Short answers, pulled from the story.
Archaeological excavations in 2023 at the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash, in modern-day southern Iraq, revealed the remains of a public food establishment dated to approximately 2700 BCE. The site contained benches, an oven, food preparation areas, and standardized bowls with traces of food and beer, interpreted as a communal dining space for non-elite populations.
The word derives from the French verb restaurer, meaning to restore. It was used as early as 1507 to describe a restorative beverage, and by 1521 to mean a fortifying food or remedy. The term transferred from the food itself to the establishments that served it, beginning in Paris in the mid-18th century.
Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau opened the first modern-format restaurant in Paris in 1765 or 1766 on the rue des Poulies, now part of the Rue de Louvre. It served bouillon and a written menu of restorative dishes and is considered the first establishment to offer customers a menu of available choices.
La Grande Taverne de Londres, opened at the Palais-Royal at the beginning of 1786 by Antoine Beauvilliers, the former chef of the Count of Provence, is considered the first real luxury restaurant in Paris. It featured mahogany tables, linen tablecloths, chandeliers, trained waiters, a long wine list, and elaborately prepared dishes including partridge with cabbage and duck with turnips.
Restaurants in Song dynasty cities such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou, during the 11th and 12th centuries, introduced key features of modern dining: written menus with choices, organized waiting staff who took individual orders, and food served in the sequence ordered. A manuscript from 1126 describes waiters singing orders to the kitchen and delivering dishes to each patron in the exact order they were placed.
By 2016 there were one million restaurants in the United States, one for every 310 people, compared to one for every 7,500 people in the 1970s. The October 2017 Bureau of Labour Statistics data cited by the New York Times counted 620,000 eating and drinking places, with the number growing almost twice as fast as the population.