A year in four charts

people preferred to eat at home, enjoying the luxury of having staff to cook and clean up.

Over time, however, the notion that a respectable person might eat a meal in public gradually took hold. Wilton’s, a fish restaurantin London, got going in 1742. Dublin’s oldest, established in 1775, traded under the name of the “Three Blackbirds” and was “noted for a good bottle of Madeira, as well as for a Chop from the Charcoal Grill”. Fraunces Tavern, New York City’s oldest restaurant, probably opened in 1762 (it is still open today and serves determinedly American fare from clam chowder to New York prime strip steaks).

Some historians look to the supply side to explain this shift, arguing that the restaurant emerged as a result of improvements in competition policy. Powerful guilds often made it hard for a business to sell two different products simultaneously. Butchers monopolised the sale of meat; vintners that of wine. The growth of the restaurant, which serves many different things, required breaking down these barriers to trade.

A Monsieur Boulanger, a soupmaker in Paris, may have been the first to do so. He dared sell a dish of “sheep’s feet in whitewine sauce”. The city’s traiteurs (caterers) claimed the dish contained a ragout, a meat dish only they were allowed to prepare, and was therefore illegal. They took their case to court, but Boulanger triumphed. The tale, supposedly marking the beginning of a movement in mid18thcentury France towards more open markets, is probably apocryphal. But other regulatory changes did help. In Britain reformers worried about public drunkenness passed a law in 1860 allowing places serving food to serve wine as well (thus encouraging people to eat something to sop up the booze). Around the same time American states started passing foodsafety laws, giving customers more confidence in the quality of the food.

Yet for restaurants to flourish, richer people had to demand what Pepys did not: eating in full view of others. Until the 18th century elites largely viewed public spaces as dirty and dangerous, or as an arena of spectacle. But as capitalism took off, public spaces became sites of rational dialogue which were (putatively) open to all. And, as Charles Baudelaire, a French poet, observed, 19thcentury cities also became places where people indulged in conspicuous consumption.

The restaurant was the natural habitat of the flâneur, Baudelaire’s wandering observer of city life. Where better than a restaurant to see and be seen? Out went the set menu of the table d'hôte; in came the à la carte kind. Shared tables gave way to private ones. Eating out became less of a communal activity focused on calorie intake and more of a cultural experience—and a place, as Baudelaire wrote, where people could show off their wealth by ordering more food than they could eat and drinking more than they needed.

Restaurants’ growth accelerated in the 20th century. American employment in food service quadrupled as a share of the workforce over this period. The Michelin Guide was first published in 1900; the stars came 26 years later. And yet the continued rise of the restaurant up until the pandemic nonetheless presents an economic puzzle. Cooking at home was becoming ever easier. Average house sizes grew. Appliances such as the food processor and the dishwasher reduced preparation and cleanup times. Dining out became relatively more expensive: in America in 1930 a restaurant meal was 25% costlier than an equivalent Today dining out is seen as an indulgence, but it was the cheapest way to eat for most of human history

26%

The growth in the number of licensed restaurants in Britain between 2009 and 2019

The number of restaurant bookings via OpenTable on April 9th 2020

0

meal at home, but by 2014 the gap had risen to 280%. From 200720 “French Laundry inflation”, describing the cost of a meal at a threeMichelinstar restaurant in California, was twice the core inflation rate.

And yet three economic changes ensured that demand for restaurants grew despite rising prices. The first is immigration. In the 50 years after the second world war the net flow of migrants into rich countries, relative to population, more than quadrupled. Starting a restaurant is a good career move for new arrivals; it neither requires formal qualifications nor, at least for chefs, fluency in the local language. Migrants tend to improve the quality of an area’s restaurants. London’s became far better in the era of free movement with the European Union. The melting pot that is Singapore has some of the best food in the world. Restaurants became more tempting, even as prices went up.

gastronomics The second factor was the changing microeconomics of the family. As a new paper by Rachel Griffith of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a thinktank, and colleagues, shows, households’ choices about whether to make their own food or to buy it premade are shaped not only by the upfront cost of those things. They also depend on what economists call “shadow costs”.

The true cost of an athome meal involves not just the outlay for the ingredients, but the time spent on shopping and preparation. In an era of low female labourforce participation, shadow costs were low. A stayathome mother who cooked instead of eating out would have less leisure time. But as more women entered the workforce during the 20th century this equation changed, raising the shadow cost of cooking. Now a working woman who cooked dinner would be sacrificing time which might otherwise be used to earn money. And so eating out made increasing economic sense, even as it became more expensive.

The third factor was changing working patterns. Historically poor people have tended to work longer hours than rich ones. But in the latter half of the 20th century the opposite became true. The rise of knowledgeintensive jobs, and globalisation, made rich people’s work more financially rewarding—and enjoyable. Toiling into the night became a sign of status. The upshot was that the people with the most money to spend on dining out increasingly needed it most, since they had the least free time. In Britain the richest tenth of households devote a much bigger chunk of their overall spending to dining and drinking out than the poorest tenth, and the gap has grown in recent years.

What does the history of the restaurant say about its future? People have relished their reopening. In recent weeks global restaurant reservations have been near their prepandemic levels. The best ones are booked up for months: Silicon Valley nerds have created automated bots which instantly reserve tables.

The longterm future of the restaurant is less clear. The pandemic has led to many people buying more takeout than before (Uber’s revenue from delivery now exceeds what it earns from helping people get around), while others have a newfound love of cooking. Restaurants have little choice but to continue to adapt. That means moving still further from the utilitarian model of the 18th century and before, and instead doubling down on what they do best: offering those who need to eat a taste of romance, glamour and love. n