The invention of the restaurant in the 18thand 19th centuryPauloSeidlHistoireet Culture de lAlimentationUniversite Francois RabelaisIntroductionThe objective of this short summary is, in light of abrief literature review, to analyze the grounds upon which the restaurant wasinvented in the late 18th and early 19th century inParis. It also attempts to differentiate common lodges and other entrepreneursthat sold food, which had catered mostly to travelers since Ancient times, fromthe establishments as we know them today.DevelopmentThe origins of the restaurant can be traced as far asthe limits between pre-history and history. In places like Rome and China,lodges already offered travelers a bed, a stable for their horses, but aboveall, a hot restoring meal. Those businesses were often located by a major road,in central areas or near main intersections.A few centuries later, taverns became common in moreurban areas, but they served mostly drinks while offering entertainment. Cafes,a 17th century invention, also became popular in large Europeancities, but did not serve any food, except for pastries and biscuits to accompanycoffee. By that time, rotisseurs and patissiers were also selling prepared foods, like pastries, roasts, or pates. Finally,there were the table dhotes (ordinaries in Britain), which were all you can eat buffetswith a fixed price, no printed menus, no separate tables or flexible time,regarded by many as a place with no finesseor charm. But these businesses had little to do with restaurantsas we know them today, which did not come to exist until the 1760s in the cityof Paris. At that time, it became common for convalescents to consume a verythick stock, consisting of vegetables but mostly meats, which were slowlysimmered for many hours. It was believed that by breaking down proteinscontained in meat, a sick person would get the necessary nourishment withoutthe hassles of a long digestion.It soon became fashionable for Parisians to frequenthouses which prepared and served the restaurant,a restoring soup. Originally, a restaurantwas not a place, but the name of a soup. By the end of the 18thcentury, the so-called restaurant rooms, or houses which served restaurants, were already serving moresolid food to its growing clientele. It was not until shortly after the French Revolution,however, that restaurants took shape and proliferated. First, because with theend of absolutism, haut-cuisine becameaccessible to the bourgeoisie, since most of the aristocracy and nobility hadbeen imprisoned or executed. Second, their chefs had lost their jobs and promptlybecame restaurateurs themselves, incrementing the growing number of restaurantsexisting in the city. Third, with the fall of Versailles, Paris doubled itspopulation between 1800 and 1850, augmenting a public increasingly eager tovisit a restaurant. Finally, with escalating demand, competition played animportant role in the development of restaurants, boosting chefs creativityand resourcefulness. Between the late 18th century and 1820, forinstance, the number of restaurants increased from a mere one hundred to 3,000houses. It is worth mentioning that around that time, the workof prominent professionals also spurred the hautcuisine and consequently the restaurants that served it. In thesociological field, Brillat-Savarin proposes a breakthrough in food literaturewith The physiology of taste. Injournalism, the figure of Grimod de la Reyniere appears as the firstgastronomic journalist. At last, Antonin Careme,