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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
This book analyzes the way in which restaurants are geographical objects that reveal locational logics and strategies, and how restaurants weave close relationships with the space in which they are located. Originating from cities, restaurants feed off the urban environment as much as they feed it ? participating in the qualification, differentiation and hierarchy of cities. Indeed, restaurants in both the city and the countryside maintain a dialogical relationship with tourism. They can be vital players in the establishment of emerging types of gourmet tourism, sometimes even constituting as gourmet tourist destinations in their own right. They participate in the establishment of necessary conditions for local development. Some restaurants are even praised as historic sites, recognized as part of the local heritage, which reinforces their localization and their identity as a gourmet tourist destination.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
Introduction
PART 1: The Restaurant: An Eminently Urban Subject
Introduction to Part 1
1 The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment
1.1. From bouillons…
1.2. … to the establishment
2 The Concentration of Restaurants in the City Centers
2.1. A center-specific logic…
2.2. … to a logic of axes
3 The Geographical Diffusion of Restaurants in Provinces by Cities and City Networks
3.1. The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces: an application of rank-size law…
3.2. … but disrupted by tourism
PART 2: The Restaurant in Terms of Places and Geographical Spaces
Introduction to Part 2
4 Logics and Strategies for Locating Restaurants
4.1. The logic of proximity
4.2. Accessibility logics
4.3. The logic of landscape charm
4.4. The logic of assimilation
5 Restaurants in the City
5.1. Restaurants in small cities
5.2. Restaurants in average-sized cities
5.3. New dynamics in large cities
6 Restaurants in the Countryside and the Relationship Between Cities and the Countryside
6.1. Restaurants in the countryside
6.2. The restaurant, the city/countryside relationship and nature in the city
PART 3: The Restaurant at the Heart of the Tourist System
Introduction to Part 3
7 The Relationship Between the Restaurant and Tourism
7.1. Complementary relations between restaurants and tourism
7.2. The interdependence between restaurants and tourism
8 The Restaurant, a Tool for Gourmet Tourism
8.1. Cavaillon
8.2. Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade
8.3. Megève
9 The Restaurant as a Gourmet Tourist Destination
9.1. The gourmet tourist destination: from the 3-star Michelin restaurant…
9.2. … to a network of restaurants
PART 4: The Restaurant as a Tool for Local Development
Introduction to Part 4
10 Restaurants and Local Development in Urban Areas
10.1. At street level
10.2. At neighborhood level
11 Restaurant and Local Development in Rural Areas
11.1. On the scale of the plateau
11.2. Across the country
11.3. At the village level
PART 5: The Restaurant: What Heritage?
Introduction to Part 5
12 The Restaurant: From Monument to Heritage
12.1. The restaurant as a historical monument
12.2. The restaurant as a showcase for intangible cultural heritage
12.3. The restaurant in heritage
13 Tourists as Actors in the Process of Adding Cultural Heritage to Restaurants
13.1. Parisian brasseries
13.2. Lyon’s bouchons
13.3.
La Mère Poulard
restaurant in Mont-Saint-Michel
13.4. What about the bouillons?
Conclusion
References
Index
List of Tables
Chapter 7
Table 7.1. Food practices in space and time (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Menu from the restaurant Véry
Figure 2.2. Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal at the end of the 1...
Figure 2.3. Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal today (source: fiel...
Figure 2.4. Le Grand Véfour (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Figure 2.5. Inside the Bouillon Racine, located at 3, rue Racine (source: Olivie...
Figure 2.6. Restaurant Allard, located at 41, rue Saint-André-des-Arts (source: ...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Map of 3-star Michelin restaurants from 1933 to 1939 (source: accord...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Map of the location of 3-star Michelin restaurants in Paris in 2019 ...
Figure 4.2. Mr. T kebab from the restaurant Mr. T, 38, rue de Saintonge (source:...
Figure 4.3. Roast leg of lamb, cut up and served in the slicing car (source: Oli...
Figure 4.4. Inside Espace Gourmand Capucin signé Bras (source: Olivier Etcheverr...
Figure 4.5. Outside Espace Gourmand Capucin signé Bras (source: Olivier Etchever...
Figure 4.6. a) Megève meadowsweet faisselle in a thin shell; b) strawberry and o...
Figure 4.7. Map of the location of the Passage des Panoramas restaurants in Pari...
Figure 4.8. Caffè Stern , 47, Passage des Panoramas (source: Olivier Etcheverria...
Figure 4.9. At Bisou Crêperie , the “Freak crêpe”: Nutella, caramel, Breton shor...
Figure 4.10. In Racines , the vitello tonnato (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For...
Figure 4.11. Location of Japanese restaurants on rue Sainte-Anne in Paris in 201...
Figure 4.12. La Taverne de Zhao, 49, rue des Vinaigriers in Paris (source: Olivi...
Figure 4.13. Map of the location of Portuguese restaurants in Versailles in 2019...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Location map of restaurants selected by the Michelin Guide in Chartr...
Figure 5.2. Location map of restaurants selected by the Michelin Guide in Reims ...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Onion gratin from Bois Giroult with young purslane shoots, Sarawak b...
Figure 6.2. Plant-cut purple tartar with cream of horseradish and beetroot (sour...
Figure 6.3. Honey-lacquered gardeners’ brioche pie, Kalamata black olive emulsio...
Figure 6.4. Tagliolini de maïs torréfié, les épis égraines liés au beurre, tartu...
