Photo by: Chloé Landrieu Murphy
Though at this point restaurants may seem hard to separate from the world of food it was not until mid 18th century paris that the restaurant truly emerged. Restaurant, from the french word restaurer (meaning to restore) was first used to describe the restorative soups that resembled bouillons and were advertised to restore health and wellness sold in the first establishments. Restaurants emerged as an alternative to eating at home and at the inns and taverns that most often served the working class with simple meals of boiled or roasted meat and a seasonal vegetable with an emphasis on alcoholic beverages at inns and on coffees and teas at cafes. Restaurants gained notoriety and individuality with their variations of restorative essences, eventually leading to the serving of a wide variety of dishes and innovation in cuisine.
In France throughout the middle ages guilds monopolized many aspects of prepared foods. Following the french revolution came a ban of these guilds and resulted in the unemployment of many chefs that were previously employed in aristocratic households. In result many of these workers opened their own restaurants in Paris bringing a new dining atmosphere with them, complete with silver cutlery, delicate china and linens and private tables, as opposed to the communal tables that were typical of inns and taverns. Before the revolution there were less than 50 restaurants in Paris, by 1814, 3,000 were listed. With this shift the eating ways of the Aristocracy were made available to a new class of french citizens, the bourgeois.
After the defeat of Napoleon bourgeois clientele flocked to Paris in search of fine dining experiences. A shift in french mentality occurred and food became a virtue to be enjoyed upon its own as opposed to an instance of gluttony. With the rise of the restaurant came the emergence of the gastronome as a public figure. Food writing was an essential element of the worldwide reputation of french cuisine, food writers like Jean Brillat-Savarin, journalists, cookbooks, Escoffier’s le guide culinaire and le guide michelin were essential in Frances culinary reputation. Gastronomic writing became a means to inform the elite and popular on opinions of taste, restaurants and culinary practices.
Advances in technologies during the twentieth century like train travel, new rail routes and eventually highways allowed for the emergence of luxury tourism and directly impacted the restaurant industry giving affluent populations access to different food products and restaurant experiences and eventually leading to the spread of the restaurant throughout western Europe, the Americas and worldwide. Since the first restaurants in Paris the world of food has changed tremendously though many aspects of fine dining have remained. When reflecting upon food and taste it is impossible to look at current and past food traditions as not being a display of the cultural climate in which the culinary traditions exist in. Like everything else, food exists within a sphere dependent upon location, time social class and culture.