THE ORIGINS OF THE RESTAURANT IN 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY 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 style. Thus, by the mid-17th century, French chefs were being ôexportedö to royal courts and noble houses across Europe, making a lasting impression on cooking and serving techniques from London to St. Petersburg.
ôOnly much later would people go inside a building [that was not an inn, hotel or private estate] to be served a mealö (Trubek 3). This came with the growth of the middle class, or bourgeoisie, and the development of the new ôurban...