Figure 6.5. Green lentils from Le Puy and caviar, with a delicate eel jelly (sou...
Figure 6.6. Creamy malted barley, frosted beer and hops (source: Olivier Etcheve...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Modern aioli, vegetables from our local market gardeners, Mediterran...
Figure 7.2. Cosa croccante (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Figure 7.3. Balade dans le bois de la Chaize at the restaurant La Marine in Noir...
Figure 7.4. Smoked ice cream at the restaurant La Marine in Noirmoutier (source:...
Figure 7.5. La borgne contemporaine (2nd plate) at Cheval-Blanc Saint-Tropez (so...
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. Dining room at the Maison Prévôt restaurant in Cavaillon in which di...
Figure 8.2. Lobster and melon casserole at Maison Prévôt restaurant in Cavaillon...
Figure 8.3. Château La Coste’s wine cellar designed by Jean Nouvel (source: Oliv...
Figure 8.4. Francis Mallmann restaurant: terrace with a view of the kitchen and ...
Figure 8.5. a) Warm smoked chocolate pie; b) Ice cream with wood from our mounta...
Figure 8.6. Cardon épineux de Plainpalais: at the Flocons de Sel restaurant in M...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. Restaurant Le Pavillon Bleu in Cambo-les-Bains (source: Olivier Etch...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. Map of the location of restaurants and food shops on rue du Nil in ...
Figure 10.2. Fish & chips (beer battered hake, mushy peas, tartar sauce) at FTG ...
Figure 10.3. Rue du Nil, seen from the Terroirs d’Avenir bakery (source: Olivier...
Figure 10.4. Pizza Chèvre de Monsieur Fabre (charcoal dough, goat’s cheese, crea...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1. Postcard depicting the Lou Mazuc restaurant (source: Olivier Etchev...
Figure 11.2. Map of the hotel-restaurant Bras at the puech du Suquet (source: Mi...
Figure 11.3. View of the hotel-restaurant Bras at Puech du Suquet (source: Miche...
Figure 11.4. The gargouillou of young vegetables (source: [BRA 02]). For a color...
Figure 11.5. Lamb from shepherd Jean-Bernard Maïtia seasoned to the taste of the...
Figure 11.6. Jean-Bernard Maïtia’s suckling lamb braised with meadow milk (sourc...
Figure 11.7. a) Rotten Carrus hen egg with melanosporum truffle served in a mush...
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1. The main dining room at the restaurant Le Train Bleu (source: Olivi...
Figure 12.2. “Orange painting” in the restaurant Le Train Bleu (source: Olivier ...
Figure 12.3. Foyot veal chop, sour jus, girolle mushrooms, cabbage and chestnuts...
Figure 12.4. A Norwegian omelette being flambéed (source: Olivier Etcheverria). ...
Figure 12.5. External view of the restaurant Au Rocher de Cancale, rue Montorgue...
Figure 12.6. External view of the restaurant L’Escargot Montorgueil, rue Montorg...
Figure 12.7. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning Le Rocher de Cancale (source: O...
Figure 12.8. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning Le second Rocher de Cancale (so...
Figure 12.9. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning rue Montorgueil (source: Olivie...
Figure 12.10. Duck menu no. 952,851 (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Figure 12.11. Front of the Café Anglais (source: André Terrail – La Tour d’Argen...
Figure 12.12. View of the Grand Seize (source: André Terrail – La Tour d’Argent)
Figure 12.13. Auberge de l’Ill Salmon soufflé (source: Olivier Etcheverria); A p...
Figure 12.14. “Paul Haeberlin” frog moussseline (source: Olivier Etcheverria). P...
Figure 12.15. Haeberlin peach (source: Olivier Etcheverria); whole peach poached...
Figure 12.16. Fine shortbread tart with bitter cocoa, Bourbon vanilla ice cream ...
Figure 12.17. “Le lait dans tous ses états”, cookie, mousse, frosted cookie, jel...
Figure 12.18. a) “Fish following the arrival of fennel. From my aunt, I broke a ...
Figure 12.19. Octopus pie at Brasserie Lutétia in Paris (source: Olivier Etcheve...
Figure 12.20. Frogs’ legs with garlic puree and parsley juice, a famous recipe b...
Figure 12.21. Desert rote with pure chocolate ice cream and candied orange couli...
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1. Colbert whiting and tartar sauce at La Poule au Pot brasserie (sour...
Figure 13.2. Front of the brasserie Au Pied de Cochon (source: Olivier Etcheverr...
Figure 13.3. Handle in the shape of a pig’s foot at the entrance door to the Au ...
Figure 13.4. Roasted cod, ham and pasta shells with crispy belly (source: Olivie...
Figure 13.5. “Piggy” meringues from the Au Pied de Cochon brasserie (source: Oli...
Figure 13.6. Entrance to the Bouillon Chartier in Montmartre (source: Olivier Et...
Figure 13.7. Haddock brandade at the Bouillon Racine (source: Olivier Etcheverri...
Figure 13.8. Bouillon Julien (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Figure 13.9. Front of Bouillon Julien (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Figure 13.10. Beef broth, vermicelli at Bouillon Pigalle (source: Olivier Etchev...
Figure 13.11. Cod brandade at Bouillon Pigalle (source: Olivier Etcheverria). Fo...
