Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work

Kitchens takes us into the robust, overheated, backstage world of the contemporary restaurant. In this rich, often surprising portrait of the real lives of kitchen workers, Gary Alan Fine brings their experiences, challenges, and satisfactions to colorful life. He provides a riveting exploration of how restaurants actually work, both individually and as part of a larger culinary culture. Working conditions, time constraints, market forces, and aesthetic goals all figure into the food served to customers—who often don't know quite what they're getting.

The kitchen is a place of constant compromise, of quirks, approximations, dirty tricks, surprises, and short cuts, as Fine demonstrates in his deft, readable narrative. He brings to life the complicated relationships among kitchen workers—servers, dishwashers, pantry workers, managers, restaurant critics, and customers—and reveals the effects of organizational structure on individual relations.