The Invention of Restaurants with Allison Zinder: How Paris Created Eating Out

[MUSIC PLAYING] Bonjour, Emily. Bonjour, Caroline. Bonjour, Allison. Bonjour. Welcome to the Real Fishwives of Paris. Merci. Thank you very much. So, Allison, you're going to be burning down some myths for us today. But before we get to that, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes. I'd be happy to. So I trained as a professional chef here in France and worked as a professional chef and culinary instructor in a Centre de Formation de Apparante for Young French Boys, Knives, Flames, High Jinks in the Kitchen. And then I converted to becoming a gastronomy guide, a gastronomy consultant. So that's what I do nowadays. I take care of a lot of-- let's see-- study a broad student who are coming from the United States to learn about French gastronomy, give tours to just regular people like us. And how long have you been here? I moved here in 1995. Oh, wow. So, yeah, I've been here for almost 30 years. You're no G. And the blink of an eye happened. That was crazy. It's crazy how fast that goes. Yeah, really, really. It's gone very quickly, so. But I love France and I love Paris. And so we're really excited to have you on the podcast today, because as the fish wives, we love to debunk the myths and legends around French food. You are an absolute expert on the history of restaurants. And there is a legend that's floating around that the Parisians love to tell that not only did Parisians invent the restaurant, but they did it as a direct repercussion of the French Revolution that basically, according to the Smith, they were chopping off heads left right in center. And all the chefs of all the nobles who were losing their heads had no jobs. And so they decided to open restaurants. Allison, is it true? Partially true. OK. But not entirely, of course. There's a lot more behind it. So actually, what we consider, what historians, French historians consider, to be the very first restaurant dates from 1765. Can I just stop you there? Because I feel like we average normal people that don't know anything about food or wine, or people that do know about food or wine, but just it's so normal to have restaurants. Restaurants feel like something that have always existed. And of course, in some form, they have a bit more like an inn, right? Absolutely. You know, you would go to an inn and get served a hot meal, but you're paying for your lodging, really? Yeah. Really what we had before the first-- what we would consider to be the first restaurants-- were tabledout, sort of like inns. You might be spending the night. You might not have been. And they were really rough and tumble kind of places. From medieval times, people could always get a bite to eat. I mean, it was mostly people traveling for professional reasons, or even pilgrimages. For example, people have always traveled and had to have food, sustenance, somewhere on the road. And so these inns or tabledout, they were more like taverns. Basically, people would be seated at this very-- sort of like a long table, kind of like this one. And on long wooden benches, it wasn't very comfortable. You would eat when the owner was serving food. He would say, when you were going to eat, usually there were men, only men. It was a pretty rough environment, because these guys were-- they had their daggers at the table. I mean, that's what they were using, basically, to stab the big, huge hunk of meat in the middle. I mean, I kind of like to envision them as sort of all, like descending on a piece of meat on a big wooden cutting board in the middle. In medieval times, there weren't even plates. I mean, it was just like you'd had a Toshua, which was maybe like a big piece of bread that was your plate to sort of stop up the juices. I don't think people were eating very many vegetables. What they were doing at the table is basically belching, passing gas. I mean, it was really like not a very savory environment. What a set of-- Right. And anyway, so yeah, I mean, those have always existed. And then when you get up into the 1700s, late 1700s, let's say about 1765, because that's really the date of what French historians consider to be the first restaurant. And it was in Paris. It was in a tiny little street called Rude Pouy, which is the actual, like, the current day, Rude Louve kind of right next to where the Louvre is. Because the Rude Louve, of course, didn't come along until, you know, under, like, a houseman, an appalling in the third. And so it was just a tiny little street. And this guy named Boulanger, one of his names, decided he was going to open up a different kind of establishment, something that was a little bit more-- what I like to call for the fainting aristocrats, you know, the sort of people who would be interested in having something healthier, a more civilized dining environment. So he actually installed very small, sort of, marble top tables, almost like the ones you might see now a day in a tea room. And this was the first time you