Why Restaurants Matter

Restaurants began in Paris in the middle of the 18th century. The earliest restaurants sold salubrious bouillons—which was what the word “restaurant” originally meant, a restorative broth—and other healthy offerings to people worried about digestion and suspicious of inns and table d’hôtes. An ad for the world’s first restaurant, cited in historian Rebecca L. Spang’s book The Invention of the Restaurant, proclaims via couplet: “Here are tasty sauces to titillate your bland palate, Here the effete find healthy chests.”