In England Eats Out, 1830– present, John Burnett describes the dining scene in London in the 1830s offering ‘a hierarchy of eating places’. The choices ran from ‘humble cook-shops and ‘ordinaries’, to better-class inns, chop-houses and dining rooms, up to a few renowned taverns and hotels’.[1] Burnett suggests an ‘ordinary’ rated higher than a cookshop, although the quality of the food available could vary.[2] In either case diners could expect a table d’hote, that is a set meal, available at the same time every day, and usually eaten at a communal table.[3] A table d’hote or ordinary was also a common feature of many hotels and taverns with the better establishments offering a choice of dishes. A chop house, as the name implies, traditionally specialised in cooked meat but cook shops might also be expected to provide roast joints of meat as well as pies, puddings and pastries. Then as now no doubt potential customers had their own ideas about where they would eat based, as Burnett observes, on their needs and incomes.
The terms cook-shop, chop house, table d’hote, ordinary, eating house, inn, tavern and hotel were all in use in Sydney in the 1830s and 1840s and there was certainly a hierarchy of eating establishments. At one end of the spectrum were places said to be little more than brothels, ‘the principal resort of the well-dressed prostitutes and youths of Sydney’, at the other were hotels of ‘the first water’ providing excellent fare where gentlemen could dine in comfort.[4]
The first documented ‘Eating and Chop House’ in Sydney was that run by Rosetta Stabler, on Pitt’s Row (now Pitt Street) next to the Yorkshire Grey Hotel. In 1803 Stabler offered her customers an ordinary of ‘victuals dressed in the English way’, promising boiled mutton and broths every day (except Sunday) at 12 and a roasted joint of meat ready by 1 pm.[5] By 1828 The Monitor could report that ‘eating houses and chop houses in Sydney are getting into fashion’ suggesting a trend to eating out which would only develop further as the population grew and more and more businesses established themselves in the city.[6]
What distinguished one eating place from another is hard to gauge from the scant material available. Some were the extension of an existing food business, a confectioner’s or pastry cook’s shop for example, or attached to boarding houses where meals were provided to both lodgers and the public.[7] Some were stand-alone, unlicensed eating houses, often styled ‘coffee rooms’.[8] More often than not an eating place was associated with a licensed hotel, and anyone who wanted to provide wine or beer with the food they made available had to obtain a publican’s license.[9] Apart from the restrictions on the service of alcohol – not allowed on Sunday, Good Friday or Christmas Day, and otherwise not after 10 pm – a licensee was required to provide on the licensed premises at least two moderate sized sitting rooms, two sleeping rooms immediately ready for public accommodation, and stabling and feed for six horses. Additional provisions involved patrons having access to suitable conveniences ‘for the use of customers in order to prevent nuisances or offences against decency’, the licensee painting their name on their premises and having a lamp burning over the door from sunset to sunrise every night. In addition, anyone holding a publican’s license could be fined for wilfully or knowingly permitting drunkenness, and for allowing gaming or the association of prostitutes on their premises.[10]
Someone contemplating opening a stand-alone eating establishment needed to do more than hire a competent cook if they also wanted to provide their patrons with alcoholic refreshments. For a licensed hotel a dining room was an expected and obvious attraction to patrons. Most also offered other inducements like billiard tables and the latest newspapers along with a variety of other features such as sitting rooms, meeting rooms, rooms for private meals, and board and lodging. The better eating places were associated with the better hotels, distinguished by their superior décor, cleanliness and comfort. Recognised for the quality, quantity and variety of food they provided these were well managed establishments which could guarantee good service and an air of respectability – no drunkenness, no prostitutes and no breaches of trading hours or other infringements of the licensing regulations.
The only readily available source of information on what food was served and how these eating places may have been run and organised is found in newspapers, including advertising and police reports. Published bills of fare are scarce, suggesting that customers were familiar with what was likely to be available and menus rarely altered. Advertisements suggest that the choices, if any, on any given day were displayed outside the premises. Nonetheless, it is possible to gain a general idea of the range of dining options from newspaper advertising.