Figure I3.1. Proportion of 2- and 3-star restaurants according to the 1990 Miche...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Tourism and Mobility Systems Set
coordinated by
Philippe Violier
Volume 3
The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach
From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations
Olivier Etcheverria
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2020
The rights of Olivier Etcheverria to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930311
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-434-6
Foreword
The impact of a restaurant’s location on its environment is rarely studied, yet it can be a major factor.
We can even talk about a total synergy, and there are many examples: what would the city of Roanne (and even its station!) be without the Troisgros brothers? What would the city of Saulieu be without Bernard Loiseau’s Côte-d’Or, Valence without the Pic, Laguiole without the Bras, Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid without the Marcon, Fontjoncouse without Gilles Goujon, etc.?
Lost and unknown places are at the top of the bill thanks to the grace of a restaurateur who attracts amateurs, tourists, the curious among us, etc.
The wine-growing regions have understood this impact of gastronomy on their territory and are developing wine tourism at a fast pace and with great success. Because, in fact, what is France’s DNA, if not the combination of food, wine and landscapes?
I am delighted that a book is now devoted to this subject. I thank Olivier Etcheverria and I wish all readers a pleasant read!
Guy SAVOY
Chef
Restaurant Guy Savoy
11, quai de Conti, Paris
Introduction
“If worst comes to worst, as long as bistronomy cultivated its garden in its favorite neighborhoods, it would do no harm. Going somewhere else is another story. Tackling the 8th arrondissement in this case is not an easy task. It is undoubtedly the most difficult area in Paris, the most paradoxical. Both poor in gastronomic culture, but of a hysterical demand; wealthy, incidentally expensive, but regularly stingy; lily-livered or exhausted, there is enough to unscrew the head, swallow the chef’s hat. Cooking in this district requires nerves of steel, a strong chest, the willpower of a sumo. That’s why the arrival of Nicolas Chimot and Manon Fleury (previously Astrance and Semilla respectively) was a bit scary. Like a true thermal, cultural, a limit rake. To welcome this duo, you probably needed the skin of a good old crocodile (Le Mermoz), a true Parisian bar counter, with its elbow bar, its mosaics and the sound reverberations of a hyper-eighth audience: loud in mouth, in ringtones – and me as well. It is to be hoped that such neat plates will nail down the local mouths. For on this side, the partition is boiling, piercing. It does not depict a tapestry, nor is it stuck-up. It removes its coat, rolls up its sleeves and enters the arena. It’s funny, as there’s so much urgency to demonstrate, like these cockles and beans in fresh mint bouillon. And especially this striking dish of spinach, apparently harmless and predictable, hitting hard with a green wheat and a stunning cream of cumin. The rest is carefully bistroed: roasted white asparagus, curdled milk, blood orange, new turnip perch chicken, vinegar apple, Saint-Gilles whiting, crayons-sabayon leeks with herb butter. Desserts languishing in a benevolent horizontality: candied rhubarb-syrup of hibiscus-streusel or panacotta-pink grapefruit-ananis from Iran. The dish of the month.” [SIMO 18, author’s translation]
This review by François Simon from the restaurant Le Mermoz, 16, rue Jean-Mermoz, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, is a delicious demonstration of the fact that the restaurant is a geographical object. It raises the stakes of the logic and strategies of its location and the relationships maintained with its location space. The enunciation of the dishes reveals choices of supply and highlights the interplay of discourses and gastronomic imaginations that symbolically positions the restaurant between integration and travel.
The restaurant was born in the city, and, more precisely, in the center of the city. It is indeed found in a context of fullness, in the spatial context of density and diversity. The geographical location and distribution of restaurants should be seen in relation to the differential qualities of urban areas, growth dynamics, and urban planning and development. The restaurant derives a large number of its characteristics from those of the urban environment. Its organization, functioning and development require proximity and accessibility that result in concentrations.
Correlatively, restaurants qualify, distinguish and participate in the prioritization of cities. They play a role in the relative geographical positioning of a city and its place in city networks. Restaurants are mainly frequented by urban eaters; these being both permanent and temporary residents, e.g. tourists. Restaurant attendance is an urban practice that has a particular impact on the city or places with urban qualities. As a result, restaurants demonstrate effects on the city, its structure and dynamics. They supply the city’s urban properties. They play a role in its influence and attractiveness.
Restaurants play an important role in shaping the tourist image and building a city’s tourist reputation. Tourists deploy their recreational tourism practices in a privileged way. They play a role in the development of tourism in the area and in the emergence of forms of food tourism. They are sometimes gourmet tourist destinations. The restaurant’s role in creating the conditions necessary for local development is real. Chefs have an effect on places and in the creation of new ones, in both urban and rural areas. This influence on places leads to the question of the characterization of the restaurant as a form of heritage.
Thus, the study of the establishment, operation and development of restaurants mobilizes geographical themes: spatial location, distribution and diffusion logics; dynamics of globalization, tourism and heritage; processes of identity construction and even territorial symbolization; enhancement and re-enhancement of city–countryside relations; emergence and re-emergence of the question of nature in the city. The salience, originality, notoriety and vitality of restaurants play a role in the organization and dynamics of spaces. Symmetrically, the qualities of spaces and customers influence the characteristics of restaurants, the cuisine served, the service, the decor, the management style, the discourses and the gastronomic imagination that infuse and diffuse there.
