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Glenda M Flores, Review of “Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers”, Social Forces, Volume 100, Issue 3, March 2022, Page e18, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab117
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Sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson skillfully traverses the swinging kitchen doors of high-end restaurants in Los Angeles and takes the reader into the two worlds of fine dining, the front-of-the-house, and back-of-the-house. Wilson’s riveting book titled, Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers highlights how swinging kitchen doors provide a physical barrier that separate staff based on job tasks, but it is a series of formal and informal practices that ultimately cements inequities between them.
Wilson’s book has several methodological strengths that allow him to examine these processes. First, the analysis relies on empirical data gathered at three Los Angeles restaurants—Match, Terroir, and The Neighborhood—providing the reader an in-depth look across organizations. Wilson worked at all of them, capturing each establishment’s own carefully curated brand of service (e.g., proximal, professionalized, or personalized luxury), décor, and ambiance via keen participant observations. Through interviews with employees, he was able to capture how Latino and White workers’—the two main racial/ethnic groups represented in these restaurants—paths fork. While his conversational Spanish skills gave him access to immigrant Latinos, Wilson (and the workers) understood his racial privilege caused him to be quickly promoted and earn a higher wage despite his poor performance. This is good reflexivity on Wilson’s part as he was attentive to how ascribed characteristics influence the field. It also illustrates his analytical approach to the question: How does social segregation becomes durable between workers of various social locations in high-end restaurants?
