Dining on Dissolution: Restaurants, the Middle Class, and the Creation of the Family Dinner in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

Urban American dining habits underwent extraordinary transformation in the antebellum period. Most importantly, the new trend of dining out in restaurants steadily infringed upon the domestic circle as more and more Americans from all socioeconomic backgrounds began to rely on restaurants to feed them. This paper examines the anxieties this new trend inspired among urban middle-class Americans, who had begun to champion the domestic ritual of the family meal as a salve for the ills of a consumer-oriented society. While mid-century domestic advisors ultimately failed to halt the trend of dining out the effects of their jeremiads against restaurants can still be seen today in the romanticized, therapeutic image the family meal continues to hold in America and the often-repeated disparagements against the modern commercial food industry.

Keywords:

• mid-nineteenth century
• urban America
• restaurants
• dining
• middle class
• consumption
• social life and customs

Notes

1. As historians of consumption have argued, the changes outlined here should be understood as a continuation of a trend that began in the seventeenth century. However, in the early nineteenth century, these changes quickened in pace and goods became available to a wider swath of the population than before.

2. One demand of the early labor movement was for employers to stop this assault on the time devoted to meals.

3. I formed this impression of meal prices by consulting the wonderful bill of fare collections at the American Antiquarian Society and the New York Public Library.

4. For example, see Menu, “Union Café,” The Union Café, Boston, 1876, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.