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The word restaurant according to the majority of contemporary dictionaries is defined as an eating-place, an establishment where meals are prepared and served to customers. By this definition, restaurants, by whatever name they have been given, are almost as old as civilization (Davidson, 1999). Modern historians, however, take a different view, that restaurants are a recent innovation and can be defined as a particular establishment where one goes to select prepared items of food, arranged on an individual plate, for a predetermined fee. Where ones sits at individual tables, alone or with acquaintances and samples exotic dishes, these are the constituents for what we commonly address as the restaurant. Contrarily, inns and taverns have served food to hungry patrons for millennia but I am not concerned with the mere serving of food, in this essay I will focus instead on how and where it is served. A restaurant, of the original meaning was the name for a restorative broth, a thing rather than a place.
In the fifteenth century a restaurant was a consomm or bouillon (Spang, 2001) cooked with precious gemstones, which, as it was rumoured, had medicinal uses and instigated good health. Up until the eighteenth century, restaurants were for those too fragile to eat a solid meal at night. Restaurants were cooked often without the addition of any liquid and sometimes composed purely of meat, cooked for so long that all of the matter, including bone, flesh and skin, had broken down to liquid essences, allowing it to reach the consumer partially digested. Restaurants were eaten, or drunk rather, in a restaurateurs room, where one lounged and sipped quietly and there was no socialising or frivolity, perhaps like an 18 th century urban spa for the delicate (Flandrin & Montarri, 1999). In 1765 a man named Boulanger, also known as Champ d Oiseaux (Flandrin & Montarri, 1999), purveyor of a restaurateurs room near the Louvre, was not content in just serving restaurants to the frail. Boulanger began to serve sheep feet in a white sauce, which stepped largely on the toes of the caterers guild.
The French work force at the time was highly compartmentalized and held together with bylaws into twenty-five different guilds. The butchers were to sell raw domestic meat, only rotisseurs sold prepared game, charcutiers sold sausages and hams, vinegar-makers sold vinegar, pastry-cooks sold pastry (Flandrin & Montarri, 1999) and the caterers guild monopolised the market in being the only cook-caterers legally able sell full meals to large parties. These trailers (cook-caterers) filed suit, as no tradesman was legally able to combine these functions as to what would be the constituents of todays restaurant. Boulanger was accused of selling not a restaurant but a ragout (Spang, 2001) and this case went all the way to the French High Court. To the bewilderment of Parisian society the judgement was found in Boulanger's favour but after a series of appeals the courts found in favour of the caterers guild. Restaurateurs were banned from selling anything other than a bouillon and sadly they never formed a guild of their own.
Boulanger has been accredited with the invention of the restaurant proper but this is unfounded and the real restaurant came from another proprietor of a restaurateurs room (Spang, 2001). Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, the son of a merchant and landowner, moved to Paris in the early 1760 s and tried to get going an assortment of ideas he believed would enrich him and his country at the same time. He had many interests and several occupations; he tried twice to set up an odd system of credit to get France out of economic crisis, was a purveyor of restaurants, founder of a private bank, manager of an information office and organizer of an information directory. In 1766, Roze launched an establishment in Paris that alleged to serve "only those foods that either maintain or re-establish health. " (Spang, 2001) This is accredited as the first proper restaurant. Roze was neither a creative connoisseur nor an imaginative chef; needless to say, the "invention" of the restaurant was one of Roze's many commerce driven ventures that set out to salvage France from debt. Through the motion of credit notes, Roze proposed to resolve the currency dearth that, in his opinion, stood in the way of repair to the economy (Spang, 2001).
Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, thought that presenting the population with easier access to their capital through credit notes would further their assurance in the country and create financial solidity. In the end, his plan was disastrous, but the restaurant was such a resilient notion that not even the approaching French Revolution could demolish it. What Roze's ventures had in common was a desire to improve exchange, whether the thing moving was credit notes or blood circulation. "The invention of the restaurant was but one component in Roze's plan to fix the economy, repair commerce, and restore health to the body politic. " (Spang, 2001) As the restaurateurs bouillon concluded being their fundamental attraction, they came to be noticeable from inns by their secondary features (Potter, 2001). Customers were charged only for what they ordered rather than at inns, which served the same meal to everyone at a set time for a single price. People sat at small tables, by themselves or with friends, not at a large communal table with the public. This last advance was maybe the most important: seating restaurant customers separately with a small space between them made it possible to see and be seen, to eat in private and in public concurrently.
