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Growth of Restaurants Over the Years
By Lenny Reponas
An outing has almost become synonymous with eating out in a restaurant. Today's restaurants can be traced back to the last part of the eighteenth century, when they made their appearance in France. They existed even before this period in the form of taverns and food shops.
The difference between a tavern and restaurant is that in the latter there was a set menu served at a set hour for a set price, while in a restaurant you chose individual, and individually priced dishes from a menu, at anytime of the day. Around 1783 Beauvilliers, once chef to the Comtede Provence (who later became Louis XVIII), opened the first restaurant in the Palais Royale. From 1789 onwards, market was flooded with chefs and other personnel. Beauvilliers' establishment closed down ten years later in 1793 because of the French Revolution. Beauvilliers left quickly for an enforced sojourn in England. In fact, large numbers fled to other European countries particularly England, then the richest country in Europe.
Many of the chefs turned their talents from preparing food for the nobility to providing the illusion of nobility for a burgeoning bourgeoisie. It became a golden age for restaurants whose number increased more than five-fold in fifteen years, from one hundred in 1789 to between five and six hundred in 1804. Restaurant revolution brought many changes in the dining patterns. It introduced 11 am and 12 noon d'jeuner'la fourchette (breakfast with a fork), preceded by petit-d'jeuner (breakfast).
In a restaurant, other than the glitzy and glamorous Dining areas, there are also the kitchens where the actual food preparation takes place. In the kitchens are the boiler rooms. In around 1800 Count von Rumford, an American introduced the first commercially available modern kitchen ranges. This invention revolutionized the restaurant kitchen. Because of introduction of kitchen range the number of dishes on the menu card being offered to the customer reduced, moreover the dishes that could be prepared fast were more on the offing. Roasts were not offered on many menu cards but pan fried stuff which took very short while to cook was offered to the customers more. Thus eating out is totally a different experience than what it was earlier.
The following summarizes the history of restaurants and the restaurant chains:
The First Restaurant that came to be is supposedly a soup vendor who opened his business in Paris in 1765.
Cafeteria: The first cafeteria was opened by the YWCA of Kansas City, Mo.
The first ever Drive-In Restaurant opened in Glendale, California in 1936. In Drive in Restaurants the food to the customer is served while they are sitting in their cars. This type of restaurants became most popular in around 1950s.
McDonalds Happy Meals: The McDonald Fast Food Revolution was started by Ray Kroc in 1954, which spread across the world. He disciplined the production of hamburgers, French fries and milk shakes. McDonalds tested their first Happy Meal in 1977 in St Louis. They served it nationwide in 1979 for the first time.
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Lenny Reponas is the owner of Restaurant Hwy one of the leading information resources on restaurants available on line.
For more information, and immediate access to his articles library, visit http://www.restauranthwy.com.
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