would have an individual table, OK? There were mirrors. And that was going to be a really, really important part of restaurants later on, is this idea of mirrors and being able to see and be seen. But that's a little bit later. And so what he was going to serve in this restaurant was a broth, a restorative broth. I like to think of it as sort of the time, the equivalent of the modern juice cleanse. It was something very helpful and light, because remember that these aristocrats had very delicate constitutions. You know, they weren't going to be eating the greasy hunk of meat. They were going to-- you know, they just needed something a little bit lighter to keep healthy. And so is that the only thing they would serve as broth? In the beginning. OK. Yeah. In the beginning, that's what was served. It was a broth bar. It was a broth bar, exactly. I think we have one of those where I grew up in New York. I'm sure you do. Like a bone broth bar. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was, you know, la mud. So he opens up this little restaurant. And the idea is that this broth was something new, because it really wasn't something new, but it had only been served in hospitals, of course, since Roman times, basically. It was the recompetement. Yeah, exactly. It paid big bucks for it. So it was a restorative broth. Get you back on your feet. And from that, we have the idea of it was, you know, like I said, a restorative broth. In French, we would say it's a restaurant. And so from that, we have, if you pronounce it a little bit differently, it's a restaurant. So the restaurant, the restaurant, was actually the thing that you would drink. It was the broth. It wasn't the place. OK. And then, of course, as time went on, the place became the restaurant instead of just the broth. Kind of like later on, the bouillon, or broth, you know, became the name of a type of restaurant in Paris. But we got to that. But so yeah, that was something that was really new and different. Now, Boulanger-- Because you mentioned Boulanger had multiple names. Yeah. So Boulanger was the guy who opened the restaurant. And then over here, you have this guy named Chantoisou, who was basically distributing a little guy to the area around Léon. And actually, they were one and the same. So of course, Chantoisou was pointing people to his own restaurant, which was run by a certain-- Dukking under the little marble table and changing his hat. Exactly. Yeah. Wheeler dealer, master of self-promotion. You know. I love that. Nothing new. So nothing new under the sun. So this is the very first place that we have to go for these restorative broths. Yes. How quickly is he imitated? And how quickly does he diversify from these broths to something else? OK. So what happens first is the diversification. I mean, there may have been some imitators. But I don't get the impression from everything I've read and studied that there were many imitators in the beginning, because it was just something very, very simple. What did get him into really hot water was when he diversified. And he started serving basically a dish that was a sheep's foot in a sauce palette. OK. Yeah, and a sauce palette. So it was sort of like a creamy, like rich sauce. Now, this was a big problem. Because, of course, during that time from the Middle Ages up until the French Revolution, 1789, we had the food guilds. So these corporations, the food guilds, had everything under their purview. You had the butcher's guild, you had the pork butcher's guild, you had the pickle guild, you had the vinegar guild, you had all the guilds, the pastry cook's guild. And they had a lot of really hair splitting rules and sort of arcane kind of ways of doing things. But, of course, these guilds-- Sorry, nothing has changed, basically. Yeah, pretty much. Except these guilds had been basically blessed by the king from the Middle Ages on. And so also anointed by God. Because, of course, the king, God, the church guilds. They were all like a big sort of mafia. They were all together. OK. So that's one of the reasons for the demise of the guilds right around the time of the French Revolution. But the problem was, is that this guy, Buon el J, serving a bouillon in a restaurant. OK, so far so good. No problems. The guilds were kind of like looking like, what's that guy doing over there? Looks a little suspicious. But there's no broth guild. So I mean, technically he's not doing anything wrong. Should we start? We should have started. Should we start the broth? - No, yeah. - That's gonna be our Perisian bone broth bar. - Yeah, the broth. - The broth, the broth guild. - Yeah, the cuposciende, bouillon de cuposciende. - We need to come up with a hat, some jewelry rose. - Yes, okay, I'll tell you about the robes in a little while. Anyway, so. - We always have robes. They're long and they're blue and they're velvet. - Oh my God. - But then we get in trouble with the knights of the brotherhood of St.Town Twain. But anyway. - So, so what happens is this sheep's foot in