Daniel Martinez

Restaurant Born of Revolution Daniel Martinez So what is a restaurant, anyway? Depends on who might be asked, I suppose. But all in all restaurants are hubs of both love and hate; of creation and destruction; of chivalry and downright misogyny. Restaurants are the perfect representation of any highly-convoluted relationship, with poor communication, unreasonable demands, myopic understanding and potentially grand success or failure. A restaurant is defined as being a business that prepares and serves food and drink for customers, in exchange for money. Being a business, it must of course be staffed. Generally speaking, this is broken down relative to in which part of the restaurant an individual works, whether most often or one hundred per cent of the time. “Front of the House” generally refers to waitstaff, bussers, hosts, bartenders, barbacks, and sommeliers; while “Back of the House” staff refers, in general, to the chef or chefs, the line and prep cooks, and the dishwashers. The front of the house staff is usually managed by one holding the title of Restaurant- or General Manager; while back of the house staff is usually managed by one holding the title of Executive Chef, Sous Chef, or Kitchen Manager. The modern concept of the restaurant began in the 18th Century; prior to that, people ate communally at the local tavern, which was quite likely to be crowded, loud, and possibly prone to serving questionable food. However, we do know that in Ancient Greece and Rome patrons would frequent what was referred to as thermopolia​, small restaurants/bars that were probably popular due to the lack of a kitchen in individuals’ homes; and we know that restaurants were not unknown in China, as early as the 11th Century AD: They were probably born of the tea houses utilized by travellers. As for the modern restaurant, with separate tables and a menu;—this was created in Paris in the 18th Century, by a man named Boulanger. Boulanger’s menu focussed on soups prepared with meat and eggs as a base; these were called ​restaurants, translated to English as “restoratives”. Boulanger called his type of establishment a “bouillon”. Technically a bouillon is defined as a broth prepared by stewing meat, fish, or vegetables in water; so the fact that his menu was focussed on soups makes perfect sense. It is a bit interesting, at least to me, to note that the product M. Boulanger sold (restaurants) became the name of the establishment and industry. The first “luxury” restaurant was called Taverne Anglaise, and it was founded in 1786 by a man named Antoine Beauvilliers, a former chef to the Count of Provence at the Palais-Röial. His establishment featured mahogany tables with linen tablecloths, chandeliers, a wine list, a menu of various fairly elaborate dishes, and a well-dressed and -trained waitstaff to sell it. Later in the year the Provost of Paris recognized this new type of business officially, thereby authorizing such establishments to take in clients and serve them food—until eleven in the winter, and until midnight in the summer. In 1791 there came a rival restaurant, called Meot; it was opened by the former chef of the Duke of Orleans. By the end of the century there were many luxury restaurants, including Huré, Couvert espagnol, Grotte flamande, Vèry, Masse, and the Café des Chartes (which is still open to this day, albeit while operating under the name Grand Vefour). The timing makes perfect sense, especially when one considers that the birth of restaurants and so-called ​haute cuisine ​is often described as a direct result of the French Revolution, which overthrew the royal class (if not beheaded its members). The chefs not really being the problem, suddenly Parisian society was faced with an influx of highly-skilled professionals requiring an income. Meanwhile, in the new nation across the pond, restaurants gained popularity in America around the same time, originally in the form of coffee houses and oyster bars. The major difference between these and other establishments serving food and/or drink, was that these coffee shops and oyster bars did not offer lodging in addition to their fare. Neither were these early eateries referred to as “restaurants”: They were known as victualing houses, eating houses, and restorators. As the middle class became more affluent, the offerings became more sophisticated, and restaurants themselves, often to be found in more highly-populated urban areas, gained in popularity overall. The highest concentration of these eating establishments was to be found in the West, followed by industrialized cities in the East; the lowest number of restaurants was in the South. Over time restaurants in America have been subject to regulation, most often