From “A Changing Harlem Celebrates the Queen of Soul Food” by Kia Gregory, in the NYT on 7/21/12:
Joan Avila, a retired nurse who has lived in Harlem for 40 years and rents a room nearby, said she had been to Sylvia’s a few times in the past. “Tourists cater to it,” she said. “If you don’t know how to cook, you don’t know the difference.”
For me, the restaurant could cater to tourists, but not vice versa. Cater to here seems to mean something like ‘be attracted to’ — so we’re looking at a reversal in the roles associated with the subject and oblique object in argument structure. I’m not sure how widespread this new argument structure is, or how long it’s been around (this use of cater doesn’t seem to have been picked up in dictionaries).
