For food writer and magazine editor Colman Andrews, restaurants have long served as a playground, a theater, a university, a refuge. In My Usual Table, Andrews interweaves his own story with tales of the seminal restaurants and the great restaurateurs of our time who are emblematic of the revolutions that have transformed the way we eat, cook, and feel about food.

Tracing the evolution of our food culture from glamourous Old Hollywood's Chasen's to the "ethnic" food movement of the psychedelic '60s to the influence of family-run cafés and trattorias in Europe, Andrews arrives at the rise of game-changing restaurants like Eleven Madison Park and elBulli.

Andrews has watched the growth of nouvelle and fusion cuisine; the explosion of the organic and locavore movements; and the rise of nose-to-tail eating and so-called molecular gastronomy. The restaurants he has loved have not only influenced culinary trends at home and abroad, but represent the changing culture of food in America and Western Europe. And all along, Andrews has been there right there in the dining room, menu in one hand and notebook in the other.