Restaurant

Restaurant of the Museum of Orsay in Paris.

Spanish-style restaurant in Oulu, Finland.

A restaurant or restorán (graphic and phonetic adaptation to Spanish of the French restaurant, its use is valid) is an establishment service, in the majority of public cases, where you pay for food and drink to be consumed in the same place or to take it away. Today there is a wide variety of service modalities and types of cuisine.

History

Thermopolio in Pompeya, precursor of the current restaurants.

The term restaurant comes from the French restaurant, a word that was used for the first time in Paris in 1765, despite the fact that establishments of this type already existed before.

In Spanish, restaurant means «restorative», referring to the food offered in the 18th century (a meat broth). Another version of the origin of the word restaurant to refer to eating houses, is also found in France. According to this second version, an innkeeper named Boulanger, when inaugurating what could be considered the first eating house, put a slogan at the entrance, which read in Latin: Venite ad me vos qui stomacho laboratis et ego restaurabo vos, which into Spanish could be translated as: «Come to me all you with a tired stomach and I will restore it to you». From that last word of the slogan would derive the term restaurant.

Word spread throughout Europe. In some countries it is modified to restoran, ristorante (in Italy) or restauracja (in Poland).

Types of establishments and catering formulas

• Restaurant buffet or free Tenedor. You can choose a variety of dishes cooked and arranged for self-service. Sometimes a fixed amount is paid and sometimes for a consumed amount (per weight or types of dishes). Surged in the 1970s, it is a quick and easy way to serve large groups of people.

• Fast food restaurant. Informal restaurants where simple and fast-preparing food is consumed, such as burgers, fries, pizzas and chicken, among others. Many of them are usually multinational franchises such as McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, etc.

• High cuisine restaurants (gourmet). Foods are of high quality and are served at the table. The order is "to the letter" or is chosen from a "menu", so the food is cooked at the moment. The cost depends on the service and quality of the dishes consumed. Existence Mozos or waitersled by a Maitre. Service, decoration, setting, food and drinks are carefully chosen.

• Thematic restaurants. They are classified by the type of food offered. The most common depend on the origin of the kitchen, and the most popular around the world are: Italian cuisine and Chinese cuisine, but also Mexican cuisine, Japanese cuisine, Spanish cuisine, French cuisine, Peruvian cuisine, Colombian cuisine, Thai cuisine and entertainment restaurants, among others.

• Restaurants bars. Food and drink are served, and food is usually not required to order alcoholic beverages.

Types of services

A different restaurant, in the air.

There are different types of tableware, depending on the way drinks and food are prepared, presented and served. Of all of them, the most widely used worldwide is the Russian-style service.

• French service: it is usually associated with French gastronomy, although nowadays it is unused even in France, beyond classic high-level restaurants. The main feature of this service is that your entire menu is made in the restaurant in the presence of the customer. The ingredients are brought from the kitchen and are shown to the customer for inspection. They are then returned to the kitchen, where they are prepared in one piece. Once cooked, the maître He presents them to the diners, who choose from the amount they want to eat, so that the maître prepares the ration in front of the customers and serves it on his plate, always serving on the left. This type of service requires a great skill of staff to be effective, and still requires a lot of staff; waiters must be familiar with the menu ingredients and the preparation methods. The French service is therefore very expensive and is only used in the highest-level restaurants.

• Russian service: despite its name, it seems that it originated in France at the beginning of the centuryXIXprobably as a desk service of Russian ambassador Alexander Kurakin. When sitting at the table, the diners find with an empty dish – the serving dish – on which a napkin is placed, as well as all the necessary cutlery, except for dessert covers and, on some occasions, specifically covered such as meat or fish knives. It is expected of the comensal that nothing else sits place the napkin on your lap. After choosing what you are going to eat, you remove the dish of service and you will bring the dishes in charge following a specific order, usually soup and intermeses, first and second dishes, desserts. The dishes are fully prepared and presented, without requiring any action by the service. Usually, as a dish has just been eaten, it is removed and replaced by the following without waiting for the rest of the diners, although this is affected by the times of the dining room and kitchen; in addition, it is traditionally made to wait for the intermeses and the main dish. The maître acts here as the head of the room, but it does not take an active part in serving dishes, since these come already prepared and presented from kitchen. The waiters only have to serve a dish already prepared, so all the staff are required a lesser formation. The chef and the kitchen staff are responsible for the filling and presentation, and in general they have greater role than in the service to the French. Therefore, this service, much more dynamic, is the most used today.

• English service: in this service, the customer finds a table with an empty service plate and all the necessary cutlery, but unlike the Russian service in this case the waiter serves the customer food from a source or tray. Foods are served on the left. The presentation of the dish is lost, and since the service is very uncomfortable for both waiter and comensal, the service to the English is only used in some banquets.

• U.S. Service: So called the simple service associated with American restaurants, a simplification of Russian service. The characteristic that distinguishes this U.S. service is its speed, the food is prepared in the kitchen and a waiter takes it to the table of the diners. The intermeses are reduced to the maximum and the rules of service are very simple. Serve food on the right, drinks on the right and remove the dishes on the left. A lot of staff is not required because the service is not complicated; this service is common in cafes, shopping malls and most restaurants.

• Traditional service: it has total assistance to the table and is performed in most establishments (restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels).