ORIGINS OF THE RESTAURANT IN FRANCE

French expertise in cooking had been the talk of the world, or at least of Europe, for a couple of centuries or more by the time of the French Revolution in 1789. Still, until then, most fancy food, or haute cuisine, had been the preserve of wealthy nobles who could afford to hire private chefs for their palatial estates. The revolution, however, put a crimp in that extravagant lifestyle, if only temporarily, and it necessarily reduced employment opportunities, as well. Chefs began looking elsewhere for their bread and butter (so to speak), and a trend toward restaurant dining that had been slowly surfacing before the revolution emerged full-blown in its wake.

In truth, prepared food had been available dating back to the 1300s in shops, roadside stands and town markets. In the late 14th century, in his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote of the ôvictualling trade,ö though hardly in a flattering way, addressing the British proprietor thusly:

Many a pilgrimÆs cursed you more than sparsely

When suffering the effects of your stale parsley

Which they have eaten with your stubble-fed goose;

Your shop is one where many a fly is loose.

France, however, was a very different story. By the 1500s, the French had gone a long way to perfecting techniques that would be the envy of the world. This included the whole range of food preparation, from cooking itself to presentation - displaying and serving food in elegant s

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means greasy spoon. Thus, even as restaurants were agencies for democracy, they also created opportunities for new forms of social distinction. WhatÆs more, in that so-called age of equality, workers, at least in restaurants, became inevitable advocates for exclusivity. Ironically, women were not excluded from the paying side of the cash counter. Indeed, women were welcome in Paris restaurants from the earliest days. The very first provided private rooms in which women and men could dine together. An early engraving depicts a man and woman walking arm in arm as they enter one establishment. Later on, there is an abundance of drawings that show many women customers seated in large and elegant public dining rooms. By the mid-19th century, chefs were becoming advocates within the new world and new era of publicly-disseminated haute cuisine. After all, they were no longer servants, mere domestics. Patronage as their lifeline to survival had ended. The new consumers were their new source of income, and indeed by 1900 the typical chef worked primarily for a mostly anonymous public. Thus, they were professionals now, setting the standards for the methods, ingredients and presentation of professionally prepared food. WhatÆs
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Approximate Word count = 1877
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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