According to The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, most early French restaurants in the 1760s and 1770s were legally suppressed by catering guild restrictions. This is also stated by the other sources I have read, and it seems to be well agreed upon in the historical community. However, despite this consensus, I have been unable to find the actual guild laws that everybody is referring to.
This is pretty sad, because I really want to read some of these laws for myself. Where can I find these laws?
Alternatively, if these laws are no lon ger available, what happened to them? Were the physical documents lost during the French Revolution? If this is the case, how do historians know that these laws actually existed?
EDIT: Quick update -
I managed to find a lead: In The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture it states "...unregulated purveyors if the 'restrorative bouillons knows as restauraunts - encroached on the rights of the established catering guild (28)".
Footnote 28 states: "Most accounts paraphrase Pierre Jean-Baptiste LeGrand d'Aussy, Histoire de la vie privee des francois (Paris: Pierres, 1782), vol. 2, pp. 213-214. This tale is repeated unquestioningly, sometimes garbled, never supported."
I think if I were to find this document, I would be able to find a good example of a legal dispute, which would hopefully bring me closer to my goal. Unfortunately I have not been able to find Histoire de la vie privee des francois Vol. 2 online, and (according to my university) the nearest library that has it in stock is in France, so the search continues.
EDIT 2: I managed to find it on Amazon, but I can't afford to spend $30 and wait a month on a hunch that this document will be useful to me. However, according to this page, Histoire de la vie privee des francois Vol. 2 is public domain. Assuming this is the case, PDFs are legal and it should probably be available somewhere if I keep searching.
Of materials that are readily available online, you might take a look at: René de Lespinasse, ed. Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris XIVe-XVIIIe siècle, Volume 1 (Paris:1886), for example page 360. Available on Google Books, free of charge. References is made to the Letters Patent of December 1610. These would be the guarantees of their privileges. Also online you can find volumes collecting these Letters Patent, such as Recueil des déclarations, édits, lettres patentes et arrêts du conseil d'Etat du Roi enregistrés au Parlement de Dijon, depuis 1666 jusqu'en 1752
which includes what I think you're looking forStatuts des maîtres queux, cuisiniers, porte-chappes et traiteurs de la ville de Paris, en 45 articles, avec lettres patentes de Louis XIV confirmatives.
with a reference to the [then] present location in the National Archives :Arch. Nat., Ordonn., 1 o° vol. de Louis XIV, X 1° 8661, fol. 1 a. - Coll. Lamoignon, t. XIV, fol. 595.
and similarly
Dictionnaire portatif des arts et métiers contenant en abrégé l'histoire, la description et la police des arts et metiers, des fabriques et manufactures de France et des pays étrangers · Volume 2 where reference is made to the specific enabling statutes.
If you're contemplating more involved research:
According to a footnote (#6) in
Piwnica, Fabrice. “Les Résistances à L'introduction Du Libéralisme En France: Le Témoignage Des Mémoires Des Corporations En 1776.” Revue D'histoire Moderne Et Contemporaine (1954-), vol. 40, no. 1, 1993, pp. 30–48.
you may find more interesting material in the 1776 memoir of the guild of traiteurs as they contested mooted reforms during Turgot's Ministry. This memoir is apparently located in the Bibliotheque Nationale, volume 462 of the Joly de Fleury collection, folio 180.
While I haven't seen this -- it's unpublished, these kinds of documents typically included references to the privileges claimed by the corporations at the time and how they came by them. Rights and privileges were often restated so I'd suspect you'd find the traiteurs stating their case in other places as well. This would speak directly to the dispute between liberalism and the guilds.
While the BN is pretty much shut at this point, under normal circumstances you might get someone to make a copy of this for you. There are often researchers grad students who're familiar with the BN who will make a copy for a modest fee; I haven't worked there in years, its possible (?) that the BN itself will make a copy. Right now, though, its likely beyond reach.
For a deep dive into the battle between liberalism and the guilds, the work of Simone Meyssonnier is probably a reasonable place to start, her work is very deeply researched, though I don't recall discussion of the traiteurs, you might well find it in "La balance et l'horloge: La genèse de la pensée libérale en France au XVIIIe siècle" [1989] or her other works