The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations [Hardcover]

This book analyzes the way in which restaurants are geographical objects that reveal locational logics and strategies, and how restaurants weave close relationships with the space in which they are located. Originating from cities, restaurants feed off the urban environment as much as they feed it ? participating in the qualification, differentiation and hierarchy of cities. Indeed, restaurants in both the city and the countryside maintain a dialogical relationship with tourism. They can be vital players in the establishment of emerging types of gourmet tourism, sometimes even constituting as gourmet tourist destinations in their own right. They participate in the establishment of necessary conditions for local development. Some restaurants are even praised as historic sites, recognized as part of the local heritage, which reinforces their localization and their identity as a gourmet tourist destination.

Foreword ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 The Restaurant: An Eminently Urban Subject 1

Introduction to Part 1 3

Chapter 1 The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment 5

1.1 From bouillons 5

1.2 ?to the establishment 6

Chapter 2 The Concentration of Restaurants in the City Centers 15

2.1 A center-specific logic 16

2.2 ?to a logic of axes 29

2.2.1 Axial diffusion 29

2.2.2 Social diffusion 34

Chapter 3 The Geographical Diffusion of Restaurants in Provinces by Cities and City Networks 41

3.1 The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces: an application of rank-size law 41

3.2 ?but disrupted by tourism 43

Part 2 The Restaurant in Terms of Places and Geogrlãš