The Invention of the Restaurant

Description:

"Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating to be an enjoyable leisure activity or even a serious pastime? To find the answer to these questions, we must accompany Rebecca Spang back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a thing to eat: a quasi-medicinal bouillon that formed an essential element of prerevolutionary France's nouvelle cuisine. This is a book about the French Revolution in taste and of the table - a book about how Parisians invented the modern culture of food, thereby changing their own social life and that of the world."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Social life and customs,  Food habits,  Restaurants,  History,  Restaurants, france,  Paris (france), social life and customs,  Social Conditions,  Feeding Behavior,  Histoire,  Habitudes alimentaires,  Mœurs et coutumes,  Manners and customs,  Eetgewoonten,  Gastronomie,  Sociale situatie