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Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment that serves prepared food and
beverages to be consumed on the premises. The term covers a
multiplicity of venues and a diversity of styles of cuisine.
Restaurants are sometimes a feature of a larger complex, typically a
hotel, where the dining amenities are provided for the convenience of
the residents and, of course, for the hotel to maximise their potential
revenue. Such restaurants are often also open to non-residents.
The term restaurant (from the French restaurer, to restore) first
appeared in the 16th century, meaning "a food which restores", and
referred specifically to a rich, highly flavoured soup.
According to The Guinness Book of Records, the Sobrino de Botin in
Madrid, Spain is the oldest restaurant in existence today. It opened in
1725.
The modern sense of the word was born around 1765 when a Parisian
soup-seller named Boulanger opened his establishment. 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,
founded in 1782 by a man named Beauvilliers.
Whilst inns and taverns were known from antiquity, these were
establishments aimed at travellers, and in general locals would rarely
eat there. The restaurant became established in France 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;
whilst 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 Antonin Carême, often credited with
founding classic French cuisine, flourished, becoming known as the
"Cook of Kings and the King of Cooks."
Restaurants spread rapidly to the United States, with the first
(Jullien's Restarator) opening in Boston in 1794, and they spread
rapidly thereafter. Most however continued on the standard approach
(Service à la française) 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 à 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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