In a literal sense, it marked the dawn of conspicuous eating (Davidson, 1999). One advantageous outcome of the French Revolution saw the twenty-five guilds swept away in the onset turbulence, which was brilliant for the new profession. During the revolution many aristocratic families had either fled or lost their heads and their cooks and chefs took full advantage of the situation (Potter, 2001). The arrival of business people, journalists and revolutionary deputies returning (Symons, 1998) from the provinces, created an eager market for the new ventures and style of eating. Thus establishing the restaurant as a favourite institution.
Grid de La Reyniere, an eyewitness (Potter, 2001), thought that the restaurant became a success because of the rage for English fashions, taking large extravagant meals in taverns. A man named Beauvilliers opened a restaurant in 1782 called the Grand Tavern de Londres. He initiated the innovation of listing the meals offered on a menu and seating customers at small individual tables during fixed hours (Potter, 2001) much like Roze. The use of the printed menu really took off and allowed its customers to feel empowered.
Though there was still a highly healthful aspect to restaurants they now served solid food. When customers ordered they could do so very personally. No two people had the same sensitivities or bodily weaknesses and they could order exactly what he or she needed or desired therefore differentiating themselves from one another and making an individualistic statement (Spang, 2001). People had particular tastes and had never before experienced awareness over their order. At the common table of inns and taverns patrons had to pay a flat fee and share the meal with all of the other customers at the table.
In restaurants they could select carefully, chose exactly what they needed (Forster, 1979) or wanted, bearing their own particular ailments in mind and eat all of what was put before them on a plate, they could also calculate the cost before parting with their hard earned cash. If only for one meal, people felt important and could dine as a King or Queen (Symons, 1998). Jurgen Habermas (Spang, 2001) said that people came to these establishments to behave differently to how they did at the market square, church or royal court, that is to experience. Shortly after this time the population launched on a food indulgence so excessive that they felt obliged to authenticate their extravagance by turning cuisine into an area for specialists. The conception of "gastronomy" changed the restaurant from a social experience into an article of aesthetic assessment, into art as dissimilar from life (De Jean, 2005).
This expansion led, to the domain of cuisine ruled by values of refinement and elegance. Eating no long war a mere necessity but a domain of sophistication and the age of celebrity chefs, restaurants and must have dishes had begun (De Jean, 2005). The French Revolution changed the scope and essence of the restaurant everlastingly almost to the polar opposite of what it was originally. Replacing restorative, healthful broths with rich, decadent foods that would have sent the "weak of body" into bouts of heaving and tenderness. "The French Revolution encouraged the augmentation of restaurants by eradicating the monopolistic caterers' guilds and by forcing the aristocrats' former chefs to find new, proletarian uses for their faculties, where the restaurant became something much like where we go to eat today. Essentially the restaurant, borne of the consomm has come along way, some good and others not so good in regard to fine cuisine. Currently there are 31, 000 McDonalds restaurants in the world and a mere fifty, Michelin three-star restaurants world-wide.
Melissa Outer References: Davidson, Alan, Oxford Companion to Food, 1999 (p. 660) De Jean, Joan, The Essence of Style, 2005 (p. 108 - 110) Flandrin, Jean-Louis & Montarri, Massimo, The Rise of the Restaurant, " Food: a Culinary History, 1999 (p. 471 - 480) Forster, Robert, Food and Drink in History, 1979 Potter, Clarkson, Larousse Gastronomique, 2001 (p. 978) Spang, Rebecca, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, 2001 (p. 1, 9, 45, 67, 81, 140, 176, 180) Symons, Michael, A History of Cooks and Cooking, 1998 (p. 289 - 293) Toussaint-Same, Maguelonne, History of Food, 1993
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