They “invented” modern (European) restaurants. That’s basically 90% of the reason why. The French Revolution created a huge unemployment problem for a bunch of highly skilled private chefs for nobles/royalty who suddenly became too headless to be able to eat food, so they had to degrade themselves to serving “common folk” (read: well off proles and petit bourgeoisie, the average worker could not afford these establishments). Before that you’d have establishments that served one or two things, a tavern that had a stew going for the past several decades, or an open air food court (also with stalls that only sold one or two types of food). The Greeks had thermopolia (where you could grab ready to eat hot food and the Romans had something similar but with grapes, cheese and bread, but none of those are really modern restaurants.
The concept of having a menu and being able to select an item, modify it to your tastes if you want, having that item made for you and delivered to your table was apparently revolutionary, and France became a culinary capital. Nevermind that this concept has existed in China since the Song dynasty and elsewhere in east Asia for a few centuries.
They “invented” modern (European) restaurants. That’s basically 90% of the reason why. The French Revolution created a huge unemployment problem for a bunch of highly skilled private chefs for nobles/royalty who suddenly became too headless to be able to eat food, so they had to degrade themselves to serving “common folk” (read: well off proles and petit bourgeoisie, the average worker could not afford these establishments). Before that you’d have establishments that served one or two things, a tavern that had a stew going for the past several decades, or an open air food court (also with stalls that only sold one or two types of food). The Greeks had thermopolia (where you could grab ready to eat hot food and the Romans had something similar but with grapes, cheese and bread, but none of those are really modern restaurants.
The concept of having a menu and being able to select an item, modify it to your tastes if you want, having that item made for you and delivered to your table was apparently revolutionary, and France became a culinary capital. Nevermind that this concept has existed in China since the Song dynasty and elsewhere in east Asia for a few centuries.