School of Economics, and Michael...

What do powerful people eat in times of conflict? Which meals end up recorded for posterity, and why? What does the identity of the cook reveal about the diner? What can we learn from written records about actual food practices (eating habits and dishes being prepared)? Food undoubtedly functions as a display of power, even when not consumed publicly by those who have that power. The power also...

In "Pupusas Come to Red Hook: A Tale of Globalization, Authenticity, and Power" Sharon Zukin, Broeklundian Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, uses the presence of IKEA and Latino food vendors in Red Hook, Brooklyn to discuss two different pathways of globalization, one of corporations, and the other of people (or immigrants). As a result she...

A panel featuring:
Amanda Hesser, Author, New York Times Columnist
Zak Pelaccio, Chef-Owner, Fatty Crab
Laura Shapiro, Writer
Rica Allannic, Senior Editor, Clarkson Potter

This panel will be moderated by Anne E. McBride.

Recipes are ways of transmitting, translating and fixing practical cultural information. They embody the tension between...

Jonathan Deutsch, assistant professor in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality/Center for Economic and Workforce Development, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, will guide us through a discussion centered around culinary education and the training of chefs. Readings are the introduction and chapter six of his new book, Culinary Improvisation.

Here are some questions to consider while...

Whatever their perspective or approach, media scholars are interested in those moments of human action that store and exchange meaning in some fixed and tangible form.

Media studies often begins with a some kind of object, artifact, or technical process – in this case, a list of items on heavy-grade paper, perhaps embossed or laminated, or the standardized script of a bistro chalkboard –...

Frederick Kaufman, author of A Short History of the American Stomach, contributing editor to Harper's, and associate professor of journalism at CUNY graduate school, and Alan Madison, TV producer for the shows of Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, Rocco DiSpirito, Jacques Torres, Sara Moulton, Rick Bayless, Charlie Trotter, and others, will lead the discussion, which will center on food television...

A panel featuring:

Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez, Chef-Owner, Lassi
Will Goldfarb, Chef-Owner, Picnick, WillPowder, WillEquipped
Frederick Kaufman, author of A Short History of the American Stomach
Adam Kaye, Vice President of Culinary Affairs, Blue Hill
Bret Thorn, Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

At a time of ever-increasing mediatization...

A Monk, a Neuroscientist and a Chef: A discussion about the nature of thinking in culinary work

An imagined conversation between a monk, a neuroscientist and a chef is one way of bringing together the various issues that my research study raises. The reason I specifically imagined a monk, a neuroscientist and a chef is because one of the key findings of my study titled: Thinkers in...

Two documents are posted here that we will discuss.

First, a menu from Lassi: Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez will talk about how she crafted the menu. What was driving her conception? She will give us instances of what she never imagined including, and why, and what was on her mind, but never made it to the final list, and why. She will also discuss if and how critics and reviewers figure in...

The thematic question for this session follows on our discussion of menus from the October meeting. We will continue to refer to the menus from last meeting so you might want to bring them along if you still have the print out. Attached here is a reading by JL Flandrin as well as some questions for discussion and additional menus.

With regard to the rhetoric of the menus under discussion Paul Freedman asks people to consider the following:

1. How much description of what the dish actually will be is provided?

2. Elaborate editorializing ("delicious")

3. Rhetoric of quality (local farms) vs. rhetoric of elegance or elaboration (associating dishes with famous people as at Le Grand...

Each participant will provide an introduction and short, informal, presentation on their current projects (e.g. proposed research, popular books, next issue of their magazine, opening of a new restaurant, curriculum changes at a cooking school, etc.). Then the discussion will be open to questions and comments by all present.