Profs and Pints Online presents: “A History of American Dining,” or what we can learn from our nation’s past in a time of culinary crisis, with Allen Pietrobon, assistant professor of Global Affairs at Trinity Washington University and former professorial lecturer of history at American University.

Covid-19 has left the nation’s restaurants, and entire food industry, in a state of crisis. By some estimates, more than half of independent restaurants are expected to close permanently. Breaks in the food supply chain have resulted in produce being left to rot in the fields, meat shortages, empty grocery store shelves, and limits on the number of items shoppers can purchase. Americans have spent the past few months stocking up on canned goods and frozen prepared meals.

We’ve been down this road before. Our nation’s history is marked by crises that claimed scores of restaurants, as well as food shortages and periods of rationing. If history is any guide, the Covid-19 pandemic will change not just the way we live and work, but the way we eat.

Join Allen Pietrobon, an award-winning professor and Profs and Pints crowd favorite, as he explores the evolution of the U.S. restaurant and food industry through the first half of the 20th century, a time when it went through enormous upheaval.  He’ll discuss how the Great Depression and the Second World War decimated the restaurant industry and forever reshaped not just where Americans dined out but also what they were able to cook at home.

The new restaurants and foods that emerged once things “got back to normal” in 1945 were radically different than what came before.  Desperate to regain their footing, companies invented wild new processed foods and restaurant dining concepts in order to regain their lost market share.  Corporations and marketers engaged in an epic battle to influence what Americans put on their dinner tables. Did you know that bacon and eggs—a now-quintessential breakfast pairing—became popularized by a marketing campaign by the U.S. pork industry desperate to get Americans to eat more pork after wartime shortages had caused them to largely give up on the typical 1930s breakfast meal of pork chops?

You’re encouraged to pair this talk with carryout or delivery from a local restaurant that you’d love to help keep afloat. (Ticket: $12. This talk will remain available in recorded form.)

Profs & Pints Online: A History of American Dining