Restorative Bouillon

It wasn't until the long reign of Louis XIV (the 'Sun King'), that a true 'investment' in the glory of an enormous meal was fully documented in history. His lunches (le petite couverts – 'the little table')

Louis reigned for 72 years, 110 days, the longest in European history

"would typically consist of four different bowls of soup, a whole stuffed pheasant, a partridge, chicken, duck, mutton with garlic gravy, two pieces of ham, hard-boiled eggs, three enormous salads and a plateful of pastries, fruit and jam (and on top of all this the king would go on to demolish a further forty dishes at dinner). On Louis' death, his stomach and intestines were found to be twice the size of an ordinary man's."  In our own age, it's mind boggling to consider the cultural images and icons we have to look to for our own 'food styles.'  Diets now carry along with them anti-diets, so that the low carb watcher or the vegan is now countered by what is called the Paleo diet, which in essence means eat what our ancestors ate, all whole foods, nothing processed.  There's a conceptual food plan for every eater out there.  In these early days of the gourmand, however, the infamous French food we have come to look at as the epitome of world cuisine would have been galvanized by the sole leadership of one icon, the Sun King.  Chefs became considerably important people; cookbooks established rules; and restaurants began to take root around Paris.

First Bouillon Restaurant founded 1765

"The word 'restaurant' originally referred to a type of soup called a bouillon restaurant ('restorative bouillon'), served in the world's first such hostelry, founded by a Monsieur Boulanger in Paris in 1765. Previously, guests at Inns would partake of a meal together at the innkeeper's table, but Boulanger introduced the innovation of guests dining at separate, small marble tables.  The idea caught on, and soon restaurants were mushrooming all over the capital."  From this scene food journals blossomed and food philosophers wrote meditations about the pleasures of gourmandism.  The icon, the writing,  the thinking, and the eating 'scene' in place, all that was needed to fill-in the last puzzle piece of food culture was celebrity, something modern American eaters know and understand very well.

Escoffier, himself with a dirt-poor background (like Ritz himself who would pair-up with Escoffier to run the Ritz-Carlton), streamlined old French cooking, "introducing revolutionary innovations still in use today.  It is to Escoffier that modern restaurants kitchens owe the 'kitchen brigade system dividing tasks between separate sous-chefs working under the direction of a chef de cuisine, while he was also responsible for introducing the a la carte menu, and worked on a new luxury liner."  Some 250 years later, beginning, one could estimate, somewhere around 2000, the U.S. is now following in the revolutionary steps of these French originals.