A short YouTube clip (Donald Burns, Apr 28, 2024) that explains the origin of the word "restaurant": derived from the French verb meaning "to restore", traced to a Parisian tavern owner (Monsieur Bollinger) in 1765 who sold a restorative soup. Burns frames restaurants as places that should "restore" patrons' souls, urging restaurateurs to take that responsibility seriously.
So let's take a trip back in time to Paris, 1765. There was a tavern owner by the name of Monsieur Bollinger, and he had this kind of entrepreneurial bug, and he wanted to sell his soup to the public. The problem was, is that the guilds or the unions controlled the selling of food to the public. So told no. His solution? Well, there wasn't a soup guild at the time. So he went to court and won the right to sell his concoction to the public. He called it a restorative. And the word restaurant derives from the French verb restore, which means to restore. So when people come to your restaurant, I want you to really think of them as they're coming to have their souls restored. And if you think about it, that's a big responsibility. If you take the word restaurant to heart.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
