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Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews

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Binding: Paperback
List Price: $22.00
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ISBN: 9780062228895
Publisher: Ecco
Language: English
Page Count: 237
Publication Date: 8/27/2013
Size: 8.46" l x 5.52" w x 0.79"
Series: N/A

Category Subject
Cooking, Food & Wine History

Once upon a time, salad was iceberg lettuce with a few shredded carrots and a cucumber slice, if you were lucky. A vegetable side was potatoes - would you like those baked, mashed, or au gratin? A nice anniversary dinner? Would you rather visit the Holiday Inn or the Regency Inn? In Grand Forks, North Dakota, a small town where professors moonlight as farmers, farmers moonlight as football coaches, and everyone loves hockey, one woman has had the answers for more than twenty-five years: Marilyn Hagerty.

In her weekly Eatbeat column in the local paper, Marilyn gives the denizens of Grand Forks the straight scoop on everything from the best blue plate specials - beef stroganoff at the Pantry - to the choicest truck stops - the Big Sioux (and its lutefisk lunch special) - to the ambience of the town's first Taco Bell. Her verdict? "A cool pastel oasis on a hot day."

No-nonsense but wry, earnest but self-aware, Eatbeat also encourages the best in its readers - reminding them to tip well and why - and serves as its own kind of down-home social register, peopled with stories of ex-postal workers turned café owners and prom queen waitresses.

Filled with reviews of the mom-and-pop diners that eventually gave way to fast-food joints and the Norwegian specialties that finally faded away in the face of the Olive Garden's endless breadsticks, Grand Forks is more than just a loving look at the shifts in American dining in the last years of the twentieth century - it is also a surprisingly moving and hilarious portrait of the quintessential American town, one we all recognize in our hearts regardless of where we're from.

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