Dan Snow's History Hit - The Restaurant

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

William Sitwell joined me on the pod to discuss the history of the restaurant. Tracing its earliest incarnations in the city of Pompeii, we discuss the events that shape the way we eat today.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're working our way through the last days of August here in 2020 and our thoughts are turning to the autumn, to the fall. We've got a lot going on everybody. We've got the ongoing struggles with Covid. We're going to have economic and political discussion. We have the US presidential election. It's all happening and as ever, History Hit will be your guide. We've got some big plans. We've got lots and lots of programs, lots of podcasts in commission talking about things like rebuilding the economy after the First World War and the Spanish influenza. We're going to be focusing a lot on the US presidential election. What is the Electoral College? What has happened in previous close elections that have been contested? We're also making some great documentaries. It's the 400th

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This podcast is a kind of late August podcast, talking about the restaurant. The fascinating story of how we've gone out to eat from the Romans to the present day. We're talking to William Sitwell. He's the restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph here in the UK. He eats for free and then writes funny things about the restaurant and the food. I mean, outrageous to be honest, but good luck to him.

He's written a book now, History of the Restaurant, and he's got some interesting observations about how and why we choose to spend our money eating out from Pompeii to US counterculture in the 1960s. Enjoy. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Well, thank you, Dan. Thanks for asking me. This is a heck of a time to be talking about the history of restaurants because this will get a chapter in future histories. Every restaurant on the planet suddenly closed.

I mean, that's not good. Well, someone said to me that the publication of my book was either the worst possible timing you could imagine or just extraordinarily clever because you could then, you know, have the vicarious pleasure of reading and thinking about restaurants. But it's certainly true that when my book came out,

lockdown was well and truly, you know, among us and every restaurant in the country, if not the entire world, was shut. So there has not been a time in history when that's happened. I mean, emperors, kings have tried to shut taverns and coffee houses in the past. No one has done it quite successfully as our current rulers. No, I mean, exactly.

It's comprehensive. And it's also, as you say, reading your book and being in lockdown, I mean, I can't wait to get crowded around a little table where there's too many of us for the table and someone just whacks a jugger house wine down the middle and we just start chatting and eating. I can't wait. But, you know, it is already happening.

I went to, my column for The Telegraph has started again in earnest, which is very exciting. My column for The Telegraph has started again in earnest, which is very exciting. And there seems to be a contrast between some restaurants that have redesigned themselves to look like wards in a hospital, where every member of staff is shielded behind a mask and a visor, where there are perspex divides between tables, where your temperature is tested. And there are a lot of those places. There's a wonderful restaurant down in Suffolk called The Unruly Pig, where they do all of that.

But then I went to a restaurant in Bridport called The Station Kitchen. The bar and the kitchen are in the old Bridport Station Master's ticket office and hall. And the restaurant is in an old train carriage that actually used to ferry wounded soldiers to hospitals during the First World War. There was absolutely no sign of any masks. We were all sitting in the carriage eating merrily. I mean, you know, we were on tables for two and there were other tables for four and six, but it was like normal times and it made me quite happy. So I think it depends on the restaurateur. I think people want to reassure the punters that they're going to be safe,

on the restaurateur, I think people want to reassure the punters that they're going to be safe. But also, I think punters want normality. And as you say, you know, I'm almost yearning to have someone spill wine down me and apologise. You know, we want to bump into people. I mean, half the fun is, it almost sounds like, you know, a myth, the idea of standing at a bar waving a note to try and get someone's attention. You know, I dream of the time of standing at a bar, waving a note to try and get someone's attention. You know, I dream of the time when I can't get the waiter's attention to get a bill, you know, because there's so many people in there. These, hospitality is about hustle and bustle

and it's about atmosphere. It doesn't matter how wonderful the food is in a restaurant. It doesn't matter how great the service is. You know, if there's no atmosphere, you know, you go out to, to you know eating out is fun okay it's it's there for business but you need to have a good time and if you can't do that if you feel you're going to the ward of your local hospital um it sort of loses its its reason and people will just stay at home merrily as they have been. Exactly. Now you have cited two examples there. Like a lot of people say to me,

