Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
My wife and I were going to dinner the other night and were talking about the rise of restaurants. I don't know much about this, but my theory is that at one point in time restaurants didn't exist, and then they were probably invented primarily for travelers while all the locals prepared their own meals.
Then at some point, perhaps in the 30s to 50s or so with the rise of cars, I think local people probably started going to restaurants occasionally for special occasions. No reason to go out when the wife was at home all day to prepare meals.
And then maybe in the 60s you had two changes that made an impact. Fast food started making meals cheap, and women started working. Now all of a sudden families had some practical reasons to start eating out. This probably outweighed advances in home foods like frozen dinners, better shipping to give us diversity of foods, and maybe even things like more mixes.
Now fast forward to today, and my wife and I are going out to dinner just because we're busy and working late and it's more convenient and easy to just walk to a restaurant than it would be to go home and cook. That's a long ways from the original mission of restaurants.
All of this is just a theory, so anyone can feel free to refute it or expand on it.
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It's not only plausible, but true. There are some good documentaries on the subject.
One thing I'll add is the rise of the chain.
Back when travelers were searching for good grub (being away from their home kitchen and all) it wasn't uncommon to get stung by a place that had not only unappetizing food, but unhealthy.
Unhealthy as in sickness and death, not as in 6packs going to 2packs.
The rise of the chain restaurant was fueled by the wary public eager for a place they knew and trusted (not to give them botulism, for instance.)
Golden arches. Plaster Shoney's man. They're not simply marketing "I'm a restaurant", but "I won't have you hurling like Bob's Unknown-to-you Restaurant over there".
We bit on it. Local dives suffered.
On another note, sometimes another way to say "suffered" is "became uncrowded enough to finally eat there regularly", which is a good thing.
Moral of the story: Find people who know good food when they eat it, and find out where they eat.