Case study: A trial of reconsideration for the food services as a mean of knowledge

The economic theory apprehends that the modern socio-cultural model, specific to the industrial society, has generated a global crisis of the development, with multiple manifestations. The alternative it is represented by knowledge society. Without to become an engine of social development, we appraise that the food services are integrated in the wide categoryof the society quality, intrinsic condition for the creation of the knowledge society. Additional than the established functions of food services, it can be added a new function, of knowledge, in the aim of gaining of the new sensorial and cultural experiences. Thus the knowledge society can reconsider the dining to the restaurant as a mean of sensorial knowledge, interrelationships and of new experiences, not only culinary but even cultural. Using the empirical observation as a method of direct research, has been performed a perception exercise on the example of a restaurant with obvious innovational claims, located in Bucharest and called Columbus. On the site, it imports the setting. Using the decorations, the „art director“ has made connection with the ambiance from the caravels of Christopher Columbus. As well as, in the dining room are exhibited the portrait reproductions of famous navigators, starting with Columbus and Nelson Admiral. The kitchen it shows as an experimental area for the new tastes and tendencies. Through the relations established with restaurant guests, the waiters must enhance the pleasure of dining. In the end, the barroom Nemo it is the expression of various sensorial, visual, audio and taste experiences. In the case of some aspects, the border between originality and kitsch it is quite thin.