There is also a questioning and re-questioning of the place of customers in the location and functioning of restaurants and their geographical role. The restaurant only exists if it is frequented by customers, if there are gourmet practices of permanent and temporary inhabitants. The choice and attendance of a restaurant are linked to the qualities of the location space. Hence, a geographical approach to restaurants differs from a geography of restaurants. It makes the customer the joint inventor and central actor of the restaurant by trying to analyze the practices, their sensitive relationship, their preferences, their discourses and the gastronomic imagination of the restaurant. Indeed, restaurant practices depend on the most pleasant geographical ambiences and landscape amenities to develop them, from which the desire to eat and drink is born. There is no gourmet predisposition of a particular place to host a particular restaurant and the choices and practices of the customer determine the location of a particular restaurant in a particular place.
This book does not deal with “great” restaurants. However, the study of locations, the relationship between restaurants and their locations, and their geographical effects lead to highlighting the exemplary nature of “great” restaurants. It should be recalled that for the Michelin Guide, the attribution of stars resonates with geographical logic: 1-star restaurant: a very good restaurant – worth the stop; 2-star restaurant: excellent cooking that is worth a detour! – and a 3-star restaurant: exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey!
This book is structured into five parts. The first part aims to show the urban and, more precisely, Parisian origin of the restaurant. The location logics and the relationship of the restaurant with its places and spaces will be discussed in the second part. Since a significant proportion of urban residents whose frequent restaurants are tourists, the third part focuses on the dynamics of restaurant tourism, the restaurant as a tool of food tourism and, sometimes, as a gourmet tourist destination. The fourth part discusses the role of the restaurant in creating the conditions necessary for local development in urban and rural areas. Finally, the fifth and last part raises the question of the monumentalization and patrimonialization of restaurants.
This attempt at a geographical approach to the restaurant is exciting, rich but risky because of the multidisciplinary dimension of the object. This is why the indulgence of historians and specialists in the topics discussed is solicited.
PART 1The Restaurant: An Eminently Urban Subject
Introduction to Part 1
Before the invention of the restaurant, inns, taverns, caterers, guesthouses and cafés offered food and drink, but the food was random in quality and not very varied in nature. The meal was eaten at a communal table, at restricted times, in an uncomfortable way.
In this context, a new place, intended for eating outside the home, was opened in the city at the end of the 18th Century and presented many original features.
1The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment
1.1. From bouillons…
Originally, the “restaurant” was a cheap broth prepared and enjoyed in the city. Pierre Andrieu thus evokes the craze for the “divine restaurant”:
“The term then applied to bouillons, one of which, the ‘divine restaurant’, was for a long time the most popular. It consisted of a mixture of poultry and very finely minced butcher’s meat, distilled in a still with pearl barley, dry roses and Damascus grapes. In the 18th Century, a doctor named Clarens simplified the formula. According to him, we were to limit ourselves to cooking fat poultry in a little flavored water. Clarens’ recipe was successful and it was this recipe that, when commercialized, was exploited by Boulanger, known as Champ d’Oiseaux, rue des Poulies, at the site of the current rue du Louvre.” [AND 55, p. 26, author’s translation]
In 1765, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defined the restaurant as “a food that restores, that repairs forces […]. A restaurant in particular is called a strong restorative consommé, a meat press”. Jean-Robert Pitte points out that:
“Since the late Middle Ages, the word ‘restaurant’ has meant these rich bouillons consisting of poultry, beef, various roots, onions, herbs and, depending on the recipe, spices, candy sugar, toasted bread or barley, butter, as well as products as unusual in appearance as dried rose petals, Damascus grapes, amber, etc.” [PIT 96, p. 771, author’s translation]
1.2. … to the establishment
Gradually, the name of the dish came to designate the place where it was tasted:
“The worldwide success of the word ‘restaurant’ gives the French a just cause for pride. First used to designate a rich and invigorating bouillon, then various small, robust dishes designed to restore weak health or, quite simply, energy reduced by fatigue and hunger, it was only applied at the end of the 18th Century to the establishment where they were served. The founding event of this institution took place in 1765, rue des Poulies, near the Louvre, where a certain Boulanger, known as Champ d’Oiseaux, served ‘restaurants’, i.e. bouillons, but also sheep’s feet in white sauce with a portion under the sign written in Latin…: ‘ Venite ad me, omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego vos restaurabo’.”1 [PIT 91, p. 157, author’s translation]
The situation reflected Boulanger’s business sense and restaurants grew rapidly. In his Histoire du restaurant en France, Pierre Andrieu quotes, on this subject, P. de la Mésangère:
“Besides the fact that Boulanger sold bouillons, there was food at home, but since he was not a caterer, he could not serve stew. Instead, he served poultry with coarse salt, fresh eggs, etc., and this was served without a tablecloth on small marble tables. Other restaurateurs followed his example, including Wauxhall, at the Colosseum and all the assembly and public celebration venues. Novelty, fashion and above all, high prices accredited them, because a person who would not have dared to sit at a guesthouse’s table would easily pay for the same expensive dinner at the restaurant!” [AND 55, p. 26, author’s translation]
Although the restaurant’s geographical origin is Parisian, Jean-Robert Pitte nevertheless points out that it shares common characteristics with London’s taverns:
“As with many cultural changes, the French restaurant does not have a simple genealogy. It also has English ancestry. The taverns on the other side of the Channel, i.e. the establishments where wine is served and which are pitted against brasseries, are often elegant and famous. One of the most famous and refined London taverns of the 18th Century was owned in the 1670s by a son of a president in the Bordeaux Parliament, Mr. de Pontac. The wine produced by his father on his estate in Haut-Brion was consumed there.” [PIT 91, p. 158, author’s translation]
The name given to one of the first famous Parisian restaurants, La Grande Taverne de Londres, opened by Antoine Beauvilliers in 1782, and sometimes considered as the first “grand restaurant”, illustrates this influence:
“Antoine Beauvilliers brought the profession to its pinnacle. He was also an essential link in the historical geography of French gastronomy, as he was one of the first officier de bouche (chef) of a prince – the Count of Provence, the future Louis XVIII – to establish his own business […] Beauvilliers […] opened a chic restaurant where everybody who was anybody was running around and enabled the high court cuisine to take to the streets. He first established himself at 26 rue de Richelieu, under the name of La Grande Taverne de Londres, then a stone’s throw away, but in the heart of fashionable Paris, in the Valois gallery at the Palais-Royal.” [PIT 91, p. 160, author’s translation]
