Whenever one plans an outing or food for that matter, the first thing that comes to mind is a restaurant. Presence of innumerable food shops and eating places has always been a part of our social lives. The restaurants, a French invention, began to appear on the social scenario in the later half of 18th century.
A Tavern and a restaurant are different from each other though both offer food to its customers. A tavern offers a set menu at a set price and is served only at a fixed time of the day. Whereas in a restaurant the customer chooses his own dishes from a set menu, at time of the day. In 1783 Beauvilliers opened his own restaurant. From 1789 there were so many chefs and other restaurant industry related personnel in the market for employment.
This was a golden period for the restaurant industry. Many chefs who had earlier fled France because of the Russian revolution and now settled in England, shifted their talents from preparing food for the nobility to providing the illusion of nobility for the bourgeoisie. In the year 1789, the number of restaurants increased to more than five hundred from a mere 100, in a matter of about 15 years.
Because of this revolution in restaurants number, dining pattern changed.
From the glitter and glamour of the dining rooms, let~s talk about the boiler room of the kitchens. Count von Rumford, an American, has the credit of introducing the first commercially available ~modern~ kitchen ranges, which began to appear about 1800. His invention revolutionized the restaurant kitchen. It brought the reduction in the number of dishes on the menu, thus roasts virtually vanished from restaurant menus and a range of dishes that could be prepared in a minute took over such as pan-frying. Since then eating was never the same again. It changed the eating-out as radically as the French Revolution did politics.
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.
Lenny Reponas is the owner of Restaurant Hwy
one of the leading information resources on restaurants available on line. For more questions, visit http://www.restauranthwy.com
