Dr. Miranda Melcher (3:46)

And obviously a book project is sort of a conceptual decision one has to make, but then deciding kind of what kind of book is another stage of it. And obviously Object, the series, is sort of a specific thing, Right. They're small books, they have black covers, they are stylized in a particular way. What made you decide to write for Object Lessons particularly?

Dr. Brian Doff (4:05)

Yeah, and I'll add one more thing to your description, which is they are, they're, they're incredibly affordable if anyone listening to the podcast wants to take a look. I just love that they really sell their books at a price where, you know, people can, can make a spontaneous decision. So it's, you know, I, I was working on the book as a project before I got in touch with Object Lessons. And, you know, I had a draft of this book that I think, I mean, we'll probably, we'll get into, I think sort of the, there's the cynical side of looking at restaurants as well as the earnest loving restaurant side. And I would say the first draft leaned more cynical and about, you know, what are we as a culture that were this obsessed with going and getting food and putting it in our stomachs? And I got some feedback on that draft that maybe it was a little too cynical. And then so as I reworked it, I ran into this series, Object Lessons, and it really seemed like a great fit to me because as a theorist, I'm very into this idea about object relations, which is kind of an awkward name for what I think of as kind of just like the best version of Freudianism, which is that you take very seriously the fact that we were infants and we were toddlers and when we were, you know, when our brain was developing the fastest and we were learning the most. We were also in this state of dependence on someone, almost always on a mother, and that that really matters and that it never stops mattering in our life. And object relations theory, you know, it doesn't get into all that sort of weird Freudian stuff about penis envy and about even the Oedipal complex so much. And that's part of what I think is going on in the restaurant is that it really resonates with some of these early experiences we had of being cared for and nourished. And so the object lesson series just. It really seemed to resonate with this focus of mine where I do think, like, the restaurant as an object, that we have strong feelings about our experiences there. I think that's part of what is, you know, is deepest about that experience. So it seemed like a really good fit to me.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (6:41)

Got it. Well, the origin story of a project is always very interesting, so thank you for giving us those elements of the backstory. Of course, the question then becomes the idea of object lessons. Right? A restaurant as an object. How did you decide how to approach that?

Dr. Brian Doff (6:58)

Well, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of books about restaurants are about the industry, right? And, and, and there's a ton to say about the industry. And I've read many of these books and they're incredibly insightful. Like, I'll just mention, one that stayed with me is called behind the Kitchen Door. And it is, you know, it's about sort of the. The really kind of like unbelievable and often very difficult and poorly paid labor that goes into running a restaurant. And then behind that, of course, is the agricultural workers and the people who work with these animals. And there's the suffering. Like, there's a lot to say about that. I decided I wasn't going to get into it at all. And because I was a critic like you, when you're a restaurant critic, that's is really how you come to the restaurant. You set all that aside and you say, like, I'm just going to consider the experience. I'm going to consider this as a place to go have an experience. And it's kind of like considering the restaurant as an object. And then. And that's a little bit also sort of like, you know, that fits with sort of the object relations view of things is that, you know, we experience them as this object to be considered rather than sort of like taking it apart and figuring out how it works.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (8:27)

Got it. That's definitely, as you said, a unique perspective or more, more, less less common perspective on restaurants, given how often, as you've mentioned. Right. The books about restaurants are about sort of what happens behind the scenes, not necessarily looking at the thing sort of overall. But whether it's your particular perspect perspective or kind of discussions about restaurants, even beyond books as a medium, there is cynicism going on around restaurants. You mentioned that already, and I would love for you to tell us more about why you think that is.