the Poulette sauce is all of a sudden the under the purview of the Trette guild. So these are like the cook caterers. Who are the ones who are responsible for making like stews and things like that? Things that are in sauce, okay? - So, I just like that there's literally a guild for people that deal with things in sauce. - Yeah. - But you know, these are people then, let's elaborate on that. Like, who are they serving? Are they serving merchants? Are they serving bourgeois families? Are they serving businesses? Like if you're a traitor at this time, who's eating your food? - Some of the people who might have been able to go to taverns but maybe didn't because women or people who just didn't want to deal with the whole tavern atmosphere. Cause taverns are kind of like a closed boys club. I mean, usually when you went to a tavern or a tabloid, you knew everyone else around the table. - It's the pub. - Yeah, basically. And so, if you didn't go there, you could always pick up food. I mean, that's always existed. So these traitor who were eventually sort of incorporated into the Shakyutie or the pork butchers were a separate guild. So the traitor and basically the whole guild system, they slap Boulanger, silly with a lawsuit. Okay, cause they're like, man, you're not allowed to do this. We're gonna shut your down, shut your stuff down. Okay. So, that's actually great for Boulanger. I mean, it was a boon for him. Because of course, all around Le Al and that area, you've got people who are following this lawsuit, inquiring minds I wanna know. And they were following it and they're like, "Wow, who's this guy, Boulanger?" And so that's free publicity for Boulanger, which is amazing. And then he wins. - Okay. - And this is at the same time that the guilds are just like going straight down to hell, basically, because we're getting up to the time of the French Revolution. So basically, I mean, that first restaurant predates the French Revolution. And during the time that Boulanger is getting publicity, not only for customers, other people are getting interested in his offer in terms of like, "Hey, if he can do it, I can do it too." Kind of thing. Then that's when you have French Revolution coming in, aristocrats losing their heads, the chefs who they employed, either leaving with them to go to England, Germany, they're fleeing maybe. And they are though out of a job instantly. So they see this model over here, and they're gonna start opening restaurants. Yeah, there is a grain of truth, of course. And at the same time, after the French Revolution, you have a lot of people coming up from other areas of France, because of course everything's opening up. You've got the aristocrats leaving the system, the entire social system has changed. And you've got all these men coming from different areas of France to find work and to find opportunity. So these guys are all coming up to Paris. They need to eat. So they're the offer that was originally sort of for, maybe more sort of upper middle class, or the fainting aristocrats or whatever, is going to democratize. It's going to sort of come down to the masses, because I mean, those people still could get food at a traitor, like a cook caterer, and carry things out. But little by little, they were gonna start being able to go to these rest of hall, just like cheap grub. Basically. I mean, one thing that, so I, in getting ready to interview you, I was reading Rebecca Spang's book about the invention of the restaurant, and one of the things that she mentioned was actually kind of, that that was another point of distinction between the taverns and the restaurants, is that because as you mentioned, you get your own table. Suddenly you can go and just eat by yourself. Yes. And there were other differences, course. And that's really like Chantoiso, Boulanger, sort of legacy, is the idea that, for example, when you went to a tavern, you didn't, I mean, I guess there was an idea of how much you were gonna pay, but maybe not a very specific idea, and you definitely weren't gonna get to choose what you ate. So the idea when you go to the restaurant is that, Chantoiso was the first or Boulanger to display a menu, first of all, a menu, the idea of even having a menu that was printed and had prices, and you know, you had choices. That was like absolutely amazing. The other thing is that he was the first to display the menu out in front. So you could actually look at the menu and decide if this place was for you, if they had an offer for you, and if it was in your price range, before you ever set foot in the door. Because once you've set foot in the door, it's like, oh no, how do we get out of here? This place is too expensive. And that actually holds true today, that, you know, it's a French law, if I'm not mistaken, that every restaurant must display its menu outside. So you can have a look and then move on your merry way if it doesn't correspond to your budget. - So this place would have been even to us today, immediately recognizable as a