Grant Blank, Critics, Ratings, and Society. The Sociology of Reviews, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, p. 43.

"There was a first restaurant, opened in Paris in 1766 by a man named Mathurin Roze de Chantioseau. The establishment was named after its primary product; an intense bouillon broth called a restaurant, or restorative. Restoratives were believed to be exceptionally easy to digest and particularly good for people with pulmonary problems. They were a popular fad among health-conscious Parisians at the time. The health focus explains the development of many key characteristics of restaurants: personalized service to treat individual maladies, menus that allowed patrons to make the choices to treat their personal problems, and wide hours of service since patrons in fragile health might need restorative at any time. Their original audience of consumptive men soon expanded to include women, who were believed by the health authorities of the time to be vulnerable to weak chests and digestive problems. Their wide hours of service and individual table service made them attractive to travelers. Other restaurants soon followed, and by the 1780s, they had evolved into something like their modern form; offering a menu of dishes at fixed prices, available at all hours, by waiters serving diners sitting at individual tables."