In an earlier post I told you about the history of public restrooms in Paris (the place where a chef’s work ends). Now it’s time to tell you, in brief, the history of the place where a chef’s work reaches its peak: Paris restaurants.
The restaurant starts out as health food
Until the mid-18th century, there were no restaurants in Paris in the sense we know them today. Anyone who didn’t cook at home usually had to eat at inns, and their terrible food was notorious far and wide (nobles and wealthy people, of course, enjoyed the services of chefs like François Vatel, about whom I wrote before).
The change in public dining began in 1766, when two men named Roze and Pontaille opened an eating house that served a dish called “restaurant” (restaurant). This restaurant was a soup made from beef or chicken that simmered for many hours in a pot of boiling water. The soup was considered the ultimate health food of its day, since doctors believed it could restore the body’s strength after an illness (hence the name “restaurant,” from the French verb restaurer, to restore).
Since, back then as today, plenty of people were looking for a healthy alternative for lunch and dinner, the eating house became a success story, and the establishment ended up named after the dish it served, which is how we got the restaurant. But despite Roze and Pontaille’s success, the real breakthrough for restaurants, and especially fine dining, should be credited to the French Revolution, which drastically cut the number of nobles and left many chefs out of work.
These chefs began opening upscale restaurants, which found no small amount of success among the new elites. Some of these restaurants have survived to this day, the most striking example being Le Grand Véfour, located in the Palais-Royal, which still serves excellent, if pricey, food. One of that restaurant’s famous clients was Napoleon, who used to sit there with his young love, Joséphine. Napoleon, who was never known as a great gourmet, preferred eating on the battlefield to dining in restaurants, and he led France to some of its greatest victories, but also to a spectacular defeat in 1814. That defeat led, quite by chance, to the invention of a new kind of restaurant: the bistro.
The Russians invent the bistro
It all began when the armies of the allied powers (England, Austria, Prussia and Russia) occupied Paris. The Russian soldiers, who were apparently short on patience and didn’t much appreciate the French pace of eating, demanded that restaurant owners serve them fast food. Since the Russian word for “fast” is “bystro,” the French started calling restaurants that served relatively simple food quickly “bistro.” That’s how many of the restaurants in Paris serving regional cuisine came to be, and in them you can still get a pretty good lunch at a reasonable price (at plenty of decent bistros you can get a two or three course lunch for around 20 euros per person).
The brasserie comes from Alsace
Napoleon had a nephew named Louis Napoleon, who in 1851, after a military coup, became Emperor Napoleon III. That controversial man, more responsible than anyone else for the current look of Paris, was also responsible for one of France’s biggest defeats, in its war with Prussia (1870-1871).
Following that defeat, the regions of Alsace and Lorraine were taken from France and became part of the German Empire, which was proclaimed at the Palace of Versailles. Many French people living in Alsace at the time had no interest in living under German rule and decided to move to Paris. These migrants brought the dishes of their home region with them and opened restaurants called “brasserie.”
Price-wise, these restaurants fall somewhere between a restaurant and a bistro, and they serve dishes typical of the Alsace region, the most famous of which is choucroute, made of cooked cabbage, potatoes, meat and sausages. The most famous brasseries today are Bofinger, near Place de la Bastille, and Lipp, where Ernest Hemingway liked to sit.
Hungry? Looking for a good restaurant in Paris?
That’s exactly why I put together this page of recommendations, so your next meal in Paris won’t be a letdown.
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