restaurant. - I think so with the menus outside. - I think so, yeah. - The idea that the little marble taubles, you know, and even a woman could go, you know, maybe not right away, but a woman could go and not be bothered by anyone she was sitting at her own table. So that was really important. - That's a big deal. - And then again, you've got that whole story about all the mirrors all around, which still exists today, you know, they exist today in the big brasseries, things like that. It's very much this like CNBC scene kind of thing. And you could discreetly, you know, see what other people were eating by looking in the mirror. And you know, you're really looking that way because you're looking in the mirror that way. And you can also check out somebody's hat, somebody's dress, somebody's mistress. - Yes, somebody's mistress for sure. Somebody's spats if you're looking further down. You know what I mean? Like, so all of those were a thing. And those mirrors are really important social element of the restaurant. - It's funny because it's like anti-social in a way, but it's not, it's the opposite of the tavern where everyone's up at everyone's business, you're just kind of like, up at everyone's business. - In a very discreet, very fetch way. - Yeah, pretty scary. - Pretty scary. So it was good. - And you were talking earlier about this neighborhood. So obviously the very first restaurant that you mentioned being right around Roodoo Louvre and then all of these other places kind of popping up around Leal. So Leal for people who aren't familiar with Paris used to be the major market district of Paris. And if I'm not mistaken, a lot of, even though the original restaurant is no longer there, a lot of the very early restaurants that popped up around Leal, some of them are still there. Some of the really old ones are still around. - Yes. - In some form. Definitely. My favorite example is Le Pied de Couchon, the pig's foot. Now, when you see on the awning, it's, you know, I like to say it's only been there since 1947. But of course, there were always restaurants along that street from basically the very beginning because it was just outside of that Philippo-Gustus, you know, medieval wall. And of course, it was easier and better and far cheaper to go outside of medieval Paris to eat and drink just the way it was much later when you, people would go to Montmau, to go to Cabaret, because it was outside of the city walls. You know, it was cheaper, it was a little bit more dangerous, you know, a little bit-- - They were drinking absences. - Yeah, artists. I mean, all the good stuff, you know? But anyway, that whole sort of street, that part near Le Pied de Couchon, there's always tons of turnover. I mean, there's always, you know, renovation going on and new restaurants opening up. But that little part of that street has always been open because-- and it wasn't for the type of restaurant that an aristocrat would go to. It was really almost just for the people who worked at Le Al, the strongmen of Le Al, you know, with the big hats, they were like, "L'affol de Al." The guy's moving wicker baskets around with vegetables and fruit and meat and hauling the meat around to different parts of the market. So, you know, when these guys, when these strongmen got out of Le Al at 3 a.m. or whatever time it was, they needed food. And so they would usually go over to this street to basically get a bowl of like gratiné de Al, like basically French onion soup because it was the cheapest thing around. So soup, big deal in French restaurants, apparently. Soup is going to govern, you know, the Ivery invention of the restaurant. We're going to eat a lot of soup in restaurants. And then there's another type of restaurant. I mean, I don't know if we'd call it a restaurant. Now that we know what a restaurant is called, called a bouillon, which is another reference to soup. So when does that kind of break off from the main restaurant trajectory? Or is that really how we'd say it does? I don't know if it sort of broke off. Yeah, it did sort of have its own trajectory, yes. It was right around like 1850s, basically, early 1850s that a butcher named Duval, who was around in Le Al area. He basically noticed that he was selling a lot of his like wonderful like choice cuts of meat to wealthier people. And no one was buying like the lower cuts as we call them sort of like not just like variety meats, but basically the long cooking cuts that like no one wants to deal with or maybe at that time that, you know, people just wanted the tender, expensive cuts. So what he decided to do was basically make a broth out of those cuts of meat and serve it in a restaurant. A little bit like what Shantouazou Boulanger was doing, but this was going to be a great way going to be for the working man. I mean, this was absolutely a very, very basic kind of thing. And so he opened up this first sort of-- what I like to call the first fast food restaurant, really-- and he opened up a bouillon. And then it became sort of