by frequent health inspections, which are intended to maintain standards of cleanliness and hygiene, relative to established standards of public health and safety. In 1950, approximately 25% of meals were consumed outside the home; by 1990 this number had increased to 46%—so it makes sense why we would want to ensure, insofar as possible, the safety of our food, and its handling and preparation! Indeed, the most common violations include storage of food at improper temperatures, improper sanitization of equipment, and improper disposal of potentially hazardous chemicals. But for now let us consider some of the other factors which regulate industry: It is often said in kitchens, that without the French we would have nothing—or, at least, we would not have that which we have today, as far as regards technique, or organization, or formality, and so on. But what does that really mean? If we had restaurants in ancient Greece and Rome, and even China, then why do they not get the credit they are due? And I will offer a disclaimer, here: Henri Soule will not be discussed, mostly because we are focussed on back of the house operations. But I will give him this notable mention, and acknowledge that it was he who defined fine cuisine in America in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Now, back to France. Although remembered historically, of course social memory is short and, indeed, the modern restaurant ​did originate in France, with Monsieurs Boulanger and Beauvilliers. The former prepared and served his various soups, while the latter established a “luxury” restaurant; but aside from decor and a bit of a wine list, and a well-dressed staff, from whence came the ​food? O ​ ften referred to as cuisine classique nowadays, originally these luxurious establishments offered what they called ​haute cuisine ​(ot kwi-zeen), also called ​grand cuisine. ​Haute cuisine translates literally as “high cooking”, and generally it refers to the cuisine of a fine-dining or “gourmet” restaurant, and luxury resorts and hotels, which is characterized as being elaborately presented and sophisticatedly prepared by a large, hierarchical kitchen staff, offered in small portions but in multitudes of courses. Le cuisinier francois was written and published in 1653 by a chef and writer named Francoise Pierre de la Varenne, born in Burgundy in 1615. One of his contemporaries was Francois Massialot, who wrote ​Le cuisine roial et bourgeois, which first appeared as a single volume in 1691; in 1712 it was reissued as two volumes, and by 1734 the work had expanded to three full volumes. The original was translated to English by 1702, and was used by professional chefs up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Massialot’s innovations included alphabetizing his recipes, adding white wine to fish stock, a recipe for meringues (by the name of “meringue”), and creme brulee; but these pale, somewhat, in comparison to what La Varenne had to offer. Said to have got his start in the kitchens of Queen Marie de Medici, by the middle of the seventeenth century La Varenne already had ten years’ experience as the ​chef de cuisine to Nicolas Chalon de Ble, ​marquis d’uxelles​. In 1650 La Varenne published his first book on cookery, which dealt with jellies, jams, preserves, and salads. Hitherto salads had really seen no prominence in books on cookery; then came ​Le cuisinier francois, which was not only the first to codify French cookery, but also the first to put into writing all the innovations of 17th-Century French kitchens: They abandoned the formerly favored exotic (and therefore expensive) spices and the heavy sauces, replacing them with more natural flavors and various local herbs. There were new vegetables introduced to the diet, including artichokes, cucumbers, pears, asparagus, and cauliflower; special care was taken in the preparation of meats, in order to maximize their flavor; fish was required to be as fresh as possible, thanks in large part to better shipping practices; and a clear divide was introduced, to distinguish salted foods as different, and meant to be served separate, from sweet foods (thus replacing the previous trend, born of Italian influence, of combining sweet and salty). In addition to these tenets of Western kitchens, which we still see today, it was La Varenne who introduced the ​bouquet garnis, fonds de cuisine ​(stocks), ​a la mode ​and ​au bleu (very rare), and the use of egg whites in clarification (as for consommes); he was the first to introduce the bisque, as well as Sauce Bechamel; he replaced with ​roux, ​the crumbled bread formerly used to thicken various sauces; he also replaced the lard formerly used to make ​roux, with butter. He introduced an early version of Hollandaise Sauce (then, as now, served with asparagus); he immortalized his patron, the Marquis d’Uxelle, in the creation of ​duxelles, a preparation of finely-minced mushrooms, shallots, and thyme, used in any number of applications (including fish and vegetables); and he even addressed the cooking of vegetables, which before La Varenne was not entirely common. Le cuisinier francois also contains the earliest printed recipe for ​mille-feuille, the classic French dessert prepared with puff pastry (​pate feuillete); ​so it should come as no surprise that La Varenne’s third book, published in 1653, was entitled ​Le Patissier francois, and served as the first really comprehensive work on French pastry-making. Also in 1653, ​Le cuisiner francois became the first French cookbook translated to English. By 1662 an omnibus edition was available, containing all three works. Between La Varenne and Massialot, the French were certainly the predominant players in the kitchen game; and although the former passed in 1678, and Massialot passed in 1733, their works continued to influence the cuisine and palates of upper-class Europeans even after their deaths. The next torch-bearer of French and haute cuisine was born in 1784, and he was named Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême. Widely considered to be one of the first internationally-known “celebrity” chefs, Carême was abandoned in the midst of the French Revolution by his parents, at only ten years of age. He found work in a chophouse in Paris, in exchange for room and board; and by the age of fourteen he was formally apprenticed to Monsieur Sylvian Bailly, an innovative Parisian pastry chef who would eventually display many of Carême’s ​pièces montées in his shop window, thus gaining the young apprentice his initial notoriety. Generally architectural in design, Carême specialized in centerpieces of considerable size made entirely of sugar, pastry, and marzipan. He also did freelance work for Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and for Napoleon himself. In 1804, when Napoleon gave Talleyrand funds to purchase the Château de Valençay, a large estate outside of Paris, Talleyrand made the purchase, took up residence, and took twenty year-old Antonin Carême with him. During the Congress of Vienna, which was meant to establish a long-term peace plan for Europe in the aftermath of both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Talleyrand played host to delegates, representatives, and members of the upper classes of Europe; and Carême managed to alter the tastes and palates of that same aristocracy, while they were there. Talleyrand challenged Carême, pushing him to create a years’ worth of menus without repeating himself, and using only seasonal ingredients. Ultimately Carême met the challenge, thus completing his training and, after the fall of Napoleon, he went on to London, to become ​chef de cuisine to the future King George IV (then Prince-Regent). After some time he accepted an offer from Tsar Alexander I of Russia to work as chef, and although Carême did travel to Russia, his stay there was so brief that he never even prepared one meal for the dignitary; and when he returned to Paris he became chef to the banker, James Mayer Rothschild. In general Carême is credited with creating the traditional chef’s hat, the ​toque, the pleats of which are said to represent the many ways a chef can cook an egg. He is also credited with simplifying the cuisine of his predecessors, and codifying the many sauces found throughout French cuisine, calling them the “Mother Sauces” (Espagnole, Veloute, Allemande, and Bechamel). Thirteen years after Carême’s passing in 1833, George Auguste Escoffier came into the world in 1846. Much of the technique used by the “Grandfather of French Cuisine” was derived from Carême’s, that is true; but Escoffier is credited with simplifying even further Carême’s cuisine, as well as re-codifying the Mother Sauces and elevating cookery to the status of a respected profession, by introducing his brigade system to the kitchen, and also with the introduction of organized discipline. To this day Escoffier’s ​Le Guide Culinaire is still used as a major culinary reference, and he was known in the French press as “roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois”, or the king of chefs and chef of kings. Escoffier got his start at the age of thirteen, when his father took him out of school to work in his uncle’s restaurant, Le Restaurant Français. Before his twentieth year, Escoffier gained the position of ​commis-rotisseur at La Petit Moulin-Rouge in Paris, but after a few short months he got called to active duty and spent the next seven years as an army chef, stationed throughout