TITLE: Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews
AUTHOR: Marilyn Hagerty
GENRE: NonFiction, General
PUBLISHED: 2013
RATING: ★★★★☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Download
Description: 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.
Review: You heard about Marilyn Hagerty when a column of hers that praised the Olive Garden went viral. Hipsters and foodies laughed hysterically about her no-nonsense style and praise of Olive Garden breadsticks. You know, because it’s not popular to admit you like any chain restaurant. Then something amazing happened. The zeitgeist turned and Anthony Bourdain fell a little in love with Ms. Haggerty. The nation took a deep breath and smiled, remembering mom and pop diners and appreciating a new look at Taco Bell and Olive Garden.
Anthony Bourdain:
This is a straightforward account of what people have been eating - still are eating in much of America. As related by a kind, goodhearted reporter looking to pass along as much useful information as she can while hurting no one. Anyone who comes away from this work anything less than charmed by Ms. Hagerty - and the places and characters she describes- has a heart of stone.
This is not your typical book of restaurant reviews, it’s something more like a Midwestern voyage through the years as curated by Anthony Bourdain. He took the time to sort through decades of the Eatbeat column to select the best columns and in doing so has managed to tell a story… through restaurant reviews.
As the pages turn, you see the first tentative forays into food journalism, but with a no nonsense flair that keeps the pages turning. Ms. Haggerty makes sure to tell her readers prices, procedures, and whether or not the bathrooms are clean and the food is tasty. She never tears apart anyone’s efforts, which she sees as not her role in life. She just observes and reports, uncaring about what’s cool or hip or modern.
In her words:
I write the Eatbeat as a reporter – not as a critic. This is not Los Angeles. It is not New York City. What point, I wonder, is there in tearing down some hardworking restaurant people? Sometimes I point out pluses and minuses. And if a place is just too bad, I move on. I don’t write about it.
Grand Forks tells the story of a Midwestern town and of Ms. Haggerty too. Initially her ‘constant companion’ is her husband, later on she tells the tale of a single diner and one who lunches with friends. Around the time that she loses her husband, she struggles with her reviews as one diner and person, where she used to be two.
So too go the reviews that progress from lutefisk and lefse to chain restaurants. At the end of each review is a short note about the fate of the restaurant. Sometimes, the note directs one to a future chapter and you can follow each incarnation of a space you’ve never entered. It’s terrific fun and very entertaining to read.
Honestly, I like the Olive Garden. I don’t claim it to be authentic or amazing, but I kind of like the breadsticks myself. It sounds weird to me to say a book of newspaper columns about food are fun, but they really are. Whether you choose to read a little at a time or straight through, like a novel, it’s the story of a woman who handily takes what life throws at her, whether it’s a truck stop, Olive Garden, or Le Bernadin. I would gladly split a “clubhouse sandwich” with Marilyn Hagerty.
I give four of five stars, just for the fact that some of the reviews can grow repetitive. (As an aside, I’d be curious to see the outtakes – trace one space over the 30 years and 7,000 columns but I fear that it would drive me slightly mad.) I recommend this book to anyone curious about the lady who shrugged off her viral notoriety and kept doing her job, fork to mouth, fingers to keyboard. It’s also worthwhile as a cultural snapshot of a world moving from mom and pop restaurants to big box chains. It is about us.