By Jim Coggins

“THIS is a new experience,” I mused philosophically.

“I admit you don’t take me out to dinner very often,” my wife replied, “but it’s not as though eating in a restaurant has never been done before.”

“I mean relatively new, in historical terms. I think it is only for the last century or so that eating out in fine restaurants has been practiced as a form of entertainment.”

“Nonsense,” my wife scoffed. “Do you mean people never used to enjoy eating?”

“Oh, people have enjoyed eating for centuries. People have celebrated with feasting back to biblical times, for as far back as we have records. But the fine restaurant is a new phenomenon.”

My wife is used to me giving long lectures drawn from my historical training. However, she is not historically illiterate herself.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Restaurants are not new. An inn was mentioned in the Bible.”

“Yes, but most people in Bible times found hospitality in private homes. Our image of inns in Bible times is really taken from inns in Europe in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, there is a major difference between inns and restaurants. Inns were for people who were travelling and couldn’t eat at home. What is new is people going to restaurants when they could just as easily eat at home.”

“But cooking at home is not easy,” my wife sniffed.

Women, she added, “have careers and need a break from cooking. It’s not fair if they work all day and have to cook every night when they get home.”

“That is one of the reasons behind the development of restaurants – and the money is an important factor, too. When my parents ate in a restaurant, my mother got a break from cooking, but the food wasn’t any different or better – and was probably worse – than my parents could eat at home. If the only reason for restaurants is to give women a night off, why don’t we go to some greasy spoon instead of paying 50 dollars a plate for haute cuisine?”

“I’m beginning to see what you mean.”

“Because women are working, couples have more money. The general rise in living standards has made restaurants more affordable.”

“So we don’t go to restaurants just for food, but for different food – and that’s the entertainment?”

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“Precisely. And in this case we are helped by the fact that Canada and the U.S. are multicultural societies.

“We can eat Chinese, Italian, Greek or Mexican food. That’s a great thing, because most people in the world don’t have much variety in their diets.”

“But we’re eating steak tonight,” my wife pointed out. “We can do that at home.”

“True, but at home we don’t usually eat the most expensive cuts of steak. We go to restaurants so we can play at being upper class.”

“You’ve lost me again.”

“Fine restaurants didn’t begin in regular inns, but in expensive hotels for the wealthy. When the rich travelled, they looked for restaurants that offered them all the luxury they had at home – servants, white linen tablecloths, silverware made out of real silver, bone china.

“They wanted exotic foods that no one else could get, and which were therefore expensive. The rich wanted different food to prove they were rich. Most people think chicken tastes better than caviar, but some prefer caviar because it has more prestige.”

“So why are we here?”

“Due to the rising standard of living, the middle class can occasionally afford to go to the restaurants originally set up for the wealthy. They go for the experience of eating from fine china and being waited on by servants. They go so they can pretend they are rich for an evening.”

“And women get the credit.”

“Partly, but women also work in the restaurants.”

“So it’s like we take turns serving each other so that we can all sometimes pretend we are rich?”

“Precisely.”

“And that’s what provides the entertainment?”

“That, and the informative conversation.”

May 2010