In Paris à table, Eugène Briffault highlights Antoine Beauvilliers’ reputation at the Palais-Royal:
“Beauvilliers was the one that first attracted the most people. He never made his mark as a chef, but he had a quality that is nowadays considered extinct: he was entirely focused on the people who came to his house for dinner, and constantly went through his rooms, to make sure that his diners were happy. At the slightest doubt, he would have one dish replaced by another, head down to his kitchens, and loudly scold the careless worker.” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation]
For Rebecca L. Spang, Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau was the first restaurateur. She places the invention of the restaurant at the heart of an original socioeconomic strategy:
“The ‘invention’ of the restaurant, the creation of a new market sphere of hospitality and taste, was but one component of Roze’s plan to fix the economy, repair trade, and restore the health to the body politic […]. Nevertheless, Roze’s role in the invention of the restaurant is particularly significant, for it epitomizes (if only by the variety of its projects) the restaurant’s place in intricate networks of market expansion and commercial growth. Like others of his era, the first restaurateur saw the long-stigmatized mechanisms of trade (the circulation of goods and the stimulation of desires) as potential conduits of social benefit and national improvement. Roze de Chantoiseau, who invented the restaurant while running an information office, attempting to abolish the national debt, and editing a commercial directory, was hardly unique in the range of his interests. In 1766, when this first restaurateur opened his doors, culinary issues were often incorporated into a wide range of discussions.” [SPA 00, pp. 13–14]
She thus insists on the complementary professional activity of communication and publications of Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, who published in 1769 Almanach général d’indication d’adresse personnelle et domicile fixe de Six Corps, Arts et Métiers2. François-Régis Gaudry specifies:
“This directory listed, in alphabetical order, several thousand merchants, traders, craftsmen and entrepreneurs who each demonstrated talent and initiative in their own field […] Similarly, a supplement to the almanac listing the new caterers indicated ‘Roze, the First Restaurateur’. Smart and intuitive, Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau was actually intelligent enough to play on two sides to support his business: he was Chantoiseau the author-publisher on the one hand, and Roze the restaurateur, on the other. Since 1766, the restaurant was located in the Hôtel d’Aligre, rue Saint-Honoré, at the same address as its publishing house.” [GAU 06, pp. 21–22]
In addition, Rebecca L. Spang points out that: “Like any number of these enterprising authors and would-be reformers, Roze de Chantoiseau frequented the aristocratic and administrative circles in Paris.” [SPA 00, p. 15]
But who was the first restaurateur then? Boulanger or Roze de Chantoiseau? An answer is provided by François-Régis Gaudry:
“The famous Boulanger consigned to the dungeons of history and Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau suddenly presented as the undisputed inventor of the restaurant? Not so sure, because it may be that the two people are actually only one. Indeed, in several texts of the time, Boulanger was also called ‘Champ d’Oiseau’, a nickname strangely close to ‘Chantoiseau’.” [GAU 06, p. 21, author’s translation]
Eugène Briffault, for his part, attributes Lamy as the first creator of the restaurant: “The first restaurateur in Paris was a man named Lamy. He opened his private rooms in one of the dark and narrow passages that surrounded the Palais-Royal at the time.” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation]. In Le mangeur duXIXe siècle, Jean-Paul Aron confirms: “The first authentic restaurateur, Lamy, served very ordinary dishes around 1773.” [ARO 89, p. 19, author’s translation]
Rebecca L. Spang also mentions the opening of an establishment run by the restaurateur Minet:
“In March 1767, L’Avantcoureur (The Forerunner), a journal dedicated to innovation in the arts, the sciences, and ‘any other field that makes life more agreeable,’ announced that a new type of establishment had opened in Paris’s rue des Poulies. The new business specialized in ‘excellent consommés or restaurants always carefully warmed in a hot water bath.’ These restaurants were available at all hours, at reasonable prices, and were served in gold-rimmed, white faience dishes.” [SPA 00, p. 34]
The restaurant is an expressive form of Parisian elite social demand for dietetics and taste:
“As much a scientific innovation as a culinary curiosity, the opening of the first restaurant responded to the 18th Century elite culture’s preoccupations with the pursuit of health as well as its fascination with cuisine.” [SPA 00, p. 26]
François-Régis Gaudry insists on this dietary interest by pointing out that Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau first named his restaurant the “ Maison de santé” (literally meaning the health home):
“This name, which came to disappear a few years later, betrayed the medical mission of the first restaurants. Roze prepared, for the attention of the urban elite who suffered from vapours, miasmas and bronchial weaknesses, ‘reconstituting bouillons’ which he served in small cups. These consumers drew their success from their nutritious and digestible properties because they knew how to capture the rich flavor of meat and vegetables while presenting them in a liquid form.” [GAU 06, p. 22, author’s translation]
The restaurateur Minet offered fresh eggs, fine butter, jellies and “cream of rice and gruel from Brittany with fat and milk”. The restaurateur Vacossin, rue de Grenelle, served cream cheese, fruit, semolina, Palais-Royal biscuits, capons with coarse salt and “lunches with fine herbs”3. In the first restaurants, it was also possible to eat rice or vermicelli soups, macaroni, fruit purées, etc. According to Rebecca L. Spang, the craze for these “healthy” dishes was linked to a sociocultural context under Rousseauist influence:
“Rousseau’s sensitive characters inhabited a milk-and-honey world of (comparatively expensive) fruits and dairy products. When restaurants served ‘simple’ bouillons, they similary contributed to the construction of a mythical version of sincere, healthful country life which proved acceptable to an urban, elite population.” [SPA 00, p. 42]
It is an urban cult of sensitivity:
“As an emotional or intellectual state with physical manifestations, the cult of sensibility also conjured up its own spaces: the farm where Marie Antoinette played milkmaid, Rousseau’s grave, and the restaurant. The restaurant introduced Rousseau’s desires – not just the paradoxically refined simplicity of his ideal meals, but the equally perplexing publicity of his privacy – into the marketplace.” [SPA 00, p. 63]
Thus, since their invention, restaurants, these urban places, mainly frequented by urban diners, have produced and disseminated discourses and, even more so, gastronomic images of the countryside and nature.