A table d’hote or ordinary remained popular at lunch time but the food on offer varied considerably from place to place. For example, in 1827 Stephen Bax, a confectioner and pastry cook, was serving ‘a snug and genteel ordinary’, a dinner of three courses, at 4 pm in his shop where he also did a steady trade in ‘cold ham, mutton pies and apple tarts’ at lunch time. Later, as licensee of the Australian Hotel, he provided his clients with soups, patties, and lamb and veal pies every day at 11 am and had an ordinary on the table at 2 pm.[11] At the Melbourne Eating House and Coffee Rooms James Kingaby served an ordinary every day at 1 pm but also advertised tea, coffee and soups available from 6 am until midnight.[12] Diners at the Tavistock Hotel could obtain hot boiled beef and vegetables, and a glass of ale from 12 noon until 3 pm every day.[13] When Charles Marsh moved from the Tavistock to the Royal Hotel he prepared an ordinary daily at 1 pm consisting of various kinds of soup, boiled and roast joints, made dishes, butter, cheese and salads.[14] The ‘ordinary’ Alfred Toogood laid on at the Rainbow Tavern was served from 1 pm to 3 pm and consisted of soups, hot joints and made dishes and included champagne ale or porter in the price.[15]
Not everyone restricted the hours of food service to lunch. At his eating house opposite the new market place, George Rainey provided tea, coffee, soups, and hot and cold joints of the best description at all hours of the day.[16] The Royal Victoria Coffee House conducted a good lunch or dinner ‘in true London style’ at any time, with ‘soups, curries of all descriptions and all the most delicious kinds always ready at a moments notice’.[17] William Toogood rented the room adjoining the Rose and Crown Hotel on the corner of King and Castlereagh Street and operated a ‘saloon for dinners and refreshments’ including tea, coffee, ‘soups and curries of every description’ and ‘all kinds of Indian preparations in the best style and on the shortest notice’.[18] Martin Gill supplied visitors to his Victoria Refreshment Rooms with breakfast from 7 am to 10 am, a luncheon from 11 am to 3 pm, dinner from 4 pm to 7 pm and supper from 9 pm to midnight. His hot or cold lunch included chops or steaks, ‘Harricoes, Fricasees, Curries’ and a variety of soups.[19] Gill later operated the City Wine Vaults where he promised ‘luncheons and a public dinner daily on the table from twelve to four o’clock, when every delicacy of the season will be provided’.[20] At one stage he even engaged an ‘East Indian’ cook to prepare Mulligatawny soup and ‘currie’ for the gentlemen who attended his ‘commercial ordinary’.[21]The bill of fare at the Royal Exchange Coffee Rooms for 28 March 1843 was extensive – soup (a choice of three), fish (boiled and baked), poultry (goose, duck and fowl), joints of meat both roasted and boiled (lamb, mutton, beef, pork veal and calves’ head), meat pies (lamb, rump steak and giblet), made dishes (including cutlets, curry and a variety of Indian dishes) and vegetables of all kinds. Dinner was available at any hour of the day.[22]
Quite apart from demonstrating that curries and Indian dishes in general were popular, these advertisements indicate that Sydney diners were neither necessarily restricted to set mealtimes or to a set menu for lunch or dinner. What is not clear is how meals were served – whether diners shared their meals at a common table or were able to dine individually at separate tables. In other words, we cannot know how closely any of these establishment resembled a restaurant.
The restaurant in the form we are familiar with today, grew out of the social and political turmoil of the French Revolution.[23] By the 1790s, restaurant dining was a fashionable pastime and Paris boasted a large and growing number of both restaurants and people using them.[24] Although eating away from home was not a new phenomenon per se the restaurant introduced the novelty of being able to sit at a private table and choose one’s dining companions. At a restaurant, diners could also choose food to suit their own tastes from a menu which listed the prices of the dishes on offer, they could eat at a time which was convenient and be served by waiters who brought the food to them at their table.
The available evidence suggests that the term ‘restaurant’ was first use in Sydney in the 1830s. In 1838 William Toogood moved from his saloon next door to Sandwell’s Rose and Crown Hotel and established himself in ‘superior and capacious premises’ immediately across the road, on the north-eastern corner of King and Castlereagh Streets. Here he proclaimed himself a restaurateur and his new endeavor (subsequently licensed and called the Rainbow Tavern) a restaurant.[25] How the eating arrangements at the Rainbow Tavern differed from Toogood’s earlier saloon is not recorded.
The Sydney Monitor, 8 August 1838, p. 3.
But in 1843 when Mr Sparke announced that he intended to open the Grand Saloon of the Royal Hotel ‘upon the principle of the universally established EUROPEAN RESTAURATEURS’ he made it clear that he understood exactly how a restaurant was supposed to operate. He would serve breakfast, luncheon or dinner between the hours of 11 am and 6 pm, and diners would sit at separate tables ‘properly laid out’. A bill of fare, listing ‘all the substantial and epicurean dishes of the season’ with the prices of each, would be available on every table. Parties of four or six who wished to do so could dine by themselves, ‘as in London’, and their table would be ready for them at the time they requested.[26]
The arrival of the restaurant did not herald the adoption of French food. At Harden’s Restaurant and Commercial Dining Rooms in 1842, James Harden specified that he would not ‘profess to supply French and Italian dishes, so much sought for by the EPICURE’ rather he intended to continue with the old English principle ‘of supplying a good Rump Steak, or Mutton Chop, so that those friends who favor him with a visit, may fancy themselves in the Mother country.’[27] While this insistence on ‘the old English principle’ may have been a reflection of Harden’s own tastes, it may also have been a reaction to the announcement by Messrs. Henin and Bourdon that they intended to open a ‘French Restaurant’ where they would be serving a variety of French and Italian dishes at their luncheons and dinners.[28]
A sustained French presence on the eating out scene in Sydney would not eventuate until the 1850s, and the concept of the restaurant was not adopted with any enthusiasm until later in the century. In the meantime, businessmen and patrons of the theatre were well served with cold collations, curries, roast joints and soups at all hours.
[1] John Burnett, England Eats Out, 1830– present (London: Reason Education, 2004), p. 9.
[3] Rebecca L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant. Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 7–8; Beat Kümin, “Eating Out Before the Restaurant. Dining Culture in Early-modern Inns,” in Eating Out in Europe, Picnics, Gourmet Dining and Snacks Since the Late Eighteenth Century eds. Marc Jacobs and Peter Scholliers (Oxford: Berg, 2003), pp. 71–87.
[4] The Sydney Herald, 16 November 1840, p. 2; The Australian, 30 May 1829, p. 2.
[5] The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (hereafter SG), 26 June 1803, p. 4; SG 24 July 1803, p. 4; SG 25 December 1803, p. 4; SG, 8 April 1804, p. 1.
[6] The Monitor, 22 May 1828, p. 5.
[7] For Stephen Bax, pastry cook, see The Monitor, Friday 13 April 1827; SG 4 June 1831, p. 2. For boarding house see for example John Moses, SG, 22 August 1835, p. 4, where ‘persons can regularly obtain their meals at any hour on the most reasonable terms’.
[8] See also Charles Marsh’s Victoria Saloon which he advertised as a ‘Coffee, chop and dining rooms’, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (hereafter Bell’s), 14 July 1849, p. 3, and J. Harden’s ‘Chop House and Coffee Rooms’, Sydney Monitor, 27 August 1841, p. 4.
[9] Licensed Publicans Act 1849 No 29a (NSW) https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/num_act/lpa1849n29199/
[10] Licensed Publicans Act 1849 No. 29a, http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb//au/legis/nsw/num_act/lpa1849n29199/.
[11] The Monitor, Friday 13 April 1827; SG 4 June 1831, p. 2
[12] Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 24 March 1838, p. 1; Sydney Monitor, 31 August 1840, p. 4.
[13] Australian, 19 October 1843, p. 4.
[14] The Sydney Daily Advertiser, 6 September 1848, p. 3.
[15] Sydney Morning Herald (hereafter SMH), 12 December 1844, p. 1.
[16] SG, 30 May 1835, p. 2.
[17] Australasian Chronicle, 7 July 1842, p. 3.
[18] SG, 23 May 1835, p. 3.
[19] Australasian Chronicle, 14 January 1840, p. 3.
[20] SMH, 9 July 1845, p. 1.
[21] Australian, 4 November 1845, p. 4.
[22] SMH, 28 March 1843, p. 3. Other examples include, Francois Durand, pastry cook and confectioner, next to the Theatre Royal and the Royal Hotel, who provided soups, curries, made dishes and a cold collation at all hours, including a private room for refreshments for theatre visitors, Sydney Times, 29 July 1837, p. 4. J. Roberts at the Albion Eating House and Coffee Rooms supplied a ‘comfortable, snug, pleasant retreat’ for theatre patrons and a good fire in the coffee rooms. His rooms were also extravagantly embellished with murals of Welsh scenery. His food offerings included ham, roasted and boiled duck, fowl and geese, boiled beef, soup, fish and curries along with stewed oysters, made dishes, toast, eggs and butter. Gilly’s coffee was ‘always available by patent stem apparatus’ Sydney Times, 16 September 1837, p. 4. At Lee and Pelham’s Australian Coffee House and Supper Rooms, the choicest viands, fish, soups, meats, curries, made dishes of every description, jellies, custards, pastry etc. were constantly ready, Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 3 November 1838, p. 2.
[23] See Spang, also Burnett, pp. 9–12; Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food. Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2nd. edition. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 135–144.
[25] Sydney Monitor, 23 July 1838, p. 2; Sydney Monitor, 8 August 1838, p. 3.
[26] SMH, 14 March 1843, p. 2.
[27] The New South Wales Examiner, 1 July 1842, p. 2.
[28] Australasian Chronicle, 28 July 1842, p. 3. This was a very short-lived concern if it ever eventuated. According to Barbara Santich (‘French Restaurants in Nineteenth-century Australia: A Preliminary Review, Part 1’, French Australian Review, 76 (Winter 2024): pp. 4–26), who references Brian Petrie (French Canadian Rebels as Australian Convicts (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2013)) both men were Canadian rebels transported to Australia in 1840. Louis Bourdon was one of the rebels. He was granted a Ticket of Leave in March 1842 and absconded from the colony in September (Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995)). The exact details of Henin are not clear. His name is not on the published lists of rebels transported. A Mr. and Mrs. Henin and child, left Sydney for the South Seas in January 1846 (SMH, 27 January 1846, p. 2).
