Isabelle Beauchamps's List: Food

What is terroir? That is not easy to say. It is a French word, and everyone agrees that it is untranslatable. The disagreement is over whether it exists. To its defenders — notably the Old World winemakers of France, Italy and Germany — terroir refers to the ineffable way that soil, light, topography and microclimate conspire, over generations of human stewardship, to endow a wine with its unique soul. It’s a sense of place you can taste. To its detractors — especially the New World winemakers of the Americas and Australia — terroir is a marketing slogan dressed up as a poetic reverie. In other words, it’s a hoax — and they should know, since they’ve had precious little luck getting any terroir into their own wines.

In 1815, Paris had 3,000 restaurants; New York had none. (In fact, the word itself wouldn’t enter the American lexicon until the middle of the 19th century.) Those forced to eat out could choose between “a slab of beef or mutton with potatoes and gravy” at a boardinghouse or chophouse, reports William Grimes, a New York Times domestic correspondent and formerly the newspaper’s restaurant critic, whose latest book is a chronicle of New York’s transformation from a Dutch village at the edge of the wilderness to what he sees as the most diverse restaurant city in the world.