History of Food Service Industry

Greece and Rome In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, thermopolia (singular thermopolium) were small restaurant-bars that offered food and drinks to customers.

A typical thermopolium had little L-shaped counters in which large storage vessels were sunk, which would contain either hot or cold food.

Their popularity was linked to the lack of kitchens in many dwellings and the ease with which people could purchase prepared foods. Furthermore, eating out was considered a very important aspect of socializing.

In Pompeii, 158 thermopolia with a service counter have been identified across the whole town area. They were concentrated along the main axis of the town and the public spaces where they were frequented by the locals.

Food catering establishment which may be described as restaurant were known since the 12th century in Hangzhou, a cultural, political and economic center during China’s Song Dynasty. Emperor Taizu of Song Map of Hangzhou, China

Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House, was established in Kaifeng, China, is considered the world’s oldest operating restaurant, first opening in 1153 AD during the Jing Dynasty, and still serving up meals today. Probably growing out of the tea houses and taverns that catered to travelers.

Hangzhou’s restaurants blossomed into an industry catering to locals as well. Restaurants catered to different styles of cuisine, price brackets, and religious requirements.

In the West, even when inns and taverns were known from antiquity, these were establishments aimed at travelers, and in general locals would rarely eat there. Restaurants, as businesses dedicated to the serving of food, and where specific dishes are ordered by the guest and generally prepared according to this order emerged only in the 18th century

Since there are no sufficient documents to prove that the Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House is the oldest restaurant in the world, the official title was given by Guinness Book Records to Sobrino de Botín.

This restaurant is located in Calle de los Cuchilleros 17, 28005 in Madrid, Spain. It was established in 1725 and recognized as the world’s oldest eatery.

Part of the restaurant’s folklore has it that a young Francisco Goya worked there as a waiter whilst he was waiting to get a place at Madrid’s. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/goya/hd_goya.htm

Specialty of the Sobrino is cochinillo asado or roast suckling pig Specialty of the Sobrino is cochinillo asado or roast suckling pig. Other signature dishes include sopa de ajo, an egg, poached in chicken broth, and laced with sherry and garlic, and the favorite pick-me-up with Madrileño revelers.

The term restaurant (from the French restaurer) first appeared in the 16th century, meaning “a food which restores” and referred specifically to a rich highly flavored soup.

It was first applied to an eating establishment at around 1765 founded by a Parisian soup-seller named Boulanger.

The first restaurant in the form that became standard (customers sitting down with individual portions at individual tables, selecting food from menus, during fixed opening hours) was the Grand Taverne de Londres (the Great Tavern of London),

founded in Paris in 1782 by a man named Antoine Beauvilliers, a leading culinary writer and gastronomic authority who achieved a reputation as a successful restaurateur and later wrote what became a standard cook book L’ Art du cuisiner. Antoine Beauvilliers

Restaurants became commonplace in French after the French Revolution broke up catering guilds and forced the aristocracy to flee, leaving a retinue of servants with the skills to cook excellent food: while at the same time numerous provincials arrived in Paris with no family to cook for them. Restaurants were the means by which these two could be brought together and the French tradition of dining out was born.

In this period the star chef, George Auguste Escoffier, often credited with founding class French cuisine, flourished, becoming known as the “Cook of Kings and the Kings of Cooks”.

Georges Auguste Escoffier was a very fascinating figure with panache (puh-nash) to match. (Panache - a grand or flamboyant manner; verve; style; flair)

Born in the middle of the 19th century, Escoffier’s life spanned almost 90 years though his influence to the cooking world has remained timeless.

As a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who created the methods of what we now consider traditional French cuisine, Escoffier notably created the hierarchy of the kitchen or better known as the “Brigade de Cuisine. “

George Auguste Escofier, was a french chef, restauratuer and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a near-legendary figure among chefs and gourmets, and was one of the most important leaders in the development of modern French cuisine.

Much of Escoffier’s technique was based on that of Antoine Careme, the founder of French Grande Cuisine, but Escoffier’s contributions to cooking was to elevate it to the status of a respected profession, and to introduce discipline and sobriety where the brigade system, with each section run by a chef de partie. A chef de partie is a cook who is in charge of one area of a restaurant's kitchen. Antoine Careme

He also replaced the practice of service ä la francaise ( serving all dishes at once) with service ä la russe (serving each dish in the order printed on the menu). Table d’hote menu - menu offering a complete meal with limited choices at a fixed price A la carte menu - A la carte it means that all the items on the menu are separate, meaning you have to order it to have it.

A leading restaurant of the Napoleonic era was the very which was lavishly decorated, and boasted a menu with extensive choices of soups, fish and meat dishes, and scores of side dishes.

Although absorbed by a neighboring business in 1869, the resulting establishment Le Grand Vefour is still in business in the 21sth century.

The most illustrious of all those restaurants in Paris in the 19th century was the Café Anglais (the “English Coffee Shop”) on the Boulevard de Italiens, showing for a second time the high regard that Parisians evidently had for London, England.

Restaurants then spread rapidly across the world, with the first in the United States (Julien’s Restarator) opening in Boston in 1794.

Most however continued on the standard approach (service a la francaise) of providing a shared meal on the table to which customers would then help themselves, something which encouraged them to eat rather quickly.

The modern formal style of dining, where customers are given a plate with the food already arranged on it, is known as Service a la russe, as it is said to have been introduced to France by the Russian Prince Kurakin in the 1810s, from where it spread rapidly to England and beyond.

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