In this Parisian, urban, sensory context, the restaurant was originally both a public and a private place where consumption and tasting practices took place:
“The restaurant was a publicly private place: Minet promised the weak-chested ‘a public place where they can go to take their consommé’, but (and in no less certain terms) another restaurateur advertised his establishment as perfectly suited to ‘those who would hardly want to eat in public’. Neither expansively ‘public’ nor narrowly ‘private’, the restaurant offered the possibility for a public display of private self-absorption.” [SPA 00, pp. 86–87]
Lounges and staff met this need for privacy and even confidentiality.
Therefore, the restaurant initially demonstrated original properties. It was frequented by urban diners who were looking for quality products, sometimes rare or even luxurious, rigorously chosen, skillfully cooked and carefully served. François-Régis Gaudry underlined the diversity of restaurant customers:
“The restaurant welcomed a heterogeneous clientele: merchants, intellectuals, aristocrats, actors, financiers, officers… But the greatest sociological innovation lied in the appearance of women, seduced by the delicacy of the dishes and the intimacy of the private rooms.” [GAU 06, p. 25, author’s translation]
According to Eugène Briffault:
“The establishment of the restaurateurs was a social fact. Under the regime in which they succeeded, good food was the privilege of opulence; the restaurateurs made it accessible to everyone. A man who could, once in his life, spend twenty or twenty-five francs on his dinner, if he knew how to choose his dishes, and if he sat at the table of a first-rate restaurateur, was treated better than if he dined with a prince: he was served with as much splendour as in a palace; he ordered at will; his taste and desire knew no boundaries; free from all consideration, he obeyed only the whims of his fantasy and his delicacy. Restaurateurs therefore took a great step forward in social equality, established by the community of enjoyment much more than by theories that would never succeed in placing the poor on an equal footing with the rich.” [BRI 03, pp. 92–93, author’s translation]
In a prepared, comfortable, peaceful and clean room, diners enjoyed their varied dishes set up at individual tables and, most often, tablecloths4. “They thus avoided promiscuity and could make confidential or courteous comments”, emphasized Jean-Robert Pitte [PIT 91, p. 159, author’s translation]. It was even possible to choose your table. The richness of restaurant decorations was significant.
Diners “were served individual portions of dishes that they chose from a framed sheet of paper, before resolving the ‘paying card’, i.e. the bill” [PIT 91, p. 159, author’s translation]. Thus, the menu was born, presenting the prices. Food was served on demand all day long. Wine was no longer used only to quench your thirst: it came to accompany dishes and allowed for food and wine pairings. Water could be served in bottles. The service remained attentive to the expectations and demands of diners.
Indeed, Rebecca L. Spang insists on the emergence of a new form of manners that gave primacy to the individual and to their needs, desires and pleasures:
“The restaurant gave new significance to the individual’s emotions, utterances, and actions, and elaborated a whole new logic of sociability and conviviality. While the serving of salutary dishes was the restaurant’s initial raison d’être, fans of the restaurant spoke with equal enthusiasm about the many other delights available there.” [SPA 00, pp. 66–67]
The restaurant therefore became a place of free choice where food intake was motivated, desired and individualized. According to Tristan Hordé, the restaurant appeared in a context in which the idea of the individual was affirmed: “the idea of the ‘individual’ was imposed, at least in the dominant urban social classes” [HOR 17, p. 12, author’s translation]. Then, the restaurateur responded to the expression of individual needs and desires related to taste; the taste preferences of the individual eater. Rebecca L. Spang points out that:
“Some twenty years after they were first established, restaurants no longer specialized in providing delicately healthful soups to a genteelly weak-chested clientele but in catering to individual tastes. While the traiteur fed large groups, the restaurateur offered single servings and small, intimate tables. […]. The restaurateur invited his guest to sit at his or her own table, to consult his or her own needs and desires, to concentrate on that most fleeting and difficult to universalize sense: taste.” [SPA 00, p. 75]
Therefore, the diner held an essential role: they made a real choice. They took on a “buyer” role. The birth of the restaurant thus marked the transition from a situation where the eater was an agent (human operator or agent capable of voluntary actions and their own initiatives but possessing no strategic competence: he/she was not a decision-maker and even less a designer) to one where he/she became an actor (agent with subjective interiority, intentionality, autonomous strategic capacity and an ability to express oneself) [LUS 03, p. 39]. The buyer (the diner) of this particular service, that of catering, was therefore at the initiative and design stage, insofar as there was a simultaneity of production and consumption. Thus, the diner became a “coproducer” of the catering service with the chef.
