History of Restaurant and Its Significance in Song Dynasty

As the capital of Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), Kaifeng was the first city to have specified regional restaurants, which were the ones only offered cuisine of distant provinces and places. The geographical location of Kaifeng made it the natural winner of this game. Located at the nexus of several important canals, including the Yellow River and the Grand Canal, Kaifeng served as a commercial center that attracted merchants and bureaucrats from all over the country (West, 70). The specialized restaurants were mainly opened for government officials, members from elite families, and wealthy merchants coming from the south-east, since there was significant difference in taste between the north and south (Gernet, 133). Evident in the literatures of Song Dynasty, the words, such as Nanshi (南食, southern food), Beishi (北食, northern food), and Chuanfan (川饭, Szechuan food), started to appear, indicating there were a wide variety of specialized regional food in the city of Kaifeng (West, 70).

However, everything had changed in 1127 when the Jin’s troop marched into the city of Kaifeng, right after its defeating of the Khitan Liao. Because of this invasion, many government officials, members from the court, and elite families fled to the south, towards the Yangtze River. This sudden event caused a relocation of the capital to Hangzhou and gave rise to Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) (Ropp, 71). This massive migration of people from the city of Kaifeng had bought many culinary traditions from the areas they originally lived in, leading to a blend of cuisine between the north and the south. In the city of Hangzhou, it also appeared specialized regional restaurants that was similar to those in Kaifeng. For example, there were Szechuan Restaurants that served dishes seasoning with excessive amount of pimento. And even there was no official historical record, there were also restaurants serving Islamic cuisine, which excluded food such as pork, for Muslim merchants coming to the capital, (Gernet, 134). 

Kaifeng and Hangzhou, as the capitals of Northern Song and Southern Song Dynasties, had a highly mix of population coming from different regions. People met, traded, and exchanged ideas with each other, and this led to the development of the cuisine of capitals, which blended special culinary cultures bought into the cities and the native culinary culture (Sabban, 5). The emergence of specialized restaurants in major cities, such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou, showed the open and welcoming attitudes that people from Song Dynasty held towards different regions. They respected and embraced different cuisines coming from each region and opened specialized restaurants to accommodate the needs of people coming from those regions. 

The excerption above captured a scene of how a restaurant functioned during that time period. Many parallels can be drawn between a standard restaurant and a theatre. The waiters who sang the orders out and distributed dishes were the actors; the materials being performed were the shouting of orders and the specialized ways of dish distribution; and the audience were the costumers coming into the restaurants.

The “showmanship” delineated in this excerpt from Dongjing Meng Hua Lu “suggests an increasing valorization of the spectacle and esthetics of presentation as much as a concern for the actual taste of food” (West, 93).

The idea of incorporating performing art into restaurants was still prevalent in today’s Chinese food industry, especially in restaurants serving specialized cuisine, such as those Szechuan hotpot places.

Incorporating the regional performing art into customers’ dining experience, such as offering Szechuan Opera in the restaurant, became an extremely important way of attracting customers in today’s China. The fact that theatrical elements became a standardized arrangement in restaurants indicated that showmanship in a restaurant increased in importance during Song Dynasty, and it continued to gain importance, even until nowadays. This phenomenon implied people started to shift their interests from the actual food or taste of food to the quality of entertainment offering by restaurants.

Before the Song Dynasty, in the Tang Dynasty, although people in that time period sometimes blended entertainment and food together, such as hunting, they ate more for taste of food (Benn, 132). As mentioned by Pilcher in The Classical and Postclassical Era, Tang Dynasty flavored naturalism and also always looked for ways to enhance the original flavor of food (Pilcher, 6). However, it is clearly shown through the locations of specialized restaurants and the process involved in the operation of a restaurant, food was not so much for sustenance and taste but a way of entertaining. As an “entertainment-oriented society”, the social environment during Song Dynasty played an important role in supporting the growth in restaurant industry (Tian et al. 355).