The Cultivation of Taste

Christel Lane has been a Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of St. John's College. Christel has been working on fine-dining restaurants in Britain and Germany since 2009. Visiting a large number of Michelin-starred restaurants and their chefs, she has published articles on this topic in the journals Food, Culture and Society, British Journal of Sociology, and Poetics. This work combines her long-standing interest in economic sociology with the sociology of culture. Christel's most recent books are Capitalist Diversity and Diversity within Capitalism (Routledge 2012, edited with Geoffrey Wood); and National Capitalism, Global Production Networks.Fashioning the Value Chain in Britain, the US and Germany (OUP 2009, with Jocelyn Probert).

• Introduction ; 1. The Fine Dining Restaurant Industry in Historical Perspective ; 2. The Michelin-Starred Restaurant Sector Today ; 3. Vocation or Business? Competing Organizational Logics and Work Orientations of Chefs ; 4. Fine-Dining Chefs: Iconic Figures or Work Horses? ; 5. Distinctiveness, Homogeneity, and Innovation in Haute Cuisine ; 6. Chefs' Culinary Styles ; 7. Front-of-House Staff: Hosts, Sales Persons, or Communicators of Expert Knowledge? ; 8. Supplier Relations: Quality, Price, and Trust. ; 9. Diners: In Search of Gustatory Pleasure or Symbolic Meaning? ; 10. Taste Makers: the Attribution of Aesthetic and Economic Value by Gastronomic Critics and Guides ; 11. The Transformation of the Fine-Dining Sector

Christel Lane has produced an authoritative guide to fine dining as a social, cultural, and economic institution with complex systems of support and deeply rooted national differences. We learn that taste is a contested terrain, where every culinary act reveals competing values, suggesting that the world of fine cuisine is no less complex than the world at large.