DEFINITION.– Services are: “in the broadest sense, all economically productive activities that do not include the manufacture of material objects. In a narrow sense, this whole, excluding exchange activities. Services are in fact an economic and spatial phenomenon quite apart in the production of wealth. Unlike material goods, services are only realized by consuming them: the usual production/consumption distinction does not work very well. The production of a service involves the combination of three elements: a material basis, a contact staff and a customer. There is therefore joint production by the customer and the company. The economist Jean Galdrey proposed the concept of ‘servuction’ to reflect this specificity. It follows that a service is not tangible and cannot be stored.” [STO 03, pp. 834–835, author’s translation]
How is the concentration of restaurants reflected? How did restaurants spread in Paris?
1
Come to me, all of you whose stomachs are in distress, and I will restore you.
2
Which roughly translates to “The General Almanac of Personal Address and Permanent Residence of Six Corps, Arts and Crafts”.
3
Weekly sheets
L’Avantcoureur
of 1767, quoted by Patrick Ramboug [RAM 10, p. 190].
4
In
Paris à table
, Eugène Briffault emphasizes: “Originally, the restaurateur was not allowed to put a tablecloth on these tables. They were covered with a green or jasper waxcloth” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation].
2The Concentration of Restaurants in the City Centers
Restaurants were born in urban areas and are particularly concentrated in the city centers.
DEFINITION.– The urban center is an “urban geotype characterized by the maximum association of the density and diversity of social realities […]. An urban center has a potential, linked to its level of urbanity (urbanity being considered as societal production, arranged in space, resulting from the interaction of density and diversity), and also to the modalities of the spatial disposition of density and diversity. This potential, which expresses the attractive and polarizing capacity of the center, is called centrality” [LUS 03, p. 144, author’s translation].
The center offers the specific coupling of density and diversity from a human, socioeconomic and cultural point of view. The centrality of restaurants corresponds to a strategic location that places the needs of the dense and diverse at the heart of the concerns of the first restaurateurs. The density and diversity of the permanent inhabitants ensure a potentially stable local customer “fund”. In addition, the density and diversity of temporary inhabitants (tourists) allow for additional customers. More generally, this centrality of restaurants is expressed in the density and diversity of flows, relationships and exchanges, products, capital, information, discourses and imaginations.
The first restaurants were established and developed in the center of Paris, particularly at the Palais-Royal.
While the restaurant requires density and diversity, it was initially so, as shown by the solid and liquid contents of the menus of the first restaurants. The menu of the restaurant Véry is exemplary (see Figure 2.1). Pierre Andrieu recalls the geographies of this restaurant:
“At the beginning of the First Empire, a Lorraine native named Véry opened a restaurant in Les Tuileries, on the terrace of Les Feuillants, and then, in 1808, opened a branch near the Palais-Royal theater, and its reputation was soon to eclipse the first house […]. Véry’s name alone evokes a Palais-Royal sparkling with life and luxury, galleries cluttered with beautiful figures with bare arms, shoulders open to the air, while passing by them, dragging their Essling or Jena swords, the dashing officers, Oudinot’s grenadiers or Murat’s horsemen.” [AND 55, pp. 38–39, author’s translation]
In a context of concentration, restaurants, places of density and diversity, were intersected by flows and animated by centripetal forces. Through the service offerings, practices, discourses and imaginations they instilled, restaurants also produced density and diversity, and thus reinforced them. It was a dynamic of polarization.
2.1. A center-specific logic…
Since their invention, restaurants have found privileged locations in the city center, which is a geographical context of concentration (accumulation of a large number of social realities in a limited area) of people and socioeconomic and cultural activities, and therefore of potential customers. And products too.
DEFINITION.– “In the narrow sense, [centrality is] the central position of a place or area in a space. By extension, the ability to polarize space and make a place or area attractive, which concentrates actors, functions and objects of societies […]. In geography, the centrality of a place only really makes sense when we associate its position in physical space with the measurement of the radiation of potentials and functions located in that same place and when we consider the gradients and ‘fields’ that they produce and have in space. Walter Christaller constructs his model of central places based on an examination of the relationship between commercial and service functions and the physical distance between settlement points. According to this model, a balance between demand, and supply of goods and services is spontaneously organized in the regional space, which minimizes consumers’ travel costs. This is why supply functions are concentrated in the most accessible, so-called central places: those where demand reaches the levels necessary for supply to be profitable.” [DEM 03, pp. 139–140, author’s translation]
Figure 2.1.Menu from the restaurant Véry
In the center of Paris, the first restaurants were established in the Palais-Royal district. Rolande Bonnain says:
“At the end of the 18th Century, the first restaurants were found around the Palais-Royal, which was the old center of Paris. Small streets, luxury shops, average restaurants, gambling houses, the district attracted youth, politics, Parisian literature.” [BON 75, author’s translation]
The Palais-Royal and its surrounding area provided the necessary conditions, in terms of market, supply and demand, for the establishment of the first restaurants.
