In the Restaurant: Society in Four Courses - Hardcover

Christoph Ribbat (b. 1968) has taught in Bochum, Boston and Basel, and is now Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn.

Frances hurries through the crowds of Chicago. She is looking for a job as a waitress. The trams screech in her ears, a policeman’s whistle shrills, the ‘L’ train thunders. She is thirty-seven, a teacher by training. She started off in a village school with just one classroom, near St Clair in Michigan, right out by the Canadian border. She has lived in the suburbs of Detroit, in the suburbs of Chicago, and then in Great Falls, Montana. That was when she married William and stopped teaching. Then the economy in Great Falls collapsed. They moved back to Chicago. And William became incurably ill. In her threadbare black dress, Frances battles her way through the crowd of people in dark, narrow Van Buren Street. She has seen a job posting in the Chicago Daily News. Now she stands in front of the restaurant. She looks in through the window at the bright, decked tables, at ladies and gentlemen eating at leisure, white-aproned girls holding plates in their hands. Frances hesitates. Should she go in or not? Her heart is beating so fast, she writes later, that she almost can’t breathe. But she enters eventually, and asks the man behind the cigar counter whether they need a waitress. Yes, he says. They did. But they hired one just yesterday. I see, says Frances. She flees back on to the street, back into the hubbub of the year 1917.
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The Chinese capital is famous for its restaurants. Fish and seafood are excellent here, as are beef, poultry and noodles. The choices are many and varied, because the restaurants aren’t just catering to long-established residents, but also to the refugees who now call this their home. Their traditions and dietary restrictions – for example those of Muslim residents – enrich the diversity of the local cuisine. The sweet soy soup at the market comes highly recommended. Also worthy of mention are Mother Song’s fish soup and rice served with mutton, while in front of the Longevity and Compassion Palace, meat cooked in ashes is on offer. The boiled pork at Wei-the-Big-Knife at the Cat Bridge is outstanding, and the honey fritters from Zhou Number Five by the five-span pavilion are absolutely exquisite. This is all according to a gourmet. In the year 1275 he writes about the impressive gastronomic scene in Hangzhou, the capital during the Song dynasty.
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The history of the European restaurant begins with the fact that people aren’t hungry. Or at least, they act as though they aren’t. In Paris in 1760, with all its malnourished inhabitants, it wouldn’t be in keeping with the zeitgeist for the elite to stuff themselves to bursting point in some tavern or inn. Anyone with any sense of decorum has a delicate constitution. Unable to stomach much, they barely eat a thing, but still take their time about it. The upper-class clientele are enticed by the restaurant, this luxuriously furnished new style of inn. Large mirrors in which to admire oneself and others hang on the walls. The ‘restorative’ bouillons which lend the new restaurants their name, derived from the Latin restaurans, steam from decorative porcelain bowls. Made from poultry, game or beef stock, these brews are said to replenish the strength of those who are too sensitive for other forms of nourishment.
It is not the bouillons which make the restaurant successful, however, but rather its focus on individuals and their desires. Customers here don’t have to sit at a long, shared tavern table with all sorts of strangers. They get a table all to themselves. They can decide the hour at which they wish to be served. They make their choices from a menu.3 After the revolution, representatives of the National Assembly come to Paris from the provinces, and go out to eat together in restaurants. The Parisians emulate them. Before long, establishments begin to open which are also, fashionably, called restaurants, but more reasonably priced and less plush than the prototypes. In the revolutionary era, the guild system begins to ease its grip. Gastronomes now have more freedom to satisfy their customers’ varied desires. And from the very beginning, service is of great importance for the restaurant’s success. Enlightenment philosopher Diderot, for one, after dining out in 1767, praises the bouillon, the iced water and the beautiful restauratrice.4
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Out in Van Buren Street, in front of the restaurant with the bright tables and smart waitresses, Frances, rejected would-be waitress, briefly feels relieved. But then she has to make her way onwards, to the next establishment that has placed an ad in the Daily News. She is just one of countless women in Chicago who are competing for jobs. She has often thought about these crowds of women, crashing into the heart of the city from the outskirts each morning like a tidal wave. Many are young, some already middle-aged, making themselves look younger with make-up and overly short skirts, while others are simply old, not even attempting to feign youth. An army of women: secretaries, hairdressers, textile workers, daughters of farmers and daughters of factory workers. They are cheap labour, because they are women and because they have no experience when it comes to life and work in the big city. The most visible female workers serve behind the expansive windows of the restaurants – of which Chicago now has over a thousand. And Frances wants to be one of them.
So she moves on. In the next restaurant, a woman is standing behind the cigar counter. She sends Frances on to a young man, who, in turn, refers her to a gentleman in the backroom, the manager, who is sorting aprons and jackets. She asks him whether he needs another waitress. He asks her whether she has worked as a waitress before. She lies and says yes. He asks her whether she is quick on her feet. She asks him whether it looks like she’s not. And then another young man leads her down a narrow staircase into a damp, foul-smelling cellar. Here, ten young women are getting changed, putting on lipstick, sweeping rouge across their cheeks, powdering their noses, tossing make-up brushes back and forth and cursing with a crudity that Frances has never heard before in her life. No one pays any attention to her at first, but eventually one of the quieter girls helps her get into her uniform. Frances is now a waitress. A waitress with a secret.
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On the surface, the early Parisian restaurant resembles the cafés in which bourgeois public life develops. People come together in the cafés. They debate. They argue. Everything is very different from church or the royal court, different from the elite salons, the academies or scholarly societies. Anyone who can pay for his drinks and his food gets in. Anyone can join in the conversation. Newspapers are scattered around, supplying opinions. No authority intervenes, ends disputes or keeps order. If an argument arises, then eventually – or at least so one would imagine – common sense prevails, and the argument reaches a conclusion.
But the restaurant is different. You don’t go there to debate with others, nor to read the newspaper. You go to unwind or to put your sensibility on show. Once seated at the table, you make a choice that has little bearing on the broader political situation: between poultry, game or beef bouillon. The blend of public and private life sought here leans more towards the private. The Parisian café offers large rooms in which you can see everything and everyone. The restaurant, on the other hand, has niches and alcoves for customers to retreat into – groups and couples alike. There are cabinets particuliers – special rooms in which one can conduct private conversations or meet for assignations ranging from the romantic to the erotic. This is not the place for intense public discourse. And it’s important to note: men and women appear together here. A very unusual occurrence – at least for the non-French around 1800, who speak of it with wide-eyed amazement.