Dr. Brian Doff (8:56)

Well, and, you know, I often share this cynicism. You know, it's. There's. And. And I write about it in the book, of course, but like, you know, on a. On a. On a big level, like, it can start to feel a little crazy that here we are at some late stage of human civilization, and what we are all obsessing about is, you know, it's not artistic achievements and it's not, you know, the things we could accomplish collectively to solve, you know, the important crises that face the world today. But it is like, where will I get my next yummy meal? There's something about it that feels kind of shallow to care so much about this. So that's one level. But then also, you know, there is. There is just the thing that we, you know, restaurants get very hyped up. You hear about how amazing they are, and, you know, people line up for a table or you have to get lucky to get a reservation or whatever it is, and then it costs. Sometimes depending on the restaurant, it can cost a lot of money. And it's stressful. It's stressful to have such high expectations, and then you're in it, you know, it's going to cost you. Things aren't going well because this doesn't look good on the menu. Or this. I can't hear what my companion is talking about because we got seated near the kitchen, and it can, you know, it's. Yeah. I mean, when it goes well, it can be really magical. And almost for that reason, when, for any reason it doesn't go well, the disappointments can be profound. And so, you know, I think there's sort of like, there's a reason to feel a little cynical about the industry overall. And then any given restaurant meal, you know that there's always the chance. There's always the chance that it's gonna disappoint. And that disappointment can feel like, you know, it can feel pretty. It can cut pretty deep.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (11:12)

All right, we're using some words there that are kind of quite emotive. Right. Magical experience or can cut really deep. So let's make sure. We're sort of explicitly talking about the thing. Then what's the appeal of the restaurant? What's the pedestal we're perhaps putting it on that sets us up for potentially being disappointed?

Dr. Brian Doff (11:31)

Right. I mean, you know, there's this. There's the straightforward thing, which is like, honestly, and we've all experienced it, sometimes the food is so good and. And, you know, that can be. That can be like some rarefied, expensive meal, but that can be like, you know, some people just go crazy for the fries at McDonald's or whatever it is. And. And when hospitality is really warm and it really comfortable and it really sets you at ease, you know, that too, that experience, it can be. It can be really nice. But, you know, in the book, I really do try to make the case that the appeal of restaurants, it goes deeper into us and that the experience of being nourished and the experience being cared for, it resonates with these really important childhood experiences. Experiences, these childhood comforts that were really formative in our life. And so I do try to make the case in the book, and the reader can decide whether I'm convincing about it or not, that when people really experience the restaurant as magical, when they really try to figure out why, that very often is because it's tapping into this deeply felt stuff that goes back to our childhood. And then I'll finally add, and the book gets into this a lot, is that very often you don't go to the restaurant just to eat. You very often go to have a conversation with the people, people you go with. And there's something about that, and I think it's especially true now because our relationship to conversation has really changed in the last decade or more, that there's a kind of conversation that can unfold at the restaurant that the, the. This. The experience at the restaurant encourages that is in and of itself like a really important human thing and is increasingly hard to find. And so because we often have those at restaurants, and because the restaurant, you know, you get this, the hospitality and the food, it can all come together to be sort of a uniquely great human experience.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (14:05)

All right, we're definitely going to talk about the social element of this, but some something that's already come up in our conversation and in the book as well, that I want to sort of poke at a little bit is these references to childhood. Right. You've mentioned that already a number of times. You discuss in the book that reviews of restaurants often refer to it as well. Why is that something that comes up so much?

Dr. Brian Doff (14:25)

