Will The Bistro Save France’s Rural Villages?

Source: Smithsonian Magazine, Chrissie McClatchie
Photo: More than just a place to eat, many French country bistros offer lodgings and sell local produce. But the transactions of greatest value are the social ones, in which locals come together over a meal or a drink to discuss everything from pressing politics to idle gossip. (National Federation of Country Bistros)

Because these social hubs are the glue holding communities together, a growing movement seeks to protect them on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list

In February 2009, word spread to young chef Charles-Edouard Barbier that Auberge Les Tilleuls, a small, 60-seat roadside bistro in his hometown of Heilles in northern France, was about to close. Its owner had reached retirement age—and the business was on the brink of bankruptcy. After several months on the market, a buyer hadn’t been found. If nothing changed before the start of the summer, the bistro, which is so interlaced in the fabric of the village that even Barbier can’t date its opening, would close its doors for good.

Situated on the main thoroughfare of Heilles (population 655), about a 55-mile drive north of Paris in France’s Oise department, the bistro was not only the sole restaurant left in the village but also its sole remaining business.

“When I was little, it’s where I would come after school to buy sweets,” Barbier recalls. “It was the spot where everyone in the village came together.”

At the time, Barbier was 22 and working in a kitchen just outside La Rochelle on France’s Atlantic coast. But the minute he heard about the plight, a seed was sown. He wasted no time crunching the numbers and studying the market. By mid-March, he had secured a small loan from a bank and agreed on a sale price with the vendors. Come April, he was the official owner.

Barbier was driven by one overriding motivation: that he couldn’t allow his local bistro to close, as so many others have since the start of the 20th century. Because, for each bistro that does, the community loses more than an address to go for a meal; it loses a space for social interaction. So vital are France’s rural bistros to the survival of the villages that they serve that an application to recognize them on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list will soon be underway.

Under Barbier’s stewardship, Auberge Les Tilleuls has evolved over the years, even if its partially exposed red-brick facade and matching red awnings have remained the same. “The old owners had a menu typical of roadside cuisine—steak frites and the like, made with mass-produced products,” says Barbier. He now works as close as possible to the seasons, serving a menu that emphasizes homemade, regional specialties, including pigeon, snails and terrines, cooked using fresh ingredients sourced from local producers.

Beyond the dining room, with its cozy book corner and shaded outdoor terrace, the restaurant also serves as the village post office, lottery agent and grocery store. Barbier even brews and bottles his own beer, an amber ale called Merv’Heilles (a play on the French word merveilles, meaning wonders, and the name of the village).

“As the only business in Heilles, even in the middle of winter, when it’s cold and the weather isn’t very nice, this is the only place where you can grab a coffee, recharge your phone, ask for advice or directions or even a recommendation for a local hike,” Barbier says.

The original social network

More than just a place to eat, many French country bistros offer lodgings and sell local produce. Typically with longer operating hours than a restaurant, some cook and drop off lunch to the cafeterias of nearby schools or deliver bread in the morning. But the transactions of greatest value are the social ones, in which locals come together over a meal or a drink to discuss everything from pressing politics to idle gossip.

In other words, these bistros are the glue that holds these rural communities together.

Yet, their numbers have seen a dizzying drop in the past century. In 1900, France had 500,000 bistros and cafés. By 1945, that number had fallen to 400,000. Fifteen years later, in 1960, that had been slashed in half. In 1987, only 92,000 survived. “Right now, as we’re speaking, there are less than 40,000 remaining,” says Alain Fontaine, president of the Association for the Recognition of the Art of Living in Bistros and Cafés in France as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Every era has had its own set of triggers for the decline, Fontaine explains, from urbanization and deindustrialization to the rise of staff canteens, or company cafeterias, and, more recently, the advent of the internet. “People are staying at home to watch television or interact with their community on Facebook,” he says. “But bistros are the original social network!”

Fontaine, whose own bistro Le Mesturet sits on rue de Richelieu in the heart of Paris, is fighting to have the country’s bistros and cafés—and in particular, the social and cultural exchanges they incubate—recognized on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, which protects invaluable cultural practices worldwide.

“Bistros are places of life, places of exchanges and very clearly make up a part of our French DNA,” he says. “We need to ensure their influence and survival.”

Twice, in 2018 and 2021, the association has fallen at the first hurdle: recognition on France’s national inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which already includes the likes of pétanque, the production of Cognac and Paris’ beloved riverside bouquinistes, or booksellers.

