Antoine’s, the oldest US restaurant owned by a single family

Same. I actually hadn't heard of it before going there on a business dinner. The food and service were great, but we were also given a tour of the restaurant afterwards and the size and richness of the history there is staggering. I think the restaurant takes up the entire city block on 2 floors, with about 9 different dining halls / rooms for large catered events, intimate occasions, etc. a massive underground cellar, etc. Very cool experience...

I admittedly lived in New Orleans before the modern generation of "celebrity chef" restaurants really got going. K-Paul's had just opened. So most of the best restaurants were all cut from a somewhat similar high creole cloth. But Antoine's was always right near the top of my favorites--though I haven't been there for years.

The way things worked back then was they tended to stick the tourists in the front room but if you knew one or more of the waiters by name they'd give you one of their tables in the back.

Certainly if you go outside the US there are. Supposedly Stiftskeller in Salzburg was established in 803. Yeah, over a thousand years earlier.

http://www.stpeter-stiftskeller.at/en/the-restaurant.html

There are older restaurants, but for example, Cafe Procope in Paris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_Procope) was opened in 1686, and is still in operation. It was worth it for me to eat at a place where (for example) Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin ate.

'Rules' [0] in Covent Garden, London. 1798. Great place!

[0] http://rules.co.uk/

Some random ones from Scotland (I'm sure there are plenty more):

Drovers Inn, Inverarnan (1705) http://www.droversinn.co.uk/

The Sheep Heid, Edinburgh (allegedly 1360, but a bit vague) https://www.thesheepheidedinburgh.co.uk/

Spot the american! (I mean that in a good-natured way). There are a few 1700s restaurants in london, plenty of 1800s, and of course if you look at pubs in the UK then 1840 is practically modern. One pf my local pubs dates to 1381. The food is probably better now than it was then.

There are many in Japan. I even remember an article on HN about one.

A quick search on Google showed this link:http://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/the-10-oldest-... The first listing was "Established in 1659".

Wikipedia's list of oldest companies says that Stiftskeller St. Peter, an inn within the monastery walls of St. Peter's Archabbey, Salzburg, Austria, is the oldest restaurant (dating to at least 803), but hotel Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan has presumably been selling food since its founding in 705.

It's difficult to define exactly the boundaries between tavern, tea house, and restaurant, but I'd be curious what the oldest business serving prepared meals but not offering accommodation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

Looking up the place's menu on their website and watching pictures of their dishes on Yelp, I have the feeling this place wouldn't be doing very well if it didn't have its illustrious history.