The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach. Olivier Etcheverria
de la Sorbonne, stood out among all the others. On these tables the carafes were gigantic; the wine only a prejudice.” [BRI 03, p. 116, author’s translation]
He specifies:
“Near the Palais-Royal, something similar to the restaurants of the Latin Quarter was created for the artistic world. There too, at dinner time, we saw the flocks of voracious locusts flocking to Rouget et al., from the small café and the workshop, to fall on all combinations of roasted or boiled beef, veal and mutton under all circumstances. In these areas, wine was known, but only in small doses, by decanter or quarter bottle.” [BRI 03, p. 116, author’s translation]
Similarly, Antoine de Baecque underlines:
“Undoubtedly because, in the same space, the most contrasting restaurants coexisted – either by their specialities, their menu, their personality, their appearance, their location, or, quite simply, by their price. The density of the boulevard actually attracted the ‘popular restaurant’, which was, half a century earlier, an antinomy. The first generation restaurateur sought to seduce the elites; his table was an obvious sign of social and cultural success. In the middle of the 19th Century, on the contrary, some institutions sought to feed the less fortunate, the working classes, students and bohemian artists. Yet they also call themselves restaurateurs.” [BAE 19, p. 183, author’s translation]
The social diffusion of restaurants was particularly sensitive on the left bank of the Seine. In the Latin Quarter, in the 1830s, the restaurant Flicoteaux was famous:
“In Paris, poor students, like Horace Bianchon who appears in several Balzac novels, went to Flicoteaux, a very famous and modest restaurant located on Place de la Sorbonne or in the other two or three restaurants on Rue de la Harpe, Viot or Rue Saint-Jacques. In these restaurants, bread was served at will, not wine or spirits, but well-cooked beef, well-baked chops. The service was done by boys. Dinners were à la carte.” [BON 13, pp. 285–286, author’s translation]
This accelerated with the birth of bouillon restaurants:
“In the mid-19th Century, the popular restoration of Paris was at the dawn of a small palace revolution. A certain Baptiste-Adolphe Duval, a butcher of his condition, had been thinking for some time about a way to feed the small population of Les Halles, composed of workers, employees and craftsmen who lived further and further from their workplace, and needed to be able to eat outside their homes without spending too much money. One day, he came up with this brilliant idea: to bring ‘restaurant’ bouillons up to date, those restorative consommés made from meat and vegetables that were at the origin of the invention of the restaurant in the mid-18th Century[…]. Duval opened his first bouillon restaurant in 1854, rue de la Monnaie, where he mainly offered cheap boiled beef. He certainly did not suspect that success would push him to open new establishments at a frenetic pace (boulevard Saint-Denis, Madeleine, place du Havre, boulevard des Italiens, rue de Rome, rue de Clichy, boulevard Poissonnière, rue du Quatre-septembre, rue de Rivoli, boulevard Saint-Germain…), thus constituting the first commercial empire in the history of the restaurant industry. Half a century later, his wife and son Alexandre took over and headed some 40 branches… Duval had his own butcher shops, his own purchasing centers, his own industrial bakery, his own milk company, his own Seltz water factory, cellars in Bordeaux and Bercy and laundry.” [GAU 06, p. 92 and p. 95, author’s translation]
At the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, the number of bouillon restaurants increased: Chartier, Boulant, etc. Louis Isidore Chartier, also known as Camille Chartier, a butcher in Orgeval, opened his first bouillon restaurant at 7, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in 1896 and then branches at 142, boulevard Saint-Germain in 1904 (now Brasserie Vagenende), at 3, rue Racine in 1906 (now Bouillon Racine) (see Figure 2.5) and at 59, boulevard du Montparnasse in 1906 (today Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse, an establishment created in 1858, bought by Chartier in 1903 and renovated in 1906).
Figure 2.5. Inside the Bouillon Racine, located at 3, rue Racine (source: Olivier Etcheverria)
Social diffusion was reinforced with the appearance of creamery restaurants in the mid-19th Century. The rural exodus led to new arrivals in Paris who appreciated and consumed dairy products on a daily basis. They frequented Turkish and Georgian creameries where they bought milk, yoghurts and cheeses, and soon tasted them standing up. The creamers progressively set up tables and served hot milk bowls and “cuts” of brie8.
During the second half of the 19th Century, brasseries also developed. Michel Bonneau explains:
“In the second half of the 19th century – following the Universal Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867, and the war of 1870 which led to the loss of Alsace and Lorraine – the freedom given to the beer trade led to the appearance of the brewery restaurant, which competed with coffee shops and ultimately proved to be more popular. The freedom to sell beer, whose consumption was increasing due to urbanization, and the possibility of eating simple dishes to accompany beer (sausages, ham, cheese, cabbage) encouraged the development of brasseries in a niche market between the restaurant and the luxury restaurant.” [BON 13, p. 292, author’s translation]
These were establishments serving beer brewed in Alsace and Germany, and transported to Paris by the Eastern Railways:
“The first establishment of this new type appeared in Paris in 1847 on the ground floor of a building at 26, rue Hautefeuille. We owe it to a French naturalized German, Louis Andler, who had only the means of basic decoration – whitewashed walls, barrels, cheese wheels, rustic oak chairs and benches – but compensated with his good humor and his sense of conviviality.” [GAU 06, p. 123, author’s translation]
Thus:
“After 1870, the ‘Alsatian brasserie’ appeared on the initiative of Alsatians who had withdrawn to Paris, serving both beer and Alsatian cuisine (sauerkraut, pork shanks, herring apples in oil, veal head, flambé pie, etc.). The brasserie is in fashion.” [BON 13, p. 292, author’s translation]
From the 1860s onwards, brasseries refined their decor (Zimmer in 1862 on Place du Châtelet, Bofinger in 1864 on Place de la Bastille, Lipp in 1880 on Boulevard Saint-Germain, Mollard in 1895 on Rue Saint-Lazare). They thus became showcases of the decorative Art Nouveau and Art Deco style (Le Vaudeville in 1918 on Place de la Bourse, La Coupole in 1927 on Boulevard du Montparnasse).
At the beginning of the 20th Century, restaurants serving regional and foreign cuisine developed, as in the Latin Quarter:
“In the heart of the district, in 1925, the Rôtisserie Périgourdine opened on Place Saint-Michel, under the direction of the Rouzier brothers, in the place of a grill room that has not left much trace in history. Here, regional cuisine was at the forefront, and that of a particularly rich province. What about the gratin périgourdin: minced fresh mushrooms, fresh cream and truffle strips, covered with a puff pastry and put in the oven… and the stuffed pike, and the hare in royal style, and the rooster in paste and truffles under ashes?…” [HER 56, p. 282, author’s translation]
The restaurant Méditerranée opened on Place de l’Odéon:
“It was fishing, Place de l’Odéon, which led to the Méditerranée, where Provençal cuisine was to find one of its great Parisian homes, the spiritual heirs of the Frères Provençaux, as later on the Relais de Porquerolles, rue de l’Éperon. In Méditerranée, decorated by Vertès in southern tones, grilled wolves with fennel, fried scampi in tartar sauce, crustaceans and bouillabaisse were appreciated by artists in writing or prestidigitation, with Cocteau and Picasso mainly. Following blackcurrant and rosé from the Var, the stuffed mussels looked as good as in Bandol or Cannes; it