The French Revolution and Haute Cuisine

Beauvilliers Art Cuisinier – Antoine B. Beauvilliers was a pioneering restaurateur who opened the first prominent grand restaurant in Paris and wrote the cookbook “L'Art du Cuisinier.” Public Domain Image 

The Boulanger Case

It was around 1765 that a certain Boulanger, known as “Champ d'Oiseaux” or “Chantoiseau,” opened a shop near the Louvre. It sells "restaurants" or "restaurant broths", that is, meat-based consommés suitable for restoring weakened forces. Since the end of the Middle Ages, the word “restaurant” has meant those rich broths in which poultry, beef, different roots, onions, herbs and, depending on the recipes, spices, candied sugar, toasted bread or barley, butter, as well as to unusual-looking ingredients such as dried rose petals, Damascus grapes, amber and so on. To attract customers, Boulanger had this Gospel maxim from Matthew painted on the facade of his restaurant (11:28)
“Come to me omnes qui stomacho laboratis et ego vos restaurabo.” Or, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will refresh you.”

But he was not satisfied with serving broth; he also prepared mutton feet in white sauce, thereby undermining the monopoly of the street vendor groups. They immediately brought him to trial, at the end of which, against all expectations, a judge of the Paris Parliament agrees to Boulanger: a signal of crisis for the street vendors that would soon disappear in the whirlwind of the revolutionary storm, but a gesture of encouragement to a new profession that strongly felt the need.

From that moment, thanks to the greater accuracy of the service and the popularity achieved, the doors of success opened in Boulanger. In a letter addressed to Sophie Volland, Diderot gives this opinion: I was going out … to go to dinner at the restaurateur in the rue des Poulies; you eat well there, but at a high price. 

Dissemination of the “Restaurant” Concept

In the years preceding the French Revolution, a number of establishments began serving more refined dishes divided into portions, no longer on a common table, but on small tables covered with tablecloths, individual or reserved for a group of already formed customers.

In 1782, Antoine Beauvilliers, having left the service of the Count of Provence — the future Louis XVIII —opened a restaurant in the Rue de Richelieu under the banner of the Grande Taverne de Londres. Beauvilliers recognized the customers and called them by name, addressing the foreign ones in their language and twirling around the room with a sword at his side. The prices he charged were in proportion to his many talents.

Brillat-Savarin wrote about him: “He [Was] the greatest restaurateur in Paris for fifteen years. ... he was the first to have an elegant dining room, well-dressed waiters, a well-kept cellar and a superior kitchen . . . and it seemed that he was giving his guests a very special attention.” It was the coming of the Revolution that made the fortunes of the concept of a restaurant. 

A number of good cooks of the Court and the Nobility lost their masters to the guillotine or fled abroad. Thus, some of these professionals reinvented themselves by offering food to the new ruling class. Their new patrons were the provincial deputies present in Paris, who near the places where they met, found the pleasures of the palate and all of the comforts of dining, including those most prosaic. It was therefore the Revolution that allowed haute cuisine to leave the Royal Court environment.

The restaurants, from the hundred that were, grew in number to 500 or 600 under the Empire and 3,000 during the Restoration.
Grimod de la Reynière wrote in 1804 in his Almanach des Gourmands: “The hearts of most wealthy Parisians suddenly turned into a gizzard . . . as a result, there is no city in the world where traders of edible products have soared. In Paris there are one hundred restaurants for a bookseller.” Throughout the 19th century, the overall level of eating establishments improved significantly, although several leftover “dealers of food” survived.

The refinement of the old aristocratic houses is found in the luxury restaurants of the great boulevards in Paris. Here the recipes, developed to perfection, and codified by Antonin Careme, the cook of the “extraordinary events” (these were official state meals on great occasions) of the Empire and of the Restoration are made, and then by his successors — Dugléré, Dubois and Escoffier.

The preparation lists of these places are as long as the menus of the great occasions of the ancien régime could be, but in this case it is the customer who makes the selection of the foods he wants to eat, just like the wines he wants to drink.

The French Revolution, far from killing food creativity and calling into question this aspect of the culture of the aristocratic class, caused the culinary art to be transferred to the bourgeoisie and also, in part, to the popular classes, through the establishment of the restaurant.

From France, the new “refreshment” place spreads throughout the West, to reach even the great Italian cities after the unity of the nation (1861). — From Taccuini Gastrosofici

Contributor, Eva Sorribas Costantini, was born in Barcelona Spain, but currently lives in Rome Italy. She is a graduate of La Sapienza University of Rome, specializing in in the courses of Etiquette, Good Manners and Costume Paths, Ceremonial, Protocol and Institutional Etiquette. She has performed Basic and Advance courses in Etiquette and Good Manners at the Accademia Italiana Galateo in the city of Rome, and has studied British Etiquette, English Afternoon Tea, Social History of Tea and Colonial Drinks. She also worked in the luxury retail fashion sector in window dressing, image consultancy and fashion history. Her expertise is in the history of dress code and court dresses with a focus on the psychology of fashion, gender identity, body, image and symbolism of color.

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