Well, so you Know, I genuinely, I really do believe it comes up so much. Like for these, you know, quasi Freudian reasons I keep mentioning, I don't expect my readers to, to buy it. I don't expect my readers to just believe me. And so I do. You know, I spent a lot of time reading about, you know, what other people had to say about why they love restaurants. And like, I'll just mention, like one book that comes to mind is Adam Gopnik, who writes for the New Yorker, wrote a book about restaurants called the Table Comes First. And you know, he's, you know, he, he's a great writer and he really, he, he tries to get deep and in the end it comes down to his first restaurant experience at a Howard Johnson's. And he specifically remembers it because it was like the first time he felt nourished and cared for outside of his mother's kitchen. And he had these complicated ideas about what did it mean that he could get, have this experience without having to worry about his mother doing it. And, and that I remember being one of my first, like, aha, okay, this is really going on. And then, and then I just started noticing it again and again. And like, I think, you know, one of the things I use a lot of evidence from writing in the New York Times and the New Yorker just because I read those all the time. But there are some, some really great writers about food. And Te Har, who's now the chief food critic for the New York Times, like, she's very good about this. She really tries to get earnest about what is so moving about my experience at this restaurant. And she taps into those feelings. The critics at the New Yorker had a conversation about restaurants and they arrived there too. And I just kept noticing it. And so I started collecting some of these examples and kind of like thinking of them as evidence that I was onto something. And so I try to pile those up a little bit in the book to make the case and I'll stand by it. And the book starts and ends with this film called My Dinner with Andre, which is really a book about adults. It's about adulthood. It's about two very grown up men having a very sophisticated conversation at a restaurant. But it starts with one of the characters, Wally, just wishing he could skip this restaurant meal and go home and have his girlfriend cook him dinner. And it ends with him on his way home having this amazing conversation, having had it, driving by this place where he remembers getting ice cream sodas when he was like a little kid. And in the middle of the conversation they talk a lot about this desire to, like, to revisit childhood experiences in order to try to kind of find new meaning in their lives. And it's just. It's. It was just there. Even in the most adult conversation, I feel like that childhood magic that we associate with nourishment and care is still there. So. So. So, yeah, I work hard to make the case.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (17:49)

Definitely seems to come up in a number of places, as does, of course, this idea of conversation. So can we talk more about what you think enables conversation and connection at restaurants?

Dr. Brian Doff (18:00)

Sure. I mean, one thing I think about it is like, just on a practical level, I mean, I'm very, very convinced by some of. Some of the scholarship around. And you can just observe it. Of course, the way conversation has changed where people just text so much more. Even families now text each other from inside the house very frequently. There's this interesting phenomenon where when couples start to have highly charged conversations, they can get overwhelmed and they'll retreat to separate rooms and text each other. And, of course, our friendships are just so much more these group texts that go on and on and on. And the restaurant stands out as a place where you usually. Not always understand, but usually there's a sense of occasion where you're going to put down the phone and you're going to really kind of look at each other and, you know, you're. You're gonna kind of like, you're gonna. You're gonna hang in there and talk to each other for a certain amount of time. And, you know, your hands are busy and. And I think that's increasingly rare. And then, you know, I talk about in the book that there's. John Dewey had this idea about there are certain experiences. He called them consumatory. And you know, all he meant by then that. Not all he meant, but part of what he meant by that is that, you know, it has a beginning and it has an end, and. And it can take on certain qualities because of that. And a restaurant conversation is like that too. You know, you kind of like, you. You get things going and then it can flow and then you wrap things up. And it. It is not like a ongoing text chain, for example. And then finally, you know, it's this. This experience of feeling nourished and cared for, this experience of. Of having kind of warm hospitality around you. It can put us in a certain psychological state that I think creates a special kind of sort of openness that can change the quality of our conversations and improve the quality. Improve is not exactly the right word, but it can it just makes possible a certain kind of conversation that I think is more and more rare. And one of the things those conversations can accomplish is they can make a certain kind of self transformation possible. I talk about that in the book.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (20:46)

Do you want to tell us more?

Dr. Brian Doff (20:48)

Well, sure. So that part I got very intrigued. There's this interesting psychoanalysis analytic theorist named Christopher Ballas, and his famous book is called the Shadow of the Object. But he's been really influential among queer theorists and like Lauren Berlant, like to cite him a lot, but he would write about what goes on in the actual therapist's office. And so these are people who really, you know, do want to make some change in their lives and, and their emotional lives or their psychological lives. And, you know, it's difficult work that he would try to. He would try to make happen in the therapist's office. And he talked about what makes that work possible. And he, he said to create a transformational environment. He talked about there should be this regression towards dependence. That was one of his phrases where the, the. Oh, man. What's my psychoanalytic. Well, I'm gonna call em the patient. That's not the word that balls are used at the. Now sand. You would say the patient. It just. They start to feel sort of like they have a little bit regressed to this childhood experience of they're ready to be sort of like cared for and guided. And they start to hear his voice. He calls it a good sound. It's just kind of a soothing sound. And that he has to try to create that environment in his office in order for a transformative conversation to begin to take place. And he says that when we were kids, when we were dependent, especially when we were little, and we were dependent on the mother, so many of the major transformations and who we are happened in that environment. Right. With a little bit of encouragement and nudging, you know, we learned how to walk because, you know, somebody who made us feel safe and cared for kind of like talked us through it and nudged us through it, and we learned language in that same environment. And, and we were changing so rapidly at that time in our life. And if we really want to, if we're really interested in and making those kinds of changes as adults, that kind of environment is especially fruitful, he thinks. And I just. Everything he said about the therapist's office resonated to me with what people say about what's magical about a restaurant when things are going well there is that like, you just bask in the, in the nourishing. Care, you know, the food and the hospitality is a kind of aggression to dependence. And then of course, what happens next in a therapist's office is you have to start talking. And that is exactly what we do in a restaurant too. And and so I saw that connection very clearly. And then as I dug into sort of what people had to say about about restaurants, it seemed like it could be a promising place for that kind of transformation.

