It is hard to miss the striking trend in urban dining towards less fussy, more casual spots serving artistically prepared comfort foods and beverages. The focus on the combinations of flavour, heritage and provenance of ingredients is a twist on the local and slow food movements. But the spaces that these culinary entrepreneurs choose to enliven – the streetscape itself, the peripheral neighbourhoods of a metropole or the post-industrial warehouse – suggest a larger socio-economic project at play. But what, exactly is going on? Is this trend intentional, connected and definable? Where is it happening, by whom, for whom and to what ends? These are the basic questions at the heart of the new volume Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities.