The Greatest French Invention: Le Restaurant
by Tony Perrottet
Everyone who comes to Paris looks forward to its restaurants – famous institutions like Taillevent, Guy Savoy and Faugeron roll off the tongues of world gourmands – and it has remained that way for more than 200 years. Starting in the Middle Ages, aristocrats traditionally ate in their own homes unless they were traveling, when they brought along their own cooks.
But the roots of the restaurant idea can be dated back to the 1770s, when a craze began for fresh, healthy soups (literally restoratives, or “les restaurants”) served to the well-to-do public by talented vendors. But the real turning point came during the French Revolution in 1789, when the culinary world of Paris was flooded with unemployed chefs from noble households (not to mention the excellent wine cellars) of aristocrats who fled France or were arrested. As a result, entrepreneurs saw the need for dining rooms where middle class citizens could choose a range of meals from menus. The idea caught on.
As Napoleon conquered Europe in the early 1800s, Paris became flush with new wealth, and the city’s restaurants (as they were now called) grew more ornate, with chandeliers, Grecian columns, oil paintings, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and the first waiter service. Still, modern diners might find these early eateries a little different from those in present-day Paris. For example, no reservations were taken.
As diners arrived, they would choose between the main salon and a private room – if they did not want to be observed while eating. Also, the first menus, which were as thick as newspapers, and commonly offered two dozen types of veal preparation and hundreds of elaborate dishes. In truth, the menus, which were called “les cartes,” or maps (as they still are today) were more symbolic than practical. The actual dishes offered that day were far more limited, written by hand into the margins or explained by the waiters – a casual fore-runner of the “plats du jour,” special plates of the day, scrawled in chalk on blackboards by restauranteurs all over Paris today.