oh, you've got the best job in the world because I get to go and meet veterans and go around battlefields. But you get to go around the country. You self-select. You get to go and eat amazing food and drink lots of booze for free and then write witty things about it. And annoyingly, we're just talking on Zoom. You're very very thin you're not paunchy your skin is good you know you don't look like you're about to die of of uh gout um so it is i mean you must you're obviously very lucky is it does the history fascinate you as much as actually doing it in the flesh does the history matter does the history of restaurants matter i think the history of restaurants does matter and i love exploring uh the the development of of hospitality um your first point about having a lovely job i mean i i took my two elder teenage kids to a restaurant i hadn't seen them for for a few weeks. And we went on a review

and we did agree that this was this is quite a nice way of for their dad to earn a living, you know, sniffing the wine, thinking about it, looking at the menu, ordering lobster. I mean, you know, when lockdown began, I felt that I was sort of there was so much cholesterol in my veins. I'd sort of overeaten. I was quite looking forward to a period of sort of fasting but I did miss it and it's lovely to get out there but it's not just the joy of dining out I do love meeting chefs I do love discussing food with people who are passionate about it and what I love about the subject of food is that if you don't care or you do care, I find that fascinating. It's a doorway into people's culture. People who say they have no interest, I just find that extraordinary.

And you can drill down and realise actually that they do. So it's the most phenomenal subject because it's about politics and culture and happiness and misery and poverty. And of course course the history and one of the things that I love about the history of of restaurants is well two things which is sort of quite contrasting one is the extraordinary change and advancement and the story of restaurants that goes to such an extreme that it's about not being hungry it's about theatre but then also the story of restaurants is about a total lack of change if you go back to you know back into ancient history back to pompeii ad 79 the hospitality that was thriving

in that extraordinarily fashionable Roman Empire city shows that, you know, if you'd gone into the streets, if you'd walked up the main drag, the Via della Appondanza, and gone into a tavern, you would have felt very familiar, a very familiar scenario. So I love the idea that in many ways nothing has changed, but I love the fact that in many ways, you know know they weren't sous-viding back in those days you know they weren't creating froths and smears and carpaccios of this and etc etc but i'm sure there were elements of dining out as theater as well

probably more unsavory but um so you identify uh pompeii is important rome's importance and then we don't it seems that the kind of restaurants and and pubs and things become a bit more it's slightly more difficult to place and then there's a sort of explosion uh in the late middle ages so just kind of give it can you give me the global history of eating out what what's what does um what have you learned from the book well let me tell you there me the global history of eating out? What have you learned from the book? the early 15th century in London, where restaurants sort of started to emerge, really to sort of support the burgeoning parliament and the civil servants that were kind of clustering around Westminster. You know, what on earth, what happened? Because there seemed to have been no development for hundreds and hundreds of years the romans were so uh

sophisticated hospitality was was was a law really you know when you traveled in the roman empire you were expected to give and receive hospitality and then the roman empire sort of the the roman The Roman Empire falls and hospitality seems to disappear with it. But I suppose the story of eating out is a story of characters and innovation. And there are moments that for me do start to flag up real change. There's a big debate about the impact of the French Revolution on dining. Because at the end of the French Revolution, so the sort of turn of the 18th century, there were some 500 more restaurants in Paris than there were at the beginning. And it's not a coincidence.

And one of the reasons, and people do debate this, but I think there is a truth in it. The revolutionaries, Robespierre, they set about chopping off the heads of the aristocrats. And they all lived in this extraordinary grandeur in their vast chateaus and their enormous apartments in Paris. And you chopped off their heads, and it meant that they had a lot of staff without jobs. And those staff, a lot of them went to Paris and started to open kitchens and they did run restaurants. Now, not all of them were

successful at running restaurants. There was Marie Antoinette's personal private chef actually complained to the government, the revolutionaries, that he'd lost his job and wanted back pay. Anyway, he was executed. So that was the very sensible protest of his. But there was definitely this idea, you know, that there was a new bourgeoisie and they wanted to dine out. And certainly the French Revolution was a bit of a catalyst. But, you know, the story of restaurants is one that sort of ebbs and flows across the centuries. And as technology improves and travel improves, you see the sort of the tentacle of inspiration appearing in extraordinary places and trends begin and they sort of dissipate so you know it's hard to encapsulate and answer your question simply because it's such a vast story and what about drinking i mean are you