France. Near the end of his tenure he was ​chef de cuisine to the Rhine Army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and sometime between the end of his active duty and 1878 he opened his restaurant, Le Faison d’Or (the Golden Pheasant) in Cannes. Two years later he married his wife, Delphine Daphis, and four years after that he moved to Monte Carlo to be employed by Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz, at the new Grand Hotel. He spent his winters there, and then in the summertime he’d work the kitchens at the Grand Hotel National, in Lucerne (and also managed by Ritz). From 1890 through 1898 Escoffier and Ritz, along with ​maitre d’hotel Louis Echenard, were employed at the Savoy Hotel in London. There, the Prince of Wales was a common face to be seen, and it also became common to see aristocratic women dining in public at the Savoy. At that hotel Escoffier invented Peach Melba for the Austrian singer Nellie Melba in 1893, and four years later he invented Melba Toast for the same. But in 1898 Escoffier, Ritz, and Echenard were all dismissed from the Savoy Hotel, being accused of negligence, breach of duty, and mismanagement. The case would not be settled until two years later, in 1900, in private, when all three men signed confessions admitting to fraud: Greater than six thousand pounds’-worth of wines and spirits were diverted in the first six months of 1897, and Escoffier admitted to accepting gifts and bribes from the hotel’s suppliers. He was obliged to repay eight thousand pounds, but eventually settled with just five hundred. Not that any of this stopped Escoffier and Ritz. In the same year of their dismissal was established the Ritz Hotel Development Company, with Escoffier responsible for the kitchens. The company opened the Paris Ritz in 1898, and then the Carlton Hotel in London in 1899. By 1906 Ritz began making his way toward retirement, following the opening of the Ritz London Hotel, while Escoffier remained the figurehead of Carlton for the next fourteen years. The Ritz-Carlton began in 1905 as a restaurant modelled after Escoffier’s Carlton Hotel kitchen on board the ​SS Amerika, for the Hamburg-Amerika Line. In 1913 the kitchen on board the ​SS Imperator was modelled the same way, and Escoffier was tasked with overseeing the kitchen on board during Kaiser Wilhelm II’s visit to France. Escoffier met the challenge, impressing not only 146 German dignitaries with his multi-course luncheon and a subsequent dinner of epic proportion, but impressing greatly the Kaiser himself, who would later be oft-quoted as saying to Escoffier, “You are chef to the Emperor, and you are the Emperor of chefs!” Yet even for that high praise, just two years after Escoffier’s retirement in 1920, still another figurehead—this time the “Father of Modern French Cuisine”—was already on his way to prominence. Fernand Point was a French chef and restaurateur born in 1897, who trained at Foyot and the Bristol Hotel in Paris, the Majestic in Cannes, and the Royal Hotel in Evian-les-Bains. In 1922 he moved with his family to Vienne, where his father established a restaurant, only to remove himself from its operation two years later and pass it on to his twenty-four year-old son. Fernand renamed it La Pyramide and elevated the cuisine such that the restaurant was, during Point’s life, considered the best in all of France. Perhaps more than with his cuisine, Fernand Point’s influence was extrapolated and projected onto cookery mostly by his protégés, which included Paul Bocuse, among others. In the 1960s food critics and writers (Henri Gault, Christian Millau, Andre Gayot) used the term ​nouvelle cuisine to define the cookery of Paul Bocuse and his contemporaries, including Alain Chapel, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Michel Guérard, Roger Vergé, and Raymond Oliver. Although possibly a natural progression relative to World War II and shortages of the copious quantities of proteins necessary for traditional ​cuisine classique, this “new cuisine” of Paul Bocuse, et al, was seen as a sort of rebellion against Escoffier’s stuffy, over-complicated style. The basic tenets of this so-called ​nouvelle cuisine included the rejection of complicated cookery; reduction of cook-times for most fish, seafood, game, veal, and vegetables (steaming was a popular method for cooking these latter); utilization of the freshest-possible ingredients; simplification of menus; and the elimination of strong marinades, ​Sauce Espagnole and ​Sauce Bechamel (replaced with fresh herbs, very good butter, and lemon juice and vinegar). Also, inspiration was culled from regional dishes instead of ​cuisine classique; m ​ odern equipment was used, including microwaves; chefs paid