Is the iconic Parisian bistro dying? | Hacker News Reader

Is the iconic Parisian bistro dying?

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60 pointsohjeez41 comments

As a nearly lifelong Parisian, bistros are often seen by locals as overpriced (for the quality you get) low-effort joints where you regularly get frozen microwaved food (which led to a huge backlash in recent years) that tastes like shit, burnt cardboard-tasting espresso, and house wine that — while cheap — is closer to vinegar than a halfway decent red. There are of course a few exceptions to this rule in each neighborhood in Paris but they're incredibly hard to distinguish if you're not from here, which is probably what gives most bistros a bad reputation.

The iconic Parisian bistro isn't dying, it's being thankfully renewed by younger chefs who don't take their customers for granted, are more welcoming to non-French-speaking tourists, and who showcase better and more seasonal products at a fairly reasonable price.

Check out David Lebovitz' review of Bouillon Pigale as a prime example of affordable quality joints we'll thankfully get more of in the years to come as old and busted bistros fade away: https://www.davidlebovitz.com/bouillon-pigalle-paris-restaur...

>"The iconic Parisian bistro isn't dying, it's being thankfully renewed by younger chefs who don't take their customers for granted, are more welcoming to non-French-speaking tourists, and who showcase better and more seasonal products at a fairly reasonable price."

Would you say this is also true of the brasserie?

Sorry for the late reply, but in a way yes. I'm sort of feeling that movement. The problem is that Brasseries are huge operations and even the terrible ones must be fairly profitable. Evolving them must be seen as even more risky but I'm confident that some adventuring restaurateur and/or their investors will one day realize that a high quality brasserie with seasonal ingredients prepared in-house would have huge appeal both to tourists passing through Paris and locals, especially during off seasons — which are admittedly rare in Paris.

While not Paris, there may be a general market factor at play that doesn't make for punchy headlines. Things don't "disappear," they economically polarize to normal and inferior states.

These bistros (as culture) are like newspapers and media in general, where a high quality middle ground is no longer viable, so only the very cheap, and the very expensive survive, and the middle is hollowed out.

Arguably, a quality middle is the effect of a temporary distortion or disequllibrium, where for whatever reason, quality has not been optimized out of an attractive price point. A good middle quality bistro doesn't compete on marginal price, it seeks to differentiate itself on features.

Customers become indifferent to the feature quality, select for price, and good places fail. When you add tourism, you add feature-indifferent customers who select on price - which is why locals hate them, as this indifference upsets the local equilibrium that made a good middle possible, and that hollows out their quality of life.

The same quality is available, but it costs more to sustain because it has lost the price selecting customers, and must survive on a smaller population who values them.

This was the big "race to the bottom" criticism of globalization in the 90s, where global competition ostensibly ended local ways of life by flooding markets with indifferent consumers of goods optimized for generic global markets.

Polarization happens, and it's usually costly regulation that staves it off. France led the way with designation of origin (controlee?) trade rules, and banning the McDonald-ification of their cafes probably has precedent.

Rents and real estate prices are the other key factor, where the risk/reward for anything but a proven franchise model is not a viable investment. San Francisco is a great example of that. It's not gentrified, it's globalized.

Things don't "disappear," they economically polarize to normal and inferior states.

I was just coming here to say this, just in less precise terms. I have a history of frequenting cafes as a regular, only to become disillusioned over time. A cafe has become either something which can be established for very little money and a modicum of knowledge or something which takes a certain level of fit and finish to appeal to a well heeled subgroup.

So entrepreneurs should be on the lookout for the "quality middle" as a temporary market opportunity? Maybe this applies to some large fraction of all startups? It could be stated thus, "A shift in technology creates a new market opportunity for a 'quality middle' which hadn't existed before."

> So entrepreneurs should be on the lookout for the "quality middle" as a temporary market opportunity?

I guess very temporary, because the next step is for a typical entrepreneur to notice that there's a "quality middle" somewhere, which he/she can exploit by cutting some corners, selling for less, and taking over most customers.

The distortion is often a quirk of geography, or taboo. There was a famous graffiti statement in a condo construction barrier growing up that was, "artists are the stormtroopers of gentrification."

To take this further, that quality-middle is risk. It's possible that the sort of sick and uncanny aesthetics of corporate franchises are our reaction to the a disequllibrium of risk. Reacting to something that lacks skin in the game as a trap seems like a reasonable instinct. It's a representation or a simulacrum, something we recognize in nature as bait.

The things we romanticize, like old cafes, are expressions of risks taken. Where there is little risk, perhaps on some animal level we expect scavengers and death.

Gentrification is de-risking, as is franchising, and imho some portfolio management as well.

There is probably an underlying aesthetics of risk theory in there, however, we should leave that one for Nassim Taleb.

This thread 'triggered' me and I must say that you have identified what is in my opinion the problem: natural human greed and the increasing cost of rent in touristic cities flooded by low cost travel.

I experienced something similar as a (francophone) tourist in Venice recently. Seafood pasta with a total of one chopped prawn and one chopped scallop, really? 'Italian receipe!' cries the Venisian waiter. But mass tourism wants cheap and it wants fast. I'm sure that the locals would have been ashamed.

As a further anecdote, I didn't repeat my mistake and the next day went to a restaurant recommended by the Michelin guide (instead of by the colleague of nationality X who recommended the first), paid marginally more for a truly inspired menu and stellar service. And across us sat a table of tourists of nationality Y who frankly would have been better served in the first restaurant.

Excellent comment, thank you for phrasing this so clearly.

> [E]very customer who crosses the threshold is greeted with a bright and cheerful ‘bonjour’

I have been to many bistros since moving to Paris in March. This bistro must be very, very different from others - unless the author is saying this just to reinforce their narrative and image of the bistro. Parisian waiters are notorious for being busy and hard to catch.

That being said, it's still a very nice and iconic part of Paris and a good place to socialize. With all the tourism I doubt that we'll see a mass-closing of bistros. Changes in society, consumer habits and demography will of course drive change, though.

It is pretty common to be greeted warmly once you are a regular.

I have a few bistros where I am a regular, and in each the waiters are very friendly and welcoming.

It might depend on the location, I tend to avoid places that are too touristic

Interesting. Where are you from? I just got back from a tour around France, Germany, the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands. While all European waiters are far less solicitous than the ones in the US, we found Paris to be the most welcoming and the restaurants there were the easiest to get the attention of the service staff in.

Interesting. Where did you have your worst experience?

I've never had worse waiters than in Croatia. It's as if the servers hate the very plates they are holding. Or maybe they were all just badly hungover? The only good servers were in very small restaurants with a limited number of staff.

For me, Bulgaria. It was even hard just trying to get their attention to actually pay.

> serves French comfort foods at moderate prices,

I don't know, when I first visited Paris while still in school I somehow didn't find a single one of those, and lived a few days off of ham baguettes, spring rolls from Asian takeaways and McDonald's - everything going for "normal food" was very, very expensive.

Yes, this was a few years before mobile internet, and maybe it works if you live there not straight in the city center where the tourist attractions are ;) When I visited again last year I had no problem to find affordable food, but of course my viewpoint probably changed a bit.

> everything going for "normal food" was very, very expensive

Almost anywhere in Paris you will find places where locals go for lunch, and they are not considered so expensive for middle-class workers. Locals are often paid Ticket Restaurant vouchers in addition to their salaries, and to retain these loyal customers these eateries keep the price of their daily set lunches fixed to the value of one voucher.

This is why healthcare is so expensive btw. (I can't help but notice the similarities)

Insurance hands out "tickets" that get redeemed by doctors. And as you rightly point out, everything gets warped and twisted based on what the payer (not necessarily the customer) wants.

What are you even rambling on about?

I understand the parent's idea. An employer gives his employees Tickets Resto. It's a 'social advantage' that may cost the employer less than simply paying the employees more because exempt from certain social charges. As a result, there are more of these scriptural Tickets Resto floating about than real money that people want to spend on restaurant meals. Which could lead to an inflation of restaurant prices in a fashion not so different to the inflation of the prices of medical prestations paid by private insurance.

Inflation is only one symptom. The bigger problem is that the providers (health or restaurants) start catering to what the PAYERS -- insurance, or the company handing out restaurant tickets -- want, not what's good or helpful for the customers.

The entire thing becomes a giant game of "what you can bill", which pretty much sums up healthcare today. There is no emphasis on outcome, quality, or cost, just whether something is "reimburseable". Will it be covered by the ticket?

Good explanation and I've read a number of articles about private health insurance under this angle. It's not an imaginary phenomenon.

I'm curious to know if a study has been done about the similar effects of restaurant tickets. The idea seems quite plausible, would go a long way towards explaining the doubtful quality of many parisian restaurants and, anecdotally, I remember a lot of use of restaurant tickets and incentives based on them when I was in the city of lights.

I'm not sure specifically for restaurants. A lot of my ideas on health come from "Catastrophic Care", where they talk about "the surrogates" who stand in, for the role customers would pay in an ordinary cash transaction.

P.S. Bisto food sucks. I went to Paris on my honeymoon last year, I live in SF and our food is better and way more innovate to boot.

I'll check the book. I'm relatively interested in health insurance and the financing thereof because I haven't quite identified the system that works the best and even the most successful countries need to tighten their game given the imminent demographic challenges.

As to bistros, well I've been to a hundred different restaurants in Paris, they don't all have 'bistro' written on the window but I'm sure that some were. For the money that I was willing to spend at the time, nothing stood out so much. The Bouillon Chartier was great since I'm a fan of the Lyon-style bouchon and I find them comparable. Generally, I wouldn't go to Paris for affordable and good food. I'm not particularly looking for innovation either, just some intelligence in the menu and ingredients.

Where did you find such a place ? One voucher is anywhere between 5€ to 10€, and even at 10, you will struggle to find french food. (You can find salad bar, burger, chinese/japanese ..)

> to retain these loyal customers these eateries keep the price of their daily set lunches fixed to the value of one voucher

I'm a bit doubtful about this point. My experience (2 4-months internships inside Paris, lived in Paris another year but working in suburbs) is that restaurants are more expensive than the ~8€ Ticket Restaurant. Never ate for less than 12€ in a bistrot, and obviously for this price you only get main dish, no desert. In one company we had this hot food delivery inside our walls that would cost exactly one Ticket Restaurant, but nothing similar with bistrots.

To be honest one of my internships was next to Bir-Hakeim (metro station closest to Eiffel Tower) so the prices may have been inflated, but still.

Not sure if it's your case, but the concept of "expensive" changes radically from when you are in school to when you have an actually paying job.

Most likley Paris has not changed, but you did :)

Not so sure. I live in Munich which is pretty expensive compared to the region, and you can absolutely get decent lunch at a normal restaurant for 6-8 EUR. (excl. drink). This is everywhere where many people go out for lunch breaks, or where many