French Gastronomy in the US

This book focuses on the (re)invention of French food in the US, probing the intricate transatlantic dynamics underlying notions of cooking and eating French.

By looking at French gastronomy as both a symbolic formation and an exclusionary practice closely tied to power, class, and race, this book re-centers histories that have been marginalized in traditional narratives of French gastronomy. Rather than focusing on food itself, this book explores transatlantic foodways and the complex and changing nexus of historical, socioeconomic, cultural, political, and ideological routes and trajectories, both real and imaginary, that have connected France and the US around a range of gastronomical practices and representations. Foregrounding the gastronationalism that subtends the idea of “eating French” in the US, this book also looks at how a diverse group of contemporary chefs is working to deconstruct stereotypical and constrictive representations of French food and to create new cuisines that are, in turn, more inviting, inclusive, hospitable, and convivial as well as more globally sustainable. Exploring the transatlantic relation between France and the US through the lens of food offers a significant point of entry into the ways in which imagined gastronomies reflect imagined communities past, present, and future in an ever-globalizing world.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars from a wide range of interdisciplinary fields of study including food studies, global French and Francophone studies, cultural studies, media studies, Black/African American studies, history, and ethnography.