the family empire. And I don't remember how many bouillon they had. And at the heyday, maybe like four or five. And so that was really a very working class kind of environment. It was very, very cheap, cheap and cheerful. And they're still cheap. Bouillon's are still really cheap. That is absolutely the whole idea. Is whether we're talking about a bouillon, like at the classic bouillon, like bouillon, chautier, or a nio bouillon, which is something that's going to be maybe a little bit more expensive, but you get better products. You get better ingredients. You might have a farm egg, as opposed to just a regular old hard boiled egg in your of mayo, in your egg mayo. And the service is pretty much the same. It's the kind of restaurant, because a bouillon is definitely a type of restaurant, you know? It's the kind of thing where they probably have paper on the table, you know, a paper or a table cloth. And I know at chautier, for example, they write your order right on that paper on the table. They're a little bit gruff. A little bit-- A little bit, a little bit a lot. Yeah, depending on what I was going to do. When I went chautier, like the guy I have never-- I think he was rolling his eyes so hard he was seeing the inside of his skull. Any time I asked, I had the audacity to ask for water or salt. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. You just got to get right up in their business, because-- They're hustling right there, turning tables. Totally. But you're there to enjoy meal. And so if you are meek at all about any of your behavior, then they're just going to totally steamroll right over you. So you just have to give it back to them. And they love it. You've got to have that sense of ripartee. It's a game. It's flirting. It's discussing the most serious thing that we have to discuss in France, which is food and drink. You've been here for a really long time. You know French culture inside and now. But you also interact with a lot of visitors, because you are a guide. And I think there's a lot of pieces of the restaurant puzzle in Paris, because restaurants now, of course, exist outside of Paris. And we go, we're used to going to restaurants. Someone comes here from wherever they're from. They sit down in a French restaurant. And they can be surprised by a certain number of cultural codes. And I think one of the big things that surprises people is that it's going to take a long time. If you're going to eat in a restaurant, everything from placing your order to receiving your order to getting the bill is going to take time. So can you tell us a little bit culturally, what does that mean? Why is it taking so long, basically? It's really, it goes back to why French food is so important and why the French gastronomic meal is on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage. I mean, that's one of the sort of precepts of that is this whole idea that your meal is a moment. It's just a moment to be and enjoy and take pleasure in life, in the food, in the wine, in all the different courses that you're going to eat, whether it's a two, three-course meal, to a 10-course meal in a Michelin-Star restaurant. You're enjoying the wines. You're enjoying the interaction with the other people in your table because community and the people you're eating with is a really, really big part of that as well. I was with some American clients in a Michelin-Star restaurant quite a few years ago. And the remark that they made was really funny because they said, I feel like I'm in church. And I said, you are in France, this restaurant, being in this environment, it's like going to church on Sunday. It's really that important. It's about respecting the work of the institution which is touching on all those details. And it also harkens back to Wulge, a chante-wazot, it's restorative. It's a restorative moment to be, to enjoy yourself, to indulge in someone else taking care of you, to appreciate and respect their vision for that, which is not just about the food, about the dick, or about the wine list, about the service. And I think that we, Americans tend to basically expect to actually receive whatever they want, but you go to receive what these people are offering. And often, they are small menus, and you get what you get. And I think, you know, substitutions are pretty heavily fronted. There's easier and more difficult substitutions that you can ask for. And like, you know, if you are vegetarian or vegan and you go somewhere they have a vegetarian dish, often they can make it, vegan these days. Like they're, I think they are more accommodating today than they used to be, but it's, you know, you're not gonna go in and ask for, like this is something that my family does. My American family, my mom will go to a restaurant. My mom is gonna be so mad at me for saying this. Sorry mom. And be like, well, can I have green beans instead of broccoli? And here they would be like, no. Because there's probably, I mean, those things are not in the same season at the same