On the supply side, Valérie Ortoli-Denoix explains: “The abolition of corporations unleashed competition, and pork butchers, sellers of roast meat, pastry chefs… no longer had a monopoly on their specialities.” [ORT 90, p. 19, author’s translation]
On the demand side, it is clear that there was a dense and diversified pool of potential customers:
“Legislators who arrived in the capital, provincial legislators who were attracted to the Assembly [and] new wealthy people – for fear of settling down too quickly – formed the cohort of potential clients ready to sit down to eat. And why run around the streets when the best are at the door of the Assembly, in the heart of the city?” [ORT 90, p. 19]
Indeed, Jean-Robert Pitte insists on the relationship between the development of restaurants and the presence of “revolutionary” customers at the Palais-Royal:
“The increase of quality restaurants in Paris dates back to the Revolution. It is true, as has often been said, that a number of talented cooks then lost their masters, emigrated or were executed by guillotine. This was the case for Méot, the chef to Prince de Condé, who settled in 1791 on rue de Valois. But the other reason was the clientele, i.e. the revolutionary leaders themselves. They were determined to remove all symbols of the Ancien Régime1 or religion, but they were determined not to throw the baby out the bathwater. Of the entire cultural and artistic building erected by the monarchy and the court, gastronomy was one of the most easily recoverable, and Marat or Danton were never suspected of being enemies of the Republic because they come to Méot’s sumptuous dinner […]. The provincial deputies present in Paris throughout the Revolution, who lived in pensions, provided a sufficiently large and stable clientele to allow restaurants to multiply.” [PIT 91, pp. 161–162, author’s translation]
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, restaurants, which multiplied very rapidly, seduced and encountered the new gastronomic expectations of Parisian urban customers.
Jean-Paul Aron begins his book Le mangeur du XIXe siècle by presenting the event represented by the opening of the Robert restaurant:
“On July 17, 1789, Prince de Condé went into exile, leaving a plethora of first-rate artists, roasting chefs, sauce chefs and pastry chefs, unemployed. Before the end of the year, Robert, who had managed his kitchens, founded a restaurant. This reclassification was more than a symbol: it crystallized scattered aspirations; it kicked off a new diet.” [ARO 89, p. 17, author’s translation]
Their real and ideal sociocultural role can be specified:
“Because they were born from the fall of the nobles, restaurant cooks and, by analogy, bourgeois houses enjoyed incomparable prestige. In Parisian mythology, they play a prominent role. They regulate worldly life, love and business, and they lend their frameworks to the imagination. The memory of the pioneers hangs over the dinners of the whole century.” [ARO 89, pp. 118–119, author’s translation]
Jean-Paul Aron evokes a “greedy opinion” that was nourished by the relationship between the sphere of restaurateurs and the world of the bourgeoisie:
“Under the Directory, in the street, in the press, in clubs, in gambling rooms, there was a greedy opinion. The glory of restaurants emerged from this sound network; between the right places and the new society a market is concluded: it provided subsidies, they created an unusual image of excellence. An advantageous treatise: the bourgeois enriched the bosses who illustrated them in return. The event disrupted perspectives, grayed the imagination.” [ARO 89, pp. 311–312, author’s translation]
The introduction deputies at the Palais-Royal explain the enthusiasm for regional kitchen restaurants:
“Arriving from all parts of the kingdom, the deputies had kept their provincial customs. The influence of those from Provence was particularly noticeable: the people of Marseille who came to celebrate the Federation’s feast brought along with the hymn of Rouget de Lisle the use of tomatoes, which had been used very sparingly until then, oil and garlic cooking, which would henceforth perfume the agape of the revolutionists.” [AND 55, pp. 32–33, author’s translation]
Thus, the restaurant Les Trois Frères Provencaux acquired a great notoriety:
“Around the same time, Les Trois Frères Provencaux, which served a bouillabaisse and cod brandade, settled in the neighborhood [Palais-Royal]. Even if we can imagine that the Provençal cuisine of this establishment lost part of its local color under the Parisian sky, its introduction represented a small revolution. Culinary exoticism was gaining recognition, and eating out implied the acceptance – or the search – for a certain change of scenery.” [PIT 91, p. 160]
René Héron de Villefosse reports on the opening conditions of the restaurant:
“Rue Helvétius – the former name of our rue Sainte-Anne, at the corner of rue de Louvois – had just opened the restaurant of three Marseille partners: Maneille, Barthélemy, known as Trouin, and Simon, brothers-in-law and whose famous name was first that of the Frères Provençaux. They brought from the banks of the Durance the secret of cod brandade and Provençal-style lamb chops. Gaston Derys even added that they made known in Paris bouillabaisse, green olives and the red mullet of Marseille. With this barber from Porte Saint-Denis, where all the Francs-Comtois used to meet to taste cornstarch, they can be considered as the inventors of regional cuisine in the capital. They are about to move into the Palais-Égalité.” [HER 56, pp. 133–134, author’s translation]
In the past (see Figure 2.2), the concentration of restaurants was remarkable and it is the same situation today (see Figure 2.3), at the Palais-Royal.
Figure 2.2.Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal at the end of the 18th Century and under the influence of the Empire (source: according to [PIT 91, p. 163]). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip
Figure 2.3.Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal today (source: field research). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip
Adil Alkenzawi describes the Palais-Royal as an urban plateau in the center of the city of Paris:
