TIL: the invention of restaurant

Food retailers in Paris before the Revolution were tightly controlled by numerous laws, and regularly engaged in turf wars. One small group discovered that pandering to the tastes of the wealthy indisposed (who we would today call ‘the worried well’) was a nice niche market that got them around some of the regulations. They produced small, appetite-tempting, easily digested dishes called restaurants. Not all restaurants were soups – there were delicate dishes of such things as eggs, ‘creams’ and preserves too – but soups were certainly the dishes most strongly identified with the restoration of health.


--- Soup, by Janet Clarkson. 2010.