closer attention to their customers’ dietary needs or restrictions; and all pioneers of the new style were extremely inventive, creative, and experimental. Some would say that ​nouvelle cuisine made its appearance and then vanished; some might say it was played-out before it even got started, especially considering that La Varenne’s, Carême’s, and Escoffier’s styles of cooking were all, at one point, considered a form of ​“nouvelle cuisine”. Anymore, that is a term applied to any form of cookery which makes a clean break with past methods, traditions, presentations, and preparations; but, nevertheless, as with La Varenne’s ​bouquet garnis and á la mode, those pieces of ​nouvelle cuisine’s k​ itchen philosophy which inherently make sense continue to be found throughout modern cookery today. Much of that which was pioneered by the likes of Bocuse and Chapel are now evident in modern-day restaurants the world over, creating an environment which is more democratic and open to innovation than ever before. The most important aspect of what these and other chefs have done, is that they all had a thorough understanding of their craft ​before they decided to break away. They weren’t doing molecular gastronomy before they knew how to make a stock, and they weren’t coming up with specials before they knew their Mother Sauces like the backs of their hands. The important thing for us to take away from this nowadays, is an understanding that our profession is born of tradition, and is regulated by sophistication and technique, but that nothing is necessarily set in stone. We had the ​nouvelle cuisine of the Sixties, followed by the so-called molecular gastronomy rampant at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. There is a particular pride that goes with the prestige of working in a kitchen, but working in a kitchen was not always prestigious; and the choice of working in the kitchen, or not, was not always necessarily available. Would Carême have been the innovator and contributor to French cookery that he was, if he’d not been abandoned by his parents at such a young age? Or would Escoffier have risen to the prominence that he did if his father hadn’t taken him out of school? More-so than that they were extremely inventive and innovative, relative to their times and the traditions of their times, some of these pioneers just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They became responsible later in life for the gustatory requisites of the European upper classes, but they themselves were either abandoned or committed acts of fraud while entrusted with that responsibility. Nowadays we have fusion cuisines and molecular gastronomy right alongside traditional dishes. We have restaurants serving foods inspired by tradition but prepared by science; we have millions of restaurants and millions of restaurant workers, we have thousands of biases and an uncountable number of allergies and dietary restrictions. We have competition amongst ourselves, whether relative to the cookery or the business itself, and it’s quite a bit more fierce than it’s ever been before, making it harder and harder to keep a single restaurant alive. Because they’re everywhere. For all that restaurants have been, and from whence they came, and for all they may still be, restaurants are manned by many and true innovation proves far and few between. What is a restaurant? It’s a gathering-place and a community hub, it’s a landmark and also the unnoticed blink of the eye. It’s where artistry prefaces toiletry (​literally— ​ think about your three hundred-dollar dinner date last night when you’re sitting on the crapper the next morning, yeah?); and it’s where bullies thrive and the meek somehow squeak by—whether guest, employee, reviewer, purchaser or purveyor. Ironically, born of Revolution though they may be, restaurants are one of the only places normal folks can go, and find an opportunity to join the aristocracy for an hour or two: Where it’s acceptable as a customer to mistreat your server, to daydream about being able to speak abusively to fellow employees the way kitchen crew speak to one another, to prostrate and percolate one’s half-baked and hare-brained notions of food and service and their preparation and delivery and make the employees ​suffer for it​. But then again, I suppose it’s kind of built-in, now, isn’t it? Because the spirit of the Revolution from whence came this thing of ours, lives on in the hearts of the staff who simply ​sing when they get to tell a customer no; who positively ​thrum with excitement when somehow, some way, the customer—the oppressive, monied class—might in some small or large way actually be ​denied​ their request and be told, in the nicest way possible, to suck it.