The word on a restaurant’s door once referred to something you could drink.
In eighteenth-century France, a restaurant could be a restorative meat broth, offered to people who wanted to recover their strength. The name eventually came to describe the establishment serving it. The Alimentarium’s history of the restaurant follows that change from food to place.
Culture
A public room for a delicate appetite
Historian Rebecca Spang’s The Invention of the Restaurant traces the early establishments through contemporary ideas about health, commerce and personal taste. For customers seeking a light, restorative broth, a delicate appetite could carry social meaning as well as influence what they chose to eat.
On her book’s website, Spang reproduces a description of a Paris establishment that opened in March 1767. Its specialty was carefully warmed consommé, and its appeal included a public space where people with supposedly weak chests could take broth without abandoning their sense of refinement.
The arrangement also offered attention to individual preferences. A customer could occupy one table while someone nearby chose something different. Spang treats that combination of public visibility and personal choice as important to understanding what made these places distinctive.
Culture
Eating out had a much longer history
People had been buying meals away from home for centuries by the time Parisian broth sellers opened their doors. The Alimentarium traces that history through food counters in ancient Pompeii, European taverns and inns, and establishments offering a choice of dishes in Song-dynasty China.
Although restaurant became a name for a dining establishment in eighteenth-century France, people had long been eating out in places known by other names.
Culture
A broth name with a wider future
Spang follows Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau and the broth-selling establishments associated with him through the commercial changes that helped shape restaurant dining.
From broth to dining room
The name stayed with the place.
The early customers came for something they considered restorative. As these establishments began serving a wider range of meals, the broth’s name stayed with the place.
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A few things to talk about together.
- Restaurant once referred to a restorative broth in eighteenth-century France.
- Eating out has a much longer history, including Pompeii and Song-dynasty China.
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