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Dr. Miranda Melcher (26:05)

Hmm, very interesting to think about that potential. What about some other ways in which food and restaurants are kind of being discussed at the moment? You just, you talk about in the book some interactions between art and food, some of which you seem intrigued by, some of which you seem skept skeptical of. Do you want to tell us more?

Dr. Brian Doff (26:24)

Yeah, I mean, in one way, right? It's, it's, you know, like you think of the appreciation of art or objects of culture as being this very adult experience, right? You know, like at least the pretentious version of it. And you know, I talk about like, you know, many people have observed this, that all the attention that we used to give to, you know, literature or art or even film, like, even, you know, serious film. It seems like a lot of that has gotten swept up in people just their obsession with restaurants and restaurant culture and reading about restaurants or reading books about restaurants and keeping lists of the restaurants they want to go to. And, and so I got interested in that. And then in that part of the book, I engaged the political theorist Hannah Arendt. And Arendt, writing, I think in the 60s maybe wrote an essay called the Crisis in Culture. And she said, this is exactly what the crisis in culture is. She goes, the threat to cultural objects is that we might turn them into something that can be easily consumed. And she wasn't talking about food at the time. She was talking about. She thought, you know, culture was just. Things were getting sort of simplified and kind of dumbed down. But she said that, she said things are getting easily consumed and so we're no longer making cultural objects that are going to last. They become kind of this momentary fascination and then we move on to the next thing. She said we had these, these gargantuan appetites and they were, they were going to just eat up cultural objects too fast. And she called it the crisis in culture. And of course, like, you know, we've only gone way farther in that direction because our crisis in culture is that the highest culture, the culture that people think about most, is literally like, where am I going to get stuff I can eat? You know, it's like a literal version of, of what aren't feared most, that things will be easily consumed. And you know, so a little bit I'm like, ah, aren't would be very sad about this. But then I really thought about, okay, so what if we, you know, what if the only way out is through? Right. And, you know, the restaurant. Absolutely. We think of it as art. And, you know, I talk about how great museums now, they almost all have restaurants in the museums, and there's more and more art that is about food. But, you know, the. The thing that Arendt loved most, the thing that she thought was most important was the human capacity for speech and conversation. And there is, like I talk about, there's this amazing piece of art which is a dance that was choreographed by Pino Bausch, which is called Cafe Mueller. And it. The entire dance takes place inside a restaurant. And Bausch based it on the fact that she grew up, her parents ran a restaurant, and she used to. She described. She used to sit under one of the tables and just watch all the interactions that went on there. And she was fascinated by these human interactions that happened at a restaurant. You know, she wasn't fascinated by the food. And that's what that really incredible performance piece is about. Cafe Muller. It's a very disturbing and interesting series of human interactions on stage. And so I thought, you know, the fact that the restaurant, even though it tempts us in with this, with food and things we're going to consume, it then creates a context for conversation and for, you know, the human interaction that she valued most, I thought was a weird way that maybe the restaurant, even though it is an example of the crisis she feared most, is also a forum for the activity that she valued most. And there's an essay, a different essay, where Arendt talks about taste. And she says, you know, she says when people get together and they exchange their opinions about things, when they talk about questions of taste, like it is an opportunity for us to think about the world we share. Like, you're not really talking about yourself at that moment. You're talking about the objects that you either like or dislike, right? So even though you're mentioning what you think you're really. Your concern is about the object, and what you're articulating is about the object. And ultimately, that's what she thought we were in danger of losing is this ability for us to think about the world we share and care about the world we share, and then talk about what's worth preserving there, what's worth building there. And so. And I do think the restaurant makes that possible. So, anyway, so that's that part of the book about the restaurant and the art. And I really. Arendt kind of. I bring her up a lot in the book. I think she's unbelievably interesting thinker. And I do think there are several ways where the restaurant allows us to sort of like, take these arentian lessons and put them into practice.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (32:01)

