Restaurant: How It All Began
In the 1760s, a new kind of establishment started popping up in Paris, catering to the French and fancy. These places had tables, menus, and servers. They even called themselves \u201crestaurants,\u201d and you might have too, were it not for one key difference: these restaurants were places you went not to eat. Well, not to chew anyway. Because they weren\u2019t in the business of feeding their genteel clientele, but of soothing their frayed nerves \u2014with premium medicinal soups. Soups which were also called \u201crestaurants\u201d! \nIn this episode: How restaurants evolved from a soup to a chic Parisian soup spa to the diverse, loved\u2014and sorely missed\u2014solid food eateries of today.\nGuests:\xa0\nRebecca Spang\xa0is a professor of history at Indiana University.\nStephani Robson is senior lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.\nFootnotes & Further Reading:\xa0\nFor more on early bouillon-sipping establishments and the rise of restaurants, take a peek at Rebecca Spang\u2019s book, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture.\xa0\nStill can\u2019t get enough restaurant history? Check out Dining Out: A Global History of Restaurants.\nIf you, like Stephani Robson, are passionate about optimal chair spacing, check out one of her studies on the subject.\xa0\nTo see some of Stephani\u2019s work in action, listen to this collaborative episode from Planet Money and The Sporkful, on \u201cThe Great Data-Driven Restaurant Makeover.\u201d\nCredits:\xa0\nScience Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Elah Feder is our editor and producer. We had story editing from Nathan Tobey. Daniel Peterschmidt contributed sound design and wrote all our music, except the accordion piece which was by Dana Boul\xe9 and the final piece by Jazz at the Mladost Club. We had research help from Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Chris Wood mastered the episode, and we had fact checking by Michelle Harris. Special thanks to Gregg Rapp for talking to us about menu engineering. Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer.