Olivier Poels 5:40 p.m., December 24, 2021
On September 8, Éric Besnard's "Délicieux" came out with Grégory Gadebois and Isabelle Carré.
A film which tells the birth of the first restaurants in the provinces.
The story takes place in Cantal just before the revolution.
It is a fiction which is however quite close to what happened at the time and which led to the birth of restaurants.
The first restaurant certified as such was opened in France, in Paris in 1765 by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau.
It is located rue des Poulies, near the Louvre.
It uses the codes of the current restaurant: separate tables and multiple choice menu (mainly broths).
His plan was to allow those who had few means to eat properly: "come to me those whose stomachs are sulfur and I will restore you" was it inscribed on its storefront.
This is when the word “restaurant” will take on its current meaning, that which designates a place where we eat… previously, it meant a dish, a soup, a broth. Subsequently, he will come up with a recipe for poultry with chicken sauce (white sauce with an egg yolk, a dash of lemon, butter and often mushrooms) and which will bring him success and concern. Success because the dish is very popular ... worries because the roasters of the capital are suing him.
Until then, there were inns which were frequented by travelers who stopped to allow their horses to rest and who took the opportunity to eat… we ate a single dish on a large table.
It was often very bad.
Only the nobles who had cooks ate well.
Contrary to what one might think, Mathurin Roze from Chantoiseau was not a cook or an innkeeper… but an economist.
The French revolution will throw many cooks on the street, deprived of their jobs in noble families.
The latter will then join these places of restoration or open new ones.
There are only a few restaurants before 1789, there are 3000, 30 years later.