Ptipois

Things are going fast. A few days ago, I was having moules-frites at a small seaside bistrot in Brittany. My friend, who smokes the foulest-smelling tobacco hoping that it will help her quit , started rolling one, and the waiter kindly but firmly told her to go outside. No American tourists miles around, we were the only ones dining in that hall, there was nothing fancy about the place — oh, and yes: the front part of the bistrot was dedicated to the usual beer gulping, pool and pinball playing, gauloise smoking and warm barroom chatting that is so typical of Breton bistrots. It was just: no smoking in the no-smoking area, period. She begged and pleaded but to no avail. Since she couldn't stop trying to coax the waiter into making an exception, I told her that her tobacco stank like no other and that it was two against one, really. So she went out. There will always be café and restaurant owners reluctant to apply the law, but I'm pretty sure they won't be the majority in the long run.

I think you guessed right.

A nearly universal misconception. They [we] drink draught ale cellar temperature, which is in the low middle fifties fahrenheit.Mass-produced [as opposed to artisanal] American beer, on the other hand, should be drunk as cold as possible, short of freezing it into a popsicle, so as not to be able to taste it. EDIT: My apologies to those who have already made this correction; I hadn't finished reading the thread. I've gradually come to the conclusion that we Americans are less prepared than the rest of the world to accept our environment as it comes. Our buildings are too cold in summer, too hot in winter; that's partly why, with five percent of the earth's population, we exhaust close to a quarter of its resources. Every slight environmental discomfort is over-corrected, whether it be the temperature of our bodies (both internal and external), the mode and speed of our travel, the effort of adjusting our TVs, or the inconvenience of preparing our own food, let alone walking to the market to buy it. In the unequal battle with boredom, sensations are boosted to their maximum: drinks must be bitingly cold, chilis searingly hot, music deafeningly loud. I came to Europe for the gentle life--with a bit of searching, it's still available. ← Agreed on every point! I never had the notion that the French were thrifty with ice. It's just that we don't consume tons of it at any opportunity, that's all. Like many people the world over, including some tropical countries. I never had a problem getting ice, even a bowl of ice cubes, at a café or restaurant. Skeptics, take a look at the contents of the bucket holding your bottle of white wine at bistrots. The recent use of ice machines in many cafés and bistrots has made the serving of ice much easier. Still, it's true that they won't bring you truckloads of it. A bowl is more likely. A miniature bucket, in chic brasseries, is commonly seen. A tip: if you want a bowl of ice, just don't ask for "un peu de glace" or "de la glace s'il vous plaît". That's when you'll get one to three cubes in a glass, because that's the normal dose for us. Ask for "un bol de glace", like "pourriez-vous nous apporter un bol de glace s'il vous plaît ?". That should do the job. It's true that the French, and many Europeans, are often defiant of too much ice. Ruins the stomach, they say. I tend to agree, though I like ice in hot weather and don't deprive myself of it. To comment on SuzySushi's post: yes, I can confirm that Ayurvedic rule. I know it, but I don't follow it closely because that's life, being overcareful means being dead after all, and if you begin thinking of Ayurveda constantly you'll end up not being able to ingest anything. So I do like a bit of ice. Another reason: dilution. The French are very suspicious of dilution, and believe that bringing a glass of any drink with ice to the brim is akin to fraud. More ice, less goody. The problem disappears when you're brought a small bottle with a glass and ice on the side. In the US I have sometimes been served Coke in a cardboard cup filled to the brim with crushed ice, with the Coke poured on. That amounted to 300 grams ice and 12 cl Coke. Better for you as far as sugar is concerned, but by French standards (and any standards while we're at it), this is a gyp. My general impression is that the French are definitely more ice-friendly than what is described here. Oftentimes I have had to send back my carafe d'eau because it was full of ice cubes, as a concession to the demands of American tourists. Please put this back in the fridge and bring me a real carafe d'eau, i.e. without ice. And that can happen in January and February. In July or August, I don't mind so much. Now for the sad part. To the ones who never seem to get more than one cube when they ask for ice: sorry, it's not your fault, but you may well have fallen on some rare waiters with a little vicious streak, who will enjoy torturing you because you're American and asking for ice. I don't have any proof that this is true, having been sometimes presented with that solitary ice cube myself, but in some cases that's possible. Please refer to the bowl method, or even the bucket if you can manage it. Customer is king. But waiters can be tough, too. Good luck. Now on the topic of wine dilution. In France, it is now considered acceptable to put ice cubes in your rosé wine, even in white or red wine, in times of heatwave or in the South in Summertime. It is a very French thing (a favorite trick of former Premier ministre Edouard Balladur) to drop an ice cube in your flûte of champagne, even though not many French know the trick. It perks up the wine and stimulates the bubbles.

No, I believe you're quite right. The école Ferrandi is highly praised and has a very good reputation. That is the one French culinary students would attend, and definitely the one I would attend if I had the time and the money. Last year I worked with two of Pierre Hermé's pâtissiers who regularly taught classes at Ferrandi and I could see that the level of teaching was very high in this case, but it is supposed to be very high in general. I think the other schools are for foreigners and rich amateurs. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but the professional level is not the same. John dePaulas' post is interesting. I didn't know about the bad school cafeteria. That reminds me of the employee's cafeteria at Alain Ducasse's 59 avenue Poincaré, at least years ago. Utterly apalling, an ugly dark basement, while so many delicacies were made nearby in luxury settings. It's shocking to the point of immorality.

I bought Zurban only for the food reviews. What's wrong with drinking oolong tea in a floaty dress? Does it prevent from writing good articles?

Say "cime di rapa" and he probably will know. We used to eat a lot of that in Nice when I was a child. It's really Italian. You can get cime di rapa at Paris markets. Look for the maraîchers and the vegetable and fruit stands run by Asian people. On the marché Monge near my place, maraîcher Marc Mascetti sometimes has broccoli rabe. It is more common in France than purple-sprouting broccoli. It's not that we're "not keen" on this one, it's just that it isn't widely grown as yet. Restaurant Pasta e Basta on the dalle de Choisy (XIIIe) makes a great antipasto of cime di rapa. If you can't find cime di rapa, here's a hint: get some Chinese broccoli from an Asian market, it's almost the same thing.

I love Andy Wahloo, by far the nicest of Momo's places. Great décor, and nice food too.

I think it's a bit too early for cèpes, especially in this hot and dry Summer. On "normal" years, yes, there are cèpes in August, especially after the 15th. For quince it's definitely too early. For fresh almonds, it's the peak season. I'm surprised you cannot find some where you are, being close to Languedoc, a region of production.

Tristar probably means "magret de mulard", mulard being the type of duck that is fattened for foies gras and magrets. If I'm not mistaken, any other duck (not mulard) breast should be commercialized under the name "filet de canard" or "filet de canette". If it's labeled "magret", it is almost certainly from mulard. To buy it frozen under the best conditions, forget the markets. Do follow Felice's advice and stick to Picard. Their frozen magrets are good. There is a Picard shop in every neighborhood.

Probably my favorite dish. Lucky you, proper stockfish is nearly impossible to achieve outside of a Niçois context. How do they make it at La Merenda? I hope they don't rejuvenate it in any way.

Ouch, but I suppose those teeth are still pretty good for wearing on a gold chain on a hairy chest.

I just had to order a new copy of this one. My first copy was more than twenty years old and, owing to the cheap paperback binding, unrecognizable as an object. Great books: I wish all food reference books were that well made, and such great reading. I am less impressed by Davidson's Southeast Asian seafood but it's because I have much less access to the described material. However it's still great help for the frozen food department of Asian markets.

First question: no, in fact it's the other way round: it's a steak tartare (a seasoned steak haché) that is quick-seared on both sides. Second question: not very common, but more so in recent years.

(Drool) And tonight chez Ptipois, it was tajine mqalli (lamb, preserved lemons, olives) and gooseberry pie with cinnamon cream. Then my son went to watch the game at the café maure at the Great Mosque (next block from here), sipping thé à la menthe and eating more nice gooey pastries. Seems that they set a large TV screen there. Working with all windows open, I can hear plenty of shouting all over the neighborhood.

