{"id":369,"date":"2005-09-07T09:34:16","date_gmt":"2005-09-07T17:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/09\/white_people_dine_finely_but_what_about_black_people.html"},"modified":"2005-09-07T09:34:16","modified_gmt":"2005-09-07T17:34:16","slug":"white_people_di","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/09\/white_people_di.html","title":{"rendered":"White People Dine Finely, But What About Black People . . . ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock.<\/p>\n

That helps explain why at Chanterelle one night, I almost became my own worst nightmare. The sight of a black couple strolling in struck me as so bizarre that I swiveled in my seat, bug-eyed, to trail them through all that creamy quiet. I say “almost” because my husband put an end to it with a merciful hiss: “Stop staring.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whoa! What kind of condescending, clueless Times piece is this? Don’t worry, writer Diane Cardwell is black! And this is a first-person<\/em> account! Phew:<\/p>\n

Well, yes, I was staring, but not just because they were black. Suddenly, for a change, I was not the only black customer in the room.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, is this sort of inquiry “asking the tough questions” or is it just . . . weird? Observations like steakhouses are more integrated than Nobu and Babbo, both of which are still more integrated than, say, Chanterelle? I say “weird”:<\/p>\n

All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following. “That kind of chichi food doesn’t have long roots in the African-American community,” [president of the Multicultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance] Mr. [Gerald] Fernandez said.<\/p>\n

But they may soon sprout. One night at a gala at Chelsea Market for the Black Culinarian Alliance, a racially mixed crowd sipped fine wine and nibbled elaborate hors d’oeuvres and specialty cheeses, enjoying an event billed as bridging the cultural divide among different ethnic groups and their cuisines.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people: With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock. That helps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalanthropological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}