Spring-MVC : Creating restful controller for posting/retreival of Objects

I am working on an Android application with which I want to connect to a Spring-MVC based webapp. CUrrently I am working on building a restful controller for the webapp. I tried connecting via Android to the controller method to save an object which I am passing. A null row(with Id ofcourse) in database was created. I can use some help in knowing how can I send Java objects which can be persisted, and retrieval of object/s. Here is what I have so far :

Current controller :

@RequestMapping(value= "/restaurant/addition")
    public ModelAndView addRestaurant(@ModelAttribute("restaurant") Restaurant restaurant, ModelAndView modelAndView){
        modelAndView.addObject(new Restaurant());
        this.restaurantService.addRestaurant(restaurant);
        return modelAndView;
    }

//Default Controller I use for browsers
   @RequestMapping(value = "/restaurant/add")
    public String addRestaurantWebView(@ModelAttribute("restaurant") Restaurant restaurant, Model model){
        model.addAttribute("restaurant", new Restaurant());
        this.restaurantService.addRestaurant(restaurant);
        this.restaurantService.listRestaurants();
        return "redirect:/";
    }

Restaurant Entity :

@Entity
@Table(name="restaurant")
public class Restaurant implements UserDetails{

    private static final GrantedAuthority USER_AUTH = new SimpleGrantedAuthority("ROLE_RESTO");

    private static final String emailRegexp = "^[a-zA-Z0-9_.+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+\\.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$";

    @Id
    @Column(name="restaurantid")
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE,generator = "restaurant_seq_gen")
    @SequenceGenerator(name = "restaurant_seq_gen",sequenceName = "restaurant_seq")
    private int restaurantId;

@Column(name = "restaurantname")
    private String restaurantName;

    @Column(name = "restaurantemail")
    private String restaurantEmail;

    @Column(name = "restaurantaddress")
    private String restaurantAddress;
    // Getters and setters ommitted
}

Android code to send object :

String url = "http://ift.tt/1AlfdxA";

@Override
public void addRestaurant(Restaurant restaurant) {
    Log.d("Restaurant Name",restaurant.getRestaurantName());
    Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
            restTemplate.getMessageConverters().add(new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter());
            restTemplate.getMessageConverters().add(new StringHttpMessageConverter());
            String response = restTemplate.postForObject(url,restaurant,String.class);
            Log.d(response,"Response from webserver is");
        }
    });
    thread.start();
}

I have never worked in RESTful services. Any pointers would be nice. Thanks a lot.