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established their first restaurant in 1889, with just that middle-class lunch crowd in mind. In contrast to that of Delmonico’s, their fare was more modest, down-home American cooking—pancakes and omelets, sandwiches, and oysters on toast. Their most famous dish was butter cakes, and the Childses showcased them with panache by setting the griddle by a window facing the street. The restaurant had a self-service buffet line, where diners could select their food and take it to a table. It was a more casual, less expensive affair than upscale restaurants and soon became something of a midtown cafeteria for the working class.

Many more restaurants would mimic the success of the Childses’ “lunchrooms,” as they were popularly called, while others would try to top the opulence of Delmonico’s. Even today, the takeout or sit-in restaurants of New York’s busiest commercial areas don’t sound so far off from the buffet lines at Childs’. Taking this cue, many more cafes, soda shops, and bakeries would begin selling full meals instead of quick bites. Eating the foods from these places, instead of eating at home, became increasingly popular throughout the twentieth century.

This isn’t a book about all that, as you know. Still, the world might be a very different place if it weren’t for that loftily ambitious Parisian, the Swiss American dynasty, and all the other great restaurateurs through the ages who fanned the flames on the art of eating out.

In contrast, home cooking has seen better days than the last half century in the United States. The prevalence of eating out has risen quickly, gaining significant momentum with the development of the interstate highway in the 1960s. As Americans hit the road more, they relied on restaurant food more. As meticulously observed in Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, fast-food moguls were there to capitalize on the trend (and subsequently claim a large chunk of our diet). Just thirty years ago, in 1980, Americans were still spending twice as much on groceries as they did in restaurants. Heavy restaurant advertising, car culture, relative prosperity, and many other factors have all contributed to the reversal of this stance today. If national trends continue at the same rate, eating out will soon eclipse the home-cooked meal altogether. Eating out is also a habit that gets passed on to subsequent generations, something of a dominant gene. If a person hasn’t been raised in a household that cooks, how will she or he know how to cook for her- or himself? Many of my friends who claim they never eat in as adults say they rarely did while growing up.

The restaurant revolution has had graver effects on American society than our forgetting how to cook. Today, one in three Americans (one in two African Americans and Latinos) will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. This is due to the overindustrialized, over-processed foods that have engulfed restaurants as well as supermarkets today. But leaving aside easy targets like fast food for the moment, most restaurants across the country do not typically serve very healthy food. Most households, on the other hand, typically cook food for their families that they believe is healthy. Waiters in restaurants don’t tell you to eat your greens before you can be excused from the table. Instead, restaurants aim to pamper your taste buds, tell you it’s okay to have that buttery pasta or bacon burger because it was created by a renowned chef or a trendy restaurant. This should come as no surprise—restaurants are profit-seeking businesses after all, founded on the idea of making something that tastes better than what you could cook at home. Therefore, chefs add much more fat, salt, and sugars to their dishes than one would likely reach for at home, hoping to gain repeat customers hungry for another taste. Several of the entrees at the nation’s largest restaurant chains, such as Applebee’s and Chili’s, have close to twice the government’s recommended daily sodium limit alone. Thanks to recent legislation in New York City, large chain restaurants must now be transparent about