Nothing. On 14 juillet, you're free to eat and drink anything you fancy.

I'm not surprised by the disagreement, it is only based on lexical definitions. "Bistrot" in French hardly means "café" any longer. The article should indeed have used the word "café", for the use of "bistrot" could raise some unjustified fears in the food-loving community. Applying to the bistrot, in a French context, what was really happening to the café was certainly misleading. Of course I can't tell for sure, not having read the interview, but it is quite likely that he used the word "restaurants", for "bistrots" are counted as restaurants. Speaking as a restaurateur and as a representative of the corporation of restaurateurs, he couldn't mean cafés. And he would have used the term "cafés et débits de boisson" if he had meant that. Now restaurateurs have difficulties like everybody else. But as far as the bistrot, in the contemporary sense of the word, is concerned, it is doing quite nicely. Sure, but the article was not narrowing the definition, it was only a bit beside the point. Now it is absolutely true that good casual restauration and wholesome, cheap French food do need to be supported, but this is a different debate from the one regarding the cafés. Edited for two commas and one character.

The status of the café is very different in the country. The village café is often an important center of activity, where the social life concentrates. Sometimes it is the only place that remains alive in the Winter. Go to Brittany in January and you'll instantly see what I mean (Brittany has a thriving café culture; some cafés are even libraries). Generally the country café is much more than a café and serves as the local newsstand (it is often a café-tabac-journaux-PMU-billard-public TV set, etc.), but it rarely is a restaurant, unless you have a guinguette type. It may serve crêpes and sandwiches but, unless the café-tabac is attached to a hotel-restaurant (a common feature in the country), they don't usually serve more elaborate food. In the latter case, food will be served in the restaurant hall, not at the café. Many of those country cafes have been closing for decades. For different reasons than those that force urban cafés to shut down. In the country, the culprit is the "exode rural", the gradual abandonment of villages by their population, and this has been going on since at least the late 19th century. However, the thriving period for cafés-tabacs-journaux-guinguettes of our regions was still going on before WWII. Many rural cafés-tabacs started disappearing during the 60's, mostly because no one was willing to take them over, and the decline has been constant since. Indeed the cafe was a center for social life but the countries were so depopulated that there was no social life worth mentioning left. I hear that in some places things are looking up, people from the cities are settling down in the country and some old abandoned cafés are bought; I hope that's true. Again: the bistrot of the type you're mentioning here (as a place that provides good palatable food, etc.) is not threatened in any way, it is experiencing one of its most favorable periods in history. The difficulties are there, as in every form of commerce or service in hard times (the French are going through hard times now). But the French cafes are indeed threatened, and food is not their main point. I guess it's meaningful that cafes that manage to make it are the ones that decide to serve food and become restaurants, i.e. bistrots as we understand them now.

I've noticed that, too. Also that the articles on French news, good or bad, are often out of focus. However, that article is pretty accurate for once, except that it is not dealing with bistrots at all.

I'm told that their number is growing. ← "I'm told", "their number is growing", I'm afraid that doesn't mean a lot. And shopping at Metro doesn't mean anything particular, as you may quickly understand if you visit one of those places. Can you name some bistrot worthy of interest (the kind we praise here) that serves that appalling produce mentioned in the article? There are many things to buy at Metro apart from the industrial, processed substitutes. I believe we're digressing, though. The topic is really on the slow disappearance of French cafés.

← "Bistronomique" is not a combination of bistrot and économique, bien sûr, but of bistrot and gastronomique.

Well, John, I'm afraid you're still confused on the meaning of "bistrot" in the article. The word is used rather improperly. What the article is about is really the cafés (and, yes, particularly the rural ones, but not only). Bistrots are doing better than ever. It's the cafés that are doing badly. Reading the article makes it quite clear. If we are to deal with the (true) bistrots now, i.e. restaurants, well — nearly everybody goes to Metro. For certain things. And goes to Rungis for other things, and sets up their network of small producers too. Nothing incompatible there. Many bistrot owners do all of that. The problem is not going to Metro, it's what exactly you buy there. Have you ever been to a Metro? I warmly encourage you to visit one if you have a chance. As for the "bistrots" or restaurants that serve the really unmentionable Metro foods, I don't think they're the kind we're interested in here anyway.

"Troquet" is half-slang but has the virtue of dismissing any confusion. The word is commonly used in French. So is "café", which leaves no ambiguity. Was the author wrong to call them bistros? I supposed so right from the start, and now that I read the latest messages by John and BonfireCuisine, which both linger on the confusion — the subject of the article is not restaurants but cafés —, I cannot doubt it. Until the 1980s the word "bistrot" could mean a café and that's indeed the original meaning. Much less so nowadays. Now a bistrot is a simple, medium-priced or low-priced urban restaurant serving a certain type of food (traditional - modernized - personalized, etc.), and that is by no means on the way out. On the other hand cafés are on the way out, and it would have been less misleading if the author had not used the word "bistrot" in the first place. "Néo-bistrot" is a recent trend, and one more proof of the vitality of the bistrot phenomenon. It is meant to describe restaurants serving a modernized version of the typical bistrot fare. Since traditional bistrot fare has become hard to come by, that makes a lot of néo-bistrots around indeed. "Bistronomique", even more recent, is a contraction of the terms "bistrot" and "gastronomique" and the terms speaks by itself. The word has become synonymous of casual restaurant to such an extent that it hardly ever associated with cafés anymore. No worry, friends, the French bistrot is doing very well. Now some bistrot chefs (and gastronomique chefs too) may be buying from Metro but 1) that's not a tragedy, Metro is very useful for some stuff and not everybody buys frozen boiled egg, and 2) that's a different topic.

True. But there is no reason to worry for the bistrots, the places that keep John T. busy, for there will always be new ones opening, even in small towns. They're the new trend and they're successful. What is threatened is the cafés, with the zinc, pinball, slot machine and table soccer. Quite another category of place, run by a different culture and economics. Sometimes they intersect with the bistrot culture (when they serve proper food at lunch) but the two are now very distinct.

What is disappearing is, of course, the troquets (the cafés, complete with pinball, coffee machine, sometimes cigarettes and PMU), not the bistrots in the modern sense of the word. So let not there be any confusion on words. Bistrots and troquets are now completely different things. Troquets are vanishing, not bistrots. "Bistrot" now means restaurant. Increasingly, for the last 30 years, as bistrots (i.e. restaurants) were getting back in style and chefs were opening theirs, the word has come to mean "food bistrots" and much less cafés. Bistrots are not particularly disappearing, they're thriving. Cafés are becoming scarcer (in the country they have been for about 50 years really, but in cities the crisis is more recent). Funny that the insane rise of prices induced by the Euro, as well as the increasingly unmanageable cost of living, weren't counted amongst the causes for that disappearance. Given the advantageous position of French cafés, at street corners and intersections, they are frequently replaced by banks. Or sometimes by Starbucks' or fast food chains. It's not just cafés that are going out of business. Many small food stores and local commerces are no longer able to make it, but the generally large surface and exposed location of troquets are very desirable. And their replacement is very fast, and noticeable. Some café owners have tried to attract customers by investing in heavy cosmetic changes, in the "lounge bar" style (silly-looking, brightly-colored velvet armchairs, fancy type on the awnings, mojitos, background music, etc.) but I'm not sure that even makes it. A few of them have hired very good designers, and beautiful cafés have blossomed (this is particularly true of chic, expensive troquets like Le Rostand in Paris, or more modest corner cafés like Le Mirbel near my place). One other thing café owners do to remain in business is upgrade the place to "bistrot" status, i.e. serving food and trying to do it right. Or serving more food (when the troquet already had a menu, i.e. omelettes, salades and croque-monsieur) and trying to attract attention to it. It all depends on the food but that does seems to help. However, I would miss the troquet if it were to disappear, with its noises of spoons and china, the continuous puff of coffee machines, the smoky atmosphere, the grumpy owner wearing a Naples yellow tie on his bordeaux red shirt, the acrid coffee, the half-dead obese German shepherd dog dozing on the floor tiles with everybody tripping on the beast when going to the bathroom, etc. Often, the dog is the nicest person in the whole café. But I'll still miss that.