Fascinating history - I didn't realize that restaurants were so recent.
But language evolves to follow common use, and "restauranteur" is also correct:
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The term is recent. Places where you can pay for food are ancient.
I was thinking about that... Is there a distinction between a restaurant where you can order specific dishes (made to order?) vs a place where you just got whatever is available?
In the netherlands we use the french term ‘a la carte’ to mean that the restaurant allows you to pick a pre-defined set of dishes. As opposed to having a daily changing menu with maybe a choice between meat/fish/vegetarian which is called “table d’hote” but the latter has gotten a connotation of being less fancy. So if a fancy restaurant does table d’hote they generally call it ‘our concept’ and explain it to every guest as if it’s a unique thing.
I’m guessing the french use the same words. And maybe some english speaking countries as well? Given how pervasive french is around restaurants.
Degustation and omakase are the preferred fancy words for the chef choosing what you eat, particularly if there's many courses involved.
hmm, usually a la carte in the US means you can buy individual items vs a meal combo.
- adjective: (of a restaurant meal) having unlimited choices with a separate price for each item
- noun: a menu having individual dishes listed with separate prices
- adverb: by ordering items listed individually on a menu
Not anymore in english, because the second went basically completely extinct except a few location- or activity-specific exceptions like food trucks and sport concessions.
I think "cafeteria" as used by outfits like S&W Cafeteria, etc. would have been somewhat close to the idea of "a place where you get what is available", but they have - as you say - mostly gone away. I suppose a "buffet" would also be close, in that you get to pick your food, but you're picking from an array of pre-prepared items with no room for variation for the most-part. As opposed to "made to order".
Not really.
Or at least not completely extinct in South India. Some of my favorite childhood memories are from these messes (short for mess hall, I assume). You go there, pay what they ask, eat what they serve.
MTR, Brindavan on MG Road (though that's long gone), Iyer Mess in Malleshwaram.
What they lack in choice they usually make up for in taste.
You're right that they have a more traditional ambience and newer restaurants offer more choice, but they are definitely thriving in the parts of Bangalore that I grew up in.
Yeah sorry I intended there to be a more clear constraint on the claim I was making. It's mostly extinct in the anglosphere, so english doesn't really differentiate. But the concept itself is still popular globally.
I believe the term is "short order" for when you have dishes cooked to order.
I'm not sure about that. Since ancient times there were places where you could pay for food, but that was always a side business of an establishment whose main purpose was either (a) selling alcohol (or, in some places, coffee or tea) or (b) providing lodging for travelers.
I suspect that an establishment whose main purpose is selling food to order may be a fairly recent innovation.
It is pretty well accepted that Pompeii had businesses that primarily served prepared food (https://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-ancient-snack-bar...), so they are at least 2000 years old.
Also, a business that sells meals and also sells lodging or coffee is definitely still a restaurant.
Not sure if it would fit the definition of a restaurant we have today but a thermopolium was a shop where you would buy food. I'm not sure how widespread the concept was, though.
> Since ancient times there were places where you could pay for food, but that was always a side business of an establishment
I don't think that's correct: They've excavated fast-food joints from under the ashes of Pompeii. There's nothing to say a business like that needs to be a side hustle of anything else.
Street food vendors go back millennia. They’ve never been called restaurants but they’ve always been in the primary business of selling food.
The main difference a restaurant brings is the addition of a seating / dining space. I strongly doubt that extra space for patrons to eat is a recent innovation.
Coffee is Ethiopia, came with the Ottomans to Europe, tea came from Chine with the British or the Silk Road. Either of them post dates the Romans.
> I suspect that an establishment whose main purpose is selling food to order may be a fairly recent innovation.
It's not; every city has always had them. Food is actually far more important than alcohol is.