time, either. Or also they'll say, like, you know, I've been somewhere where it's like, oh, I'd like beef burger now and it comes with cookie yets. And can I have it with mashed potatoes? And they're like, no, that's not the dish. - No, no. So we have the chef gets to decide. What you are eating. - Right. - The chef is the supreme authority. And I know that sounds extremely rigid, but it is. - Mm-hmm. - What the reason why the French meal is something that has been preserved for so many years and even improved upon is because there is this very rigid structure. And that's something that the French will always defend. - If you could offer one piece of advice to someone who's coming to Paris and they say, I want a restaurant experience that's going to change my mind about restaurants. Would you tell them to go to a bouillon? Would you tell them to go to a fine dining restaurant? Would you tell them to go to a bistro, a brasserie? Where would you send them? - Okay, to change their mind about restaurants, about French restaurants. - To make them understand, live this experience, this culture that we've been talking about, what makes French restaurants so special? Where should they go to see that best? - I would say a Michelin star restaurant. - Okay. - Absolutely. And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be several stars. It can be a one-star restaurant because that's already an experience in and of itself. - And it can be at lunch, which isn't even the biggest expect. I mean, you can go to a Michelin star restaurant for lunch for like 40 euros. - I would say more like 60. - 50, 50, 50. - Okay. - If the two is the lowest. But let's put aside the, you know, the budgetary concerns for the moment, because I mean, you're not actually paying that much for what you're getting in return. - So they're also all staffed by like, armies of interns? - Yeah. - And well, but also you have to consider that, I mean, profit margins for gastronomic restaurants are really, really narrow. - Miniscule. - They are paying so much for the raw material, the ingredients that, I mean, it's really, even like for fish is the worst. I think, I mean, I think in restaurants, they're charging maybe like 1.5, like times the cost of buying the fish. Like that's insane. You know, they're making up for it on beverages. So when they're asking you what kind of water you want, whether it's gonna be, you know, still water or sparkling water, and you're buying water, you don't have to. You could always ask for a carat, but I would say an Michelin star restaurant, go with the flow and buy water, because you're saving that restaurant from like ruin basically, by ordering wines, by ordering bottled water, by ordering dessert, because then the margins are a little bit higher. And you're paying for artistry, you're paying for craftsmanship, you're paying for all this training, this muscle memory, the whole staff in the kitchen that is absolutely entirely focused on creating pleasure for you. And that is priceless as far as I'm concerned. And you know, those are the kind of restaurants where as we mentioned, you've got that very hushed, reverential atmosphere, because you're just so concentrated on the flavors, the interactions of different flavors in your mouth, the wines, how they're paired with the food. Maybe your friends, your partners, you're just having this extremely pleasurable experience together. Gosh, that sounds a little bit raunchy almost. I love it. It sounds perfect. Yeah, I love it. Anyway, it sounds, it's, it's such a special thing. Yeah. And it's funny, because I guess I'm kind of like, I'm not desensitized to it, because it still lifts me up and makes me so happy, but like, we do it. I do it a few times a year. Yeah. That's a privilege. Yeah. Yeah. But it is, it's like going to the theater. Yeah. It's a performance. Yeah. And in like literally, like I want everybody to understand, like we're talking about also a lot of people. These are places that employ a lot of people, like going to the ballet. Yeah. There's a team of people in the kitchen and the front of house and in the cellar and cleaning the number of people that these places need to give you the experience that you're having, like all behind the scenes, it's incredible. It's extraordinary. It really is. And that's what, you know, part of what makes it such a special experience, because all of these people are dedicated to this pursuit of pleasure. And I just, I love that. I love that about France. Allison, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We have learned so much. And I'm sure all our listeners have learned a lot about restaurants. And hopefully you'll come to France with a slightly different mindset when you walk into a French restaurant, knowing all this history, knowing the cultural weight of it. And hopefully that'll make you enjoy the experience even more. This has been the real fish wives of Paris. Thank you so much, Allison. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. I'd be in tow. Offer.