COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Do you eat food? I do. And for those of us who do, this is a very important week. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone wouldn’t know this, but this week is the third annual Newport Beach Restaurant Week, meaning there were two others, I’m guessing last year and the year before that. Restaurant Week starts today and runs until Thursday, which is five days, which is like a week but not exactly.

If you are a licensed foodie or you just love dining out, or the last time you tried to cook something it did not end well — this is your deal. Just about every restaurant of note in Newport Beach is participating and will offer a prix fixe menu for lunch or dinner or both for a price of — I hope you’re sitting down — $15 or $20 for lunch, and $20 or $35 for dinner. Are you getting this? Am I making myself clear? We’re talking about primo, first-cabin restaurants here like, well, the First Cabin restaurant at the Balboa Bay Club, offering three-course dinners for $35. Is that possible? I don’t see how, but they’re doing it. At these prices, I say make an entire day of it. Grab some pals, have a couple of $15 lunches at the Bungalow, then an early dinner for $20 at Pescadou Bistro, then finish with a late supper for $35 at Arches Restaurant. Just mention my name to Dan Marcheano and he’ll ask you to leave. Who started all this? That’s easy. It’s a team effort between the Newport Beach Restaurant Assn., the city of Newport Beach and the Newport Beach Conference & Visitors Bureau.

But all this talk about Restaurant Week got me thinking about an even harder question: Who started restaurants? See? You don’t know. Not to worry. Nether did I. But I was able to find out. Places where you could buy a meal, sort of, have been around since Caesar’s mom was still calling him Little Julie. But they were mostly inns or taverns that catered to travelers, and what little food they offered was strictly a sideline to the hootch — what we might call “bar food.” The first restaurant that we maybe, sort of, possibly might have recognized as a restaurant opened, as one might expect, in Paris — city of lights, city of romance, city of paté and pastry-induced food comas. In 1765, a Parisian named Boulanger opened a small restaurant that offered a few soups, simple broths really, that were supposed to have restorative powers. The word “restaurant” by the way comes from the French verb for “restore” — “restaurer.” Isn’t it interesting how many things that we take for granted, like Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper, started out as restoratives that could cure whatever ailed you? That’s why Coca Cola, which originally contained a small amount of cocaine, was only sold in drug stores and dispensed in a small medicine cup.

The first restaurant that we would instantly recognize opened in Paris in 1782, by a Monsieur Antoine Beauvilliers — better known as Tony B. to his friends. No he wasn’t. I made that up. It was called Le Grand Taverne de Londres — the Great Tavern of London — because Parisians were fascinated with all things British at the time. Customers sat at individual tables and ordered from a menu, a very novel custom for the time. In this country, aside from a boatload of colonial taverns, the first full-service restaurant was the Union Oyster House in Boston, which opened in 1826 and is still shucking those oysters and Little Necks 183 years later. One year later, a restaurant in New York opened that offered an unheard of luxury: private dining rooms. It was the creation of two Italian brothers named Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico — people named Pietro have many talents — and Delmonico’s is still going strong, the first unapologetically upscale restaurant in the country.

At the downscale end of the restaurant food chain is the cafeteria and you wouldn’t guess where that started in a hundred years.

Go ahead. Try. Nope, that’s not it. I told you you couldn’t do it.

The cafeteria started in northern California during the Gold Rush. The Forty-Niners were so unruly, unpleasant and lacking in personal hygiene that no decent place would have them. Tent-covered restaurants popped up where men would shuffle along a food line and select this or that then pay the cashier at the end of the line.

The oldest restaurant in the world still in operation is, supposedly, the Sobrino de Botin in Madrid, which claims to have opened its doors in 1726. I don’t care where you are and how good your paella is, 283 years is a pretty good run.

That’s it then … the third annual Newport Beach Restaurant Week, Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico, and the first cafeteria, with grubby gold miners.

If fine food and excellent wine is what you need and more information what you crave, go to www.newportbeach dining.com. It’s all there.

I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.