And that's one, that's definitely one of the interesting things you can do with her thinking. As you mentioned, there are a number of ways she comes up in the book, but this idea of possibilities, I think is where I'd like to keep our conversation. One of the things you suggest in the book is, or at least question the ideas around something being virtuous, specifically restaurants. Can they be virtuous?

Dr. Brian Doff (32:25)

Right. So, I mean, there is, like, there has been a lot of conversation in recent years about the restaurant industry, and much more attention has been paid to, you know, how, how poorly paid the work is, how precarious the work is. During COVID there's more attention to sort of how dangerous the work is. And then, of course, if you were to think about the largely here in the United States, largely immigrant workforce that is working the fields, that is slaughtering animals, et cetera, and of course, then also the cruelty that we commit to animals. You know, there's a lot of reasons to think of restaurants. There's very little that's virtuous about the industry. And, and there has been some really interesting writing about, like, can we revolutionize restaurants to make this industry virtuous? And you know, ultimately, I, I, I strongly have my doubts. And I will tell you, having worked in restaurants especially, I have my doubts to, to try to create a restaurant industry. Nonetheless, you know, maybe a single restaurant that isn't built on some of these sort of like, cruel practices is really hard to imagine it would be so expensive. And there are certain incredibly expensive restaurants that you can go to where they claim all their ingredients are grown locally and virtuously and their workers are well compensated. And it's probably mostly true. Um, but those restaurants are hard to find and very expensive. And, and journalists have actually figured out that sometimes they're fibbing anyway. So I don't think we can, we can find like, a virtuous meal at a restaurant. But one thing that struck me is like, okay, so that's bad in a way. But, you know, again, Hannah Arendt thought that sort of the, the, the search for, for, like the effort to be as compassionate as possible is actually sort of, there's something about it that even though it is admirable, it is not appropriate in all scopes of life. And she thought it wasn't appropriate to politics, and she thought like a politics that was all about compassion. And the suffering of the neediest can often lead to sort of a destructive politics. A politics, you know, that's too obsessive. Virtue can start to look like the French Revolution, where everyone claimed to be more virtuous than everyone else. And then they all started killing each other. And so she wanted to preserve spaces where we kind of set compassion aside and we had conversations about something else, something besides not need, something besides suffering. And it also struck me that the restaurant is like that. Like, once you've gone in to a restaurant, you've decided, like, we're here to enjoy ourselves, we're here to indulge ourselves. And you know, in that environment, we're going to have a conversation and. And you're doing this very different thing. And, you know, I think that Arendt is. Is right, that that's an important part of life. She has this phrase where she says, you know, gladness is. Is more talkative than sadness. And you conversation can be more interesting and more unpredictable and can get into a more interesting plurality or perspectives if it isn't consumed by compassion. And so it's kind of this, I find really intriguing point of hers. And I think that the restaurant kind of embodies that idea in an interesting way. And then another thing I get into the book is that if you go back, if you read some of the great histories of a restaurant, Patricia Sprague, I think, wrote the best one. The restaurant itself began as a place that was thinking about virtue. So this is like, you know, basically 1750s, 1760s, and France was where you really saw the first restaurants. And they were called the restaurant because they served what was considered like a healthier kind of more virtuous cuisine. And the word restaurant is actually the name of this soup that they used to serve in these. These shops where the cuisine would be less heavy, less indulgent. And there was also a sense that the conversation in a restaurant would be more virtuous than the conversation in the. The basically, people used to eat in hotels and inns at these shared tables, and the conversation would be very kind of like raucous and raunchy. And it was only for men. Women wouldn't be allowed to sit at these shared tables, Whereas once the restaurant started, it would be a healthier place, a calmer place, more virtuous place of women were welcome to come into restaurants and they would often, you know, discuss the topic of the day, which had to do often with the books of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his novels and his ideas about virtue. And so you know, the restaurants have a long, complicated history of virtue. And I do think they've mostly like they still think about virtue in various ways. You go to restaurants that are more or less virtuous. I'm now a vegetarian, so I keep my eye out for restaurants that seem to serve great food without killing animals. So it is important. But there's something about the fact that you can set virtue aside at the restaurant I think is also very valuable.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (38:49)

