90 Days of Feeds: Brain Food

For the next 90 days we’ll be creating posts that relate to this year’s theme of Feeds.  Ingenuity artists have looked at this theme from every angle from food to communication to technology.  Read on and see you at Docks 32 and 30, September 14, 15, and 16th in Downtown Cleveland.

Here’s a great article from Saveur that profiles the efforts of Robert Browning Sosman, who created an unusual self-published dining guide  from 1941 – 1962 called  Gustavademecum for the Island of Manhattan: A Check-List of the Best-Recommended or Most Interesting Eating-Places, Arranged in Approximate Order of Increasing Latitude and Longitude.

In each of the guide’s at least 15 editions, Sosman reviewed 300 restaurants, relaying facts like cuisine and cost, as well as esoteric observations like tableside lighting (measured in lumens) and waiters’ estimated IQs. All of it was written in a mashup of mathematical figures, glyphs, Greek, and astrological symbols. A sigma meant there was samba dancing. A lowercase “m” suggested that Madison Avenue types frequented the restaurant; Don Drapers of the day might be found slurping bouillabaisse at Le Provençal.

Read the rest of the article here: Link.

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