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The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. Yet with over four million cooks and food-preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-status position of chef. What factors determine who rises the ranks in this fiercely competitive pressure-cooker environment? 

Making It explores how the career path of restaurant workers depends on their accumulation of kitchen capital, a cultural asset based not only on their ability to cook but also on how well they can fit into the workplace culture and negotiate its hierarchical structures. After spending 120 hours working in a restaurant kitchen and interviewing fifty chefs and cooks from fine-dining establishments and greasy-spoon diners across the country, sociologist Ellen Meiser discovers many strategies for accumulating kitchen capital. For some, it involves education and the performance of expertise; others climb the ranks by controlling their own emotions or exerting control over coworkers. Making It offers a close and personal look at how knowledge, power, and interpersonal skills come together to determine who succeeds and who fails in the high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen.  

 

When fine dining met fine art, a new Los Angeles was born.

Between 1979 and 1987, the city witnessed two cultural breakthroughs that may seem unrelated. A wave of bold, design‑forward restaurants helped launch the nationwide “New American” movement, serving innovative cuisine in sleek, modern spaces adorned with contemporary art. At the same time, Los Angeles celebrated a milestone: the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), its first major museum devoted solely to contemporary art—an institution long missing from a city with global ambitions.

Though often told separately, these stories are deeply intertwined. In this lively, revelatory book, Alison Pearlman uncovers how restaurants became galleries as well as vital crossroads for the chefs, artists, collectors, architects, and civic leaders who reshaped L.A.’s cultural identity. Together, they revived hopes that L.A. could reclaim the creative energy of its 1960s heyday and join the ranks of the world’s cultural capitals.

Drawing on extensive interviews with those who built this transformative era, Pearlman shows how L.A.—through distinctive architecture, daring personalities, and unconventional collaborations—created a cultural moment with national impact. Vivid, engaging, and richly researched, this book brings to life a heady period in the city’s history.

A must‑read for lovers of art, food, and the vibrant alchemy that emerges when creative worlds collide.