The first place to be considered (after the fact) a restaurant opened in Paris in the 1760's. While the importance of this first “restorer” has been exaggerated in some regards, it did spark the rise, decades later, of the first great restaurants. As these began to draw tourists to Paris at the start of the nineteenth century, numerous other public dining options grew up, some variations on earlier places, some completely new. These included cafés, wine shops, workers restaurants, women's restaurants, bouillons, crèmeries, brasseries, tree house restaurants, bistros and a host of other options, some of which disappeared, some of which have remained part of Parisian dining. Chevallier presents an overview of these options, and their development and influence going into the twentieth century.

Jim Chevallier began by studying French bread, notably the croissant and the baguette, before branching out into other corners of food history, including early medieval French food and the history of the food of Paris. Choice magazine named his book for Rowman and Littlefield, A History of the Food of Paris: From Roast Mammoth to Steak Frites an Outstanding Academic Title for 2019. This talk draws on one chapter of that work