Restaurant On Main Street

By 1723 there were nearly four hundred cafés in Paris, but their menu was limited to coffee, tea, chocolate, liqueurs, ice creams, and pastries.

Taverns also served food, as did cabarets. A cabaret, unlike a tavern, served food at tables with tablecloths, served drinks with the meal, and charged by the dish, rather than by the pot.

At the end of the 16th century, the guild of cook-caterers (later known as "traiteurs") was given its own legal status. The traiteurs dominated sophisticated food service, delivering or preparing meals for the wealthy at their residences. Taverns and cabarets were limited to serving little more than roast or grilled meats. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, both inns and then traiteurs began to offer "host's tables" (tables d'hôte), where one paid a set price to sit at a large table with other guests and eat a fixed menu meal.