The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach. Olivier Etcheverria
red, was magnificent, and the Riche sauce, the chef’s secret, made all the well-off gourmets in Paris up their game.” [AND 55, p. 55, author’s translation]
Along the boulevards, there were theaters frequented by an audience that appreciates dinner after the performances in the restaurants. Similarly, private firms or lounges were also sought. Rebecca Spang explains: “Better suited to confidential tête-à-têtes than expansive sociability, the restaurateur’s new spaces emphasized the private, the intimate, and the potentially secret” [SPA 00, p. 78]. She explains: “‘Personal’ needs and ‘private’ desires dominated the mythology and rhetoric of the restaurant; they were what separated the restaurant from other forms of public eating” [SPA 00, p. 79].
Café Anglais was renowned for its facilities and, more particularly, for one of them, the Grand seize. The last act of Jacques Offenbach’s comic opera La Vie parisienne, premiered on October 30, 1866 at the Palais-Royal theater, took place there – a rondeau by Métella narrates a late night in this room:
Quand vient le matin, quand paraît l’aurore,
On en trouve encore, mais plus de gaieté !
Les brillants viveurs sont mal à leur aise,
Et dans le “Grand Seize”, on voudrait du thé !
Ils s’en vont enfin, la mine blafarde,
Ivres de champagne et de faux amours,
Et le balayeur s’arrête, regarde,
Et leur crie ! Ohé ! les heureux du jour !
(When the morning comes, when the dawn appears,
You can still find some, but no more cheerfulness!
The bright shining ones are uncomfortable,
And in the “Grand Seize”, we’d like some tea!
They finally leave, the pale appearance,
Drunk with champagne and fake love,
And the sweeper stops, looks,
And screams! Ahoy! The happy ones of the day!)
The boulevards promoted and directed denser and more varied travel through a wide and flat sidewalk leading to smooth traffic, sidewalks that facilitated easy and pleasant pedestrian traffic and gas lighting that allowed safe night traffic. Thus, François-Régis Gaudry underlines:
“Under the Second Empire, the boulevards were the aorta of Paris, draining dandies, marquises, lions, mistresses, courtesans, politicians, journalists and stock market people. In this worldly fauna, writers were a species apart. While they know how to mix with the crowd, they also had their favorite addresses. They were not necessarily the best, nor the most expensive, but those where the bosses knew how to welcome them. Several of them were entitled, in the gazettes, guides and other testimonies of the time, to the nickname ‘academic restaurants’.” [GAU 06, p. 105]
These are Peter’s (24, passage des Princes/5 bis, boulevard des Italiens), Café Américain/Grand Café Capucines (boulevard des Capucines), Café Brébant (boulevard Poissonnière) and Marguery (boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, formerly boulevard de la Porte-Saint-Martin), for example.
As an extension of Rue de Rivoli, Place de la Concorde and Avenue des Champs-Élysées are gradually being affected by the geographical spread of restaurants, as demonstrated by René Héron de Villefosse:
“After the winning boulevards of the Palais-Royal, here is the Champs-Élysées, which show the ends of their branches. We are still in the middle of greenery, in 1852, but, from 1855, exhibitions followed one another, giving birth to the giant palace of Industry which witnessed the satellites of the Dioramas, café-concerts and other summer restaurants appear all around it, from which we keep some charming samples. The Marbeuf district was built, the Étoile was completed. Prince Napoleon, the Duke of Morny, Princess Mathilde, the Païva, the Duchess of Alba came to be housed there. Let’s not be surprised to see the birth, on rue Royale and in its west, of a series of surprising representatives for gourmet food and refined people, not to mention the Mabille ball!” [HER 56, pp. 194–195, author’s translation]
On Rue Cambon, the restaurant Voisin was run by Braquessac, a winegrower in the Bordeaux region, with chef Choron. The Prunier restaurant opened in 1872 on rue Duphot. Grilled meats, snails and sheep feet in chicken sauce were served there, but the restaurant was especially famous for its oyster dishes: oyster soup, fried oysters and Boston beef fillet. On Rue Royale and Place de la Madeleine, Lucas opened up, followed by Francis Carton, Larue, Weber and Maxim’s. Indeed, René Héron de Villefosse points out that:
“The 1900 exhibition dedicated Maxim’s to the world view. The main entrance was Place de la Concorde, surmounted by a statue of the Parisian woman, due to Moreau-Vauthier, perched on a golden ball and topped by the ship of the city of Paris, surrounded by electric light bulbs and entirely risqué. Maxim’s happened to be the bar, café, restaurant, the nearest box to this onlooker trap. No foreigner of any brand, who came for the giant event, who did not come to Maxim’s for dinner.” [HER 56, p. 259, author’s translation]
At the beginning of the 20th Century, still in a logic of axes, restaurants progressed to the Bois de Boulogne: “It was the great fashion of Ledoyen, the Pavillon Élysée, Laurent, the Champs-Élysées, the Pré Catelan, the Pavillon d’Armenonville, Madrid, the Grande Cascade and the Bois de Boulogne.” [PIT 91, p. 172, author’s translation]
Valérie Ortoli-Denoix underlines:
“No major operation having replaced Haussmann’s work, the previous trend is confirmed. Nine thousand restaurants are spread throughout the capital, almost all of which are served by the metro. Ignoring the east where an anarchic development of poor neighborhoods is taking place (Charonne, Ménilmontant, Belleville), the restaurants mentioned above are associated with the simultaneous development of rich neighborhoods in the west (Champs-Élysées, Monceau, Passy, Auteuil, Champ-de-Mars). The periphery and the recent boulevards des Maréchaux, traced on the site of the Thiers enclosure, have only few votes. The Seine and the axis Gare de l’Est – Boulevard Saint-Michel are still borders delimiting Paris into four zones, including the northwest which dominates.” [ORT 90, p. 23, author’s translation]
2.2.2. Social diffusion
The geographical diffusion of restaurants came to be combined with a social one. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin evokes the development of restaurants at fixed prices: “Some restaurateurs proposed to join good food with the economy, and by getting closer to the mediocre fortunes, which were necessarily the most numerous, to ensure that the crowd of consumers could be satisfied” [BRI 82, p. 281, author’s translation]. Brillat-Savarin provides information on the profiles of diners who frequented them:
“Restaurateurs – considered under this last point of view – rendered a service to this interesting part of the population of any large city which consisted of foreigners, soldiers and employees. They were led, by their interest, to the solution of a problem which seemed contrary to it, namely: to make good food, and yet at a moderate price, and even at a low price.” [BRI 82, p. 282]
Eugène Briffault presents cheap restaurants:
“In the Latin Quarter (next to the ‘fixed price’, but above it) was the cheap restaurant; the ‘maximum’ [price] was 30 cents a dish for the use of ‘gentlemen-scholars’. The solemn moment of the day, which the kitchens and restaurant departments called all hands on deck, acted with unparalleled violence; young appetites rushed towards substantial dishes with fury. There was a cry of general distress, when the ‘chef’ proclaimed in a resounding voice this terrible sentence: ‘There is no more beef!’ Two or three restaurants on rue de la Harpe and rue Saint-Jacques, at