Chisolm, Edward. 2022. A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City. New York: Pegasus Books.
Guidara, Will. 2022. Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. New York: Optimism Press.
Storer, Christopher. 2023. The Bear, Season 2. FX Productions. Hulu.
In a thoughtful post-pandemic essay on the restaurant industry, Ligaya Mishan (2023) draws from philosopher Jacques Derrida’s writings on hospitality to frame her discussion of the contemporary restaurant industry, noting, as does Derrida, the similarity in the roots of the Latin words hospes (hospitality) and hostis (hostility). This correspondence leads Derrida, in noting “the troubling analogy in their common origin between hostis as host and hostis as enemy, between hospitality and hostility” (Derrida 2000: 15), to coin the playful term “hostipitality.” I take this as a jumping-off point in considering three recent popular texts on restaurants, Unreasonable...
University of California Press