All sorts of things then going on with thinking about restaurants in these ways. Is there anything further that we haven't mentioned from the book that you want to make sure we include in our discussion?

Dr. Brian Doff (39:00)

No, I really think you hit on so many of the important ideas. I mean, I guess the one other thing towards the end of the book, I think about this philosopher Levinas, who really thinks like hospitality is one of the most profound and important human activities. And you know, increasingly it's becoming less and less part of the way we live. Having people over, welcoming people into our home, having, thinking about dinner parties, that type of thing. And I do think that there's something about the restaurant where, you know, you can feel like you're engaged in hospitality if you just reach out to your friends or people you've met and say, let's go meet at a restaurant. I've heard about this place. It's great. Even better if you, you know, grab the check. It's, this is this new version of hospitality that even though it's not that rich and full version of like allowing the stranger into your home and, and making them feel welcome, it still taps into some of that, some of that feeling. It's a manageable version of hospitality. I think that we still get some of the important human benefits of it.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (40:26)

Well, there's definitely then a lot to continue thinking about with restaurants. Is this a subject you're continuing to work on or do you have any upcoming projects, whether or not they're book related, whether or not they're about restaurants that you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?

Dr. Brian Doff (40:39)

Sure, sure, yeah. I mean, one thing about these object lesson books, you know, they're gorgeous books, they have these great covers, they're affordable books, but they also are short. They're, they're, they're short books and I write long. And so there's a lot that I wrote about restaurants that didn't make it into the book. And so I am working on a follow up that really leans into this idea about, about transformative conversations that can happen in an environment where you feel nourished and cared for, for example, a restaurant. And in particular, I'm looking at ideas about gender because a lot of our ideas about gender are also wrapped up in sort of these early childhood experiences of, of care and nourishment. And most of us are raised by a mother. And so our gender is often, our ideas about gender are often we either identify with the care that we got from her. And you know, for many adult women, sort of like being caring and caring about others is a big part of their gender identity versus a lot of boys sort of think like, okay, I have to go the other way. And they become a little more stoical, a little more like thinking that caring less is an important part of who they are and that we're, we tend to be a little bit trapped in these gender identities. They are. Our gender doesn't seem to be encouraging us to flourish as humans. It seems to be affecting our politics. It seems to be affecting our ability to relate to each other. And so it's a project about if we want to loosen up some of these aspects of our, the way we live our gender, if we want to escape just some of these behaviors, what are the ways we can do it? And I do think transformative conversations at restaurants are one way to do it. So I really expand on that idea in this new book project. So that's one. And then I also have a book project that's really about family and parenthood going back to sort of my, my first and main interest as a political theorist. And I continue to work on that. But I think I'm going to try to get this food and gender book done first.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (43:05)

Yeah, probably makes sense to prioritize a little bit with all these ideas floating around. So best of luck with the projects.

Dr. Brian Doff (43:12)

Hey, I really appreciate it and I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for the invitation.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (43:17)

You're very welcome. And if any listeners want to read more about what we've been talking about, of course the book is titled Restaurant so pretty easy to find from Bloomsbury, part of the Object Lessons series. And of course the book was published in 2025. Brian, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Dr. Brian Doff (43:32)

Thank you.

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