somebody is it's a restaurants revolve around food or do pubs and ale houses feature? Because Britain in particular, it feels like the delivery of alcohol to the public just feels like such an important part of our national story. Yeah, it is. And obviously, historically, there was a lot of worry about the gin craze because British labourers, it seemed, were quite happy to spend all their money at the end of the week on gin. And the development of working class, working men's clubs was sort of hijacked by people who saw them as places where working men could gather and be educated and not drink. gather and be educated and not drink. Certainly, you know, the story of drink is a fascinating topic as we get enveloped by it. We love it and we fall in love with it. We fall out of love with it. Those who wish to rule us wish we weren't drinking as much as we do. I mean, I think it's a it is a very peculiarly English story, our love and our obsession with booze. You know, the French, the Italians are able to have a seven-hour lunch

and not stagger out and throw up and be completely wasted. Whereas, you know, seven hours, a British seven-hour lunch is a massive sort of drink-a-thon. So there are cultural differences about drinking. But I think certainly the British story of restaurants does also hinge on the story of booze

and, you know, taverns and inns and so on. But I think really, you know, our food story was sort of punctured. We had bad times in the Victorian era, partly, I think, because the Victorians didn't really agree with the idea of pleasure. You know, I think the Victorians wanted to ban puddings, basically.

And the Second World War, with rationing, also stalled the advance of British food culture. It brought out that inner Puritan, Victorian character in the British because we were very happy to be rationed and we remained rationed for seven years after the war and subsequent generations I think felt that they wanted to indoctrinate their children with the rationing that they'd tolerated and so the British food story doesn't really get going until people like Elizabeth David write about food in a romantic way

until the end of the 60s where you know the the wonderful Rue brothers turn up into London and start to open restaurants and demonstrate how wonderful food can be and how great service can be so yeah it's it ebbs and flows. uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week i mean with the so with the exception of of rome

uh restaurants as we understand today going somewhere being waited on at a table, having a menu. It's so funny because it's so ubiquitous. And yet it's quite new, really. It's only a couple hundred years old. It is relatively new. And I think that if you speak to, you know, I'm 50, you speak to my parents' generation, their parents, what my grandparents, was a was a huge luxury um you know pre-lockdown this you know if you went into you know 2020 our grandparents great-grandparents wouldn't have recognized um how young people are able to eat out so regularly and so freely and relative and and relatively so cheaply. So the idea of eating

out as a kind of hobby, that restaurant going is a sort of daily enterprise, would be completely, totally anathema to previous generations. Ironically, it was the Second World War that saw Britain eating out as never before, because of the British restaurant, the sort of national network of canteens that Lord Wilton, the Minister of Food, set up, saw cafes that could produce food that was on the ration. It meant that families who'd had their houses bombed or had lost their kitchens people could go and eat the ration and eat cheaply and eat not just economically but generally a healthy diet using what was available so britain ate out in the second world war more than they had ever done in in history but you're quite right. The idea of, you know, restaurants being available to everybody is a relatively new phenomenon. The French loom very large in this story,

not just the revolution, but it strikes me that so many of the words we're using, every time you go into it, there's a shadow of our sort of love-hate relationship with the French. It seems to fall across every restaurant experience I have. Or maybe that's just my overactive 18th century love of history. No, the French have certainly been very dominant. And in many ways, they remain dominant.

they remain dominant um what annoys the french though is the fact that catherine de medici when she came over from uh from italy or or uh whatever you know from venice florence wherever was she was living um back in the day and brought her entourage with her uh you know she she married you know the young french king uh was married by the Pope. People say that she brought Italian gastronomy to France, and that's what really got the French going. So the origins of French gastronomy lay in with the Medici's. So the Italians can really say that they were producing proper posh food and things like zabaglioni long before the French were.

But the French don't really like that idea. What the French did, though, particularly in this sort of mid-19th century with people like Karem, was to formalise restaurants and restaurant menus, formalise kitchens, organise kitchens in, you know, proper brigades, almost sort of army style. And they formalized and created sort of clear space between the amateur kitchen, the home kitchen, and the professional kitchen. And so the French influence is obviously immense and extraordinary and remains to this day. And as I touched on earlier, I think that a lot of chefs today, even if they don't know it in this country, owe a great deal to the Roux brothers, because they saw this opportunity. They came into what was still a fairly bleak scene post-war, still by the late

1960s, early 70s. You know, the restaurant scene was not really worth describing, with a few rare examples in places like Oxford and some in London. But they saw this opportunity. You know, they were entrepreneurs. Michel and his brother Albert worked for private families. Albert was working for the Caslett family in England. Michel was working for the Rothschilds in Paris. And when Michel came to stay with his brother, Albert, in the summer in Kent, they would go up to London and merrily eat in these terrible restaurants.

And they saw there was an opportunity that they could create food that, you know, and restaurants create a scene that was just not available. But what they did was they trained a lot of young chefs there was a new generation of chefs people like marco pier white and people like roly lee um and so on who then went on to create their own restaurants um and inspire future generations but also they put the idea of service as a profession um on the map.

You know, and I think people like Diego Matsiega, who worked at the Gavroche for 30 years, you know, showed young Brits that actually serving in restaurants was a viable and a profession to be proud of. So the French are still having their influence today. But, you know, trends move on and different, you know, scenarios emerge. Michelin these days, which obviously is a, you know, is a French organisation. It's a tyre company with very ambitious marketing aims. Wherever they do guides, they're trying to sell tyres. And that is essentially French, but so that they can stay relevant they don't just salute and um flag up you know places that adhere to the roots of classic french gastronomy you know you get stars for little

holes in the wall pubs and so on but. But the tentacles and the influence of the French, I don't think will ever go away. The Japanese sushi guy in the underground station in Tokyo with the Michelin star, enjoy that one. It's interesting the Rouge journey though from private sort of aristocratic families to pubs. It does feel to me like with restaurants, as with so many other sporting and cultural

pursuits in that century it goes from like giving the bourgeois the the new urban sort of middle class a taste of what it's like to be a toff because you build a nice restaurant with some gilded you know wood carvings and some mirrors and some chandeliers and then you stick lots of us in there and we all get to eat the food, the toffee. I mean, is that something that's going on in the 19th century as this new mass of people have money to spend? Yeah, it's interesting that and it is true because in exactly the same way as those redundant chefs from the aristocrats from the French Revolution were starting up restaurants and creating ornate places where people could dine as if they were toffs that's

exactly what the roo brothers were doing they were working for wealthy families and they decided to create um restaurants that again would would reflect that the the origins of of clubs gentlemen's clubs created in london to mirror the stately, the drawing rooms and the libraries of the rich aristocrats in the countryside who might not have had posh London houses. Those were created so that the Toffs could feel at home. So yes, it's absolutely a thread throughout history of, you know, the plebs finally getting a taste of what the posh people are doing thanks to the chefs. And I think the huge change that we've seen in the last 20, 30 years is an abandonment of that. And you've got young foodie entrepreneurs creating restaurants in shipping containers such as Will Bowlby's Cricket. will bulb is cricket you've got people um uh taking advantage of this street food scene you know in parts of east london uh people realizing that you can create a stall to

create food cults you don't need bricks and mortar um the idea that you can begin a food business by having a youtube channel or an Instagram account. This is a new way of developing and bringing ideas to the fore that absolutely gets rid of this sort of hangover of, you know, posh food for the rest of us. Thanks to the chef who's managed to slip out of the gilded chateau or or you know stately home but the but the that's the interesting thing for me about restaurants and that is a bit different to ale well anyway the thing i find interesting about restaurants is the poor your poor restaurant entrepreneurs i i god i admire them because you've got the food to organize but you've also got the vibe to sort out and and so they've got the ship, whether it's a

shipping container or one of those lovely 19th century restaurants where, again, you're trying to pretend that you've been invited to the dining room of a stately home. And you're riding two very different horses in a way, aren't you? Because you can have great food, but terrible atmos. Then people like you come around and just rip them to pieces for it. I mean, from the beginning, there's been a theatricality to restaurants, hasn't there? Being a successful restaurateur is one of the most difficult tasks that I can imagine. Because you've got to be a creative. You've got to be a designer.

You've got to have a sort of philosophy in terms of an approach to how you cook. You've got to be a businessman because you've got to do the numbers. You've got to be a manager of people. So you've got to be, you know, have those sort of diplomatic skills. And it helps if you can actually cook a plate of food. You've got to be able to find the right crockery and the chemistry between, you know, crockery and decor. And you've got to do all those sorts of things. Then you've got to get people in there. You've got to be consistent, which is the hardest thing.

That's why Michelin stars, the pressure of it gets to people because it's not just the fact that you can cook a beautiful plate of food one day. You've got to do it the next day, the next day, the next day, every day for days months years and then you've got to tolerate people like me turning up and having a sniff around and and bashing out hilarious copy as sport although i would say dan i i think there you know some of the i'm not one i take huge pleasure in finding gems and writing good reviews. Actually, writing good reviews is much harder than sticking the knife in,

even though I wouldn't say that it's not enjoyable and it does need to be done occasionally. But there's far greater pleasure for me, and I promise you I mean it, there's far greater pleasure for me from writing a great review because the positive impact of a great review is far greater than the negative one of a terrible review so yeah you've got to deal with all this stuff and then you've got to deal with flat from critics and then and then imagine you've done all that and then a plague turns up and shuts you down anyway. I mean, it is this extraordinary profession, but it does bring in some of the most creative people

and the most passionate people, which is why I love the subject of food. Well, I like the subject of it. I also like the consuming of it. It is very difficult, but when you get it right, it's a glorious thing. So listen, we don't usually do this on this podcast. Tell us what the book's called, first of all.

My book is called The Restaurant, A History of Eating Out. Where are your favourite spots to go at the moment? Because we've got listeners all over the world, but obviously lots here in the UK. I mean, you've named a couple of great ones in the UK, but anywhere that we should be checking out in the UK at the moment? I had a wonderful,

I had a very good curry at Sea Spice in Albury the other day on the Suffolk coast. I mentioned the station kitchen in Bridport, wonderful little place, very good lobster there. I had a fantastic lunch at Sam's Riverside, which is a restaurant run by a guy who trained under Rick Stein. That's in Hammersmith.

If you're in Soho, I love Quo Vadis. Jeremy Lee, Scottish chef. Absolutely brilliant. If you're down in the southwest, check out Hicks. Mark Hicks, who's got his oyster and fish house in Lyme Regis. Anywhere in the frozen north? Up in the north. Let me think. I'm about to head to Aberdeenshire and there's a place that sells lobster up in Bamburgh. I think it's called the Potted Lobster. I'm looking forward to eating

there. And then do you venture abroad for your column? Are you allowed? Do they send you abroad? Any North American suggestions for our audience over there? I'm going to have to say, I'm going to have to let you down. My column, I have a tight leash. If only I could eat my way around the world, then I really would have the greatest job.

But then I probably wouldn't be able to get into an aeroplane because I wouldn't fit in the seats is it even possible to sort of to make a difference differentiate between atmosphere and food in a restaurant I mean are there other restaurants where the food is average but you just love the atmosphere and you just you just you'd go back and back oh totally I mean if the food is the most important thing I think you're going out for the wrong reasons um it's rather like know, you go and see a great comedian and you say the next day, oh, you know, Michael McIntyre or whoever, and, you know, Billy Connolly, and you talk about how

you'd never laughed so much in your life, but you can't remember any of the jokes. It's a bit like a great meal out. You have a wonderful time. If you can't remember what it was you ate, it doesn't matter because you had a great time. The you can't remember what it was you ate, it doesn't matter because you had a great time. The most important thing about going out is conversation and communing with your fellow humans. And food is there to help that, not to get in the way, which is why it's annoying if you're constantly being interrupted by someone asking you,

pointing at the food, telling you about every ingredient on the plate, asking you if you enjoyed it. You have to keep on thanking the staff. Yes, thank you. That was great. Oh, asking you if you enjoyed it. You know, where you have to keep on thanking the staff. Yes, thank you. That was great. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. We need to be left alone. I love to pour my own wine in restaurants.

You know, I'm a grown-up. We want to have a good time. What's that? There's a primal scream there because I want to have a good time when I get loaded. Anyway, enough of that. Yes, I go out on my speedboat

and have fish and chips with the kids on the Isle of Wight. And frankly, they're the best restaurants on planet Earth. Thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. Thanks, Dan. It's been really lovely chatting to you. Thank you. Hi, everyone.

It's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice.

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