Undeterred, another application was made in early June this year, citing how bistros and cafés are “intimately linked to local life” and “reveal sociabilities specific to the French culture.”

Fortunately, third time’s a charm, and “Social and cultural practices of bistros and cafés in France,” as the file will be known, will shortly be added to the national inventory. From there, UNESCO beckons, and bistros could go the way of another of the country’s cultural icons, the baguette, which was added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022.

“UNESCO inscription is important because it will allow, on the one hand, to be able to challenge the government to reinstate training for bistro and café owners, because we no longer train people for these roles,” Fontaine explains. “It will also call on the state—from a regional to national level—to do everything in their power to save bistros that are threatened with closure.”

Perhaps most crucially, the people who, day in day out, are those friendly, familiar faces behind the counter will finally be celebrated. “It will be a great source of pride for those who sustain our art de vivre by opening their restaurants every day,” Fontaine says.

Far from Paris, at the edge of the lavender-scented Plateau de Valensole in Provence, another association battling to save France’s rural villages through its bistros is noticing a welcome trend: The rate of bistro closures is stabilizing after a turbulent decade or so where up to 1,200 were being lost a year.

Both traditional and convivial, bistros match a growing appetite for zero-kilometer food and authentic experiences, says Bastien Giraud, director of the National Federation of Country Bistros.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular, people are starting to see just how essential they are. “Sometimes we realize the importance of a place and all that it brings when we are deprived of it,” Giraud says.

Founded in 1993, and based in Manosque, a small town just over an hour’s drive northeast of Marseille, the federation of country bistros, known in French as bistrot de pays, currently counts 126 bistros in 36 departments across the country as members, including Barbier’s Auberge Les Tilleuls. The figure has more than doubled in the past decade (in 2013, it had 56 member bistros in five departments) as its focus zooms out of Provence to France as a whole.

Similar to Fontaine’s association, the “bistrot de pays” mission is the preservation and promotion of the “spirit” of France’s rural bistros. To join, candidates must meet certain criteria.

“The bistro must be open year-round—so not just for the tourist trade—work with local producers, serve fresh, seasonal produce and be reasonably priced,” says Giraud. The latter translates to an average three-course lunch menu of €19.50 (or $20.86) during the week. Members proudly hang a bright “Bistrot de Pays” sign above their doors, and all of them can be found on an interactive map on the federation’s website.

“There’s a new generation starting to reinvent the bistro, with more cooperative forms,” he says. That’s the case at La Ruelle in the postcard-pretty Ségur-le-Château, situated on a bend of the Auvézère River in southwest France.

Along with a café-restaurant, serving up lunch and dinner (and a long brunch every Sunday), the site acts as a shop and co-working space, and its enchanted garden is a stage for workshops, concerts, conferences and exhibitions, all in the shadow of Ségur-le-Château’s ruined 13th-century château. A cooperative structure, it opened in 2022, four years after the town’s last business shuttered in 2018.

Not out of danger yet

Giraud cautions that keeping bistros open is one thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re out of danger. “People have to be able to make a living from it, too,” he says.

Recruitment is what he names as the biggest challenge facing his community today. “A lack of staff means bistro owners themselves are facing longer working hours or having to shorten opening hours,” he continues.

In Heilles, Barbier says his greatest concerns are financial, driven by the location. “We’re fairly remote. People come here because they are coming to visit us,” he explains. But, for example, when the cost of gas increases, he notices it directly affects the number of guests he serves.

And, as general operating costs increase, margins are becoming tighter. “We are in a period of high inflation, so we’re paying more for everything,” Barbier says. “We’re trying to be careful, ensuring that the prices are enough for us to live on, while at the same time not arguing the prices from our producers, because they have to live properly as well.”

Barbier has found a family within the country bistro association. “It fits with the image I have of my establishment,” he says, “that’s to say, being the place where the village lives and offering 100 percent home cooking with local products.”

He’s also found a match for his values. “For me, a village where there are no more bistros at all is a village that will die. It will remain standing, of course. There will always be dwellings and houses, but for me, it will no longer be a village in the social sense of the term,” says Barbier. “Nothing happens once there is no more bistro. It’s the last rampart of village life.”

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Chrissie McClatchie has lived in France for nearly two decades. Her work has appeared in BBC Travel, National Geographic Travel and Travel + Leisure, and she is also a Lonely Planet guidebook author to France.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/will-the-bistro-save-frances-rural-villages