2000 restaurants in Paris in 1804?
Just a few days ago I ran into yet one more reference to 2000 restaurants in Paris soon after the Revolution.
What’s the evidence for this? Rebecca Spang in the Invention of the Restaurant picks her way carefully around the matter, “In 1804, the Gazette de France seconded Prudhomme’s [a journalist of radical leanings] claim that Paris was currently home to 2000 restaurants–a marvelous figure indeed, until one notes that the newpaper also reported that there had been 1500 “restaurants” in the city in 1789.” Amy Trubek in Haute Cuisine also takes a prudent course, refraining from numbers.
Carefulness is surely what is needed. The population of Paris in 1810 was about 550,000, just over half a million. Assume that at least 150,000 of those were too young, too old, too poor, or in prison or the army, etc etc and thus could not eat in restaurants.
That leaves 400,000 plus tourists who can’t have been that many. Hence that would mean 1 restaurant for 200 people. Hmm.
Does anyone know what present day restaurant entrepreneurs reckon they need by way of a population base?
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Depends on what you mean by “restaurant”, in the case of modern restaurants, then La Grande Taverne de Londres was on of the first and only estyablished in 1782, there wasn’t 2000 of these I should think On the other hand in the case of a restaurant in the original sense ( offering a food which “restores”), I can imagine 2000 of these without to much problem.
Clearly it depends on what you mean by restaurant which is at this very period morphing from offering a food that restores to a sit down place with a menu. I was thinking about this as I strolled downtown Guanajuato today where one half of the population is selling food in one way or another to the other half. But 2000 still seems high to me, even if these are just storefront places.
But chiefly I’m reacting against those authors who take these to be restaurants in the second sense. Cannot be.
I’m not sure I’d be much help here, but it might be contingent on how people are defining restaurant. For instance, does every inn with a kitchen count?
Hi Rachel, love your blog. No for these purposes inns where everyone eats a set menu does not count. Nor does street food. And the question at stake is whether these were just places offering (essentially) restoring soups or whether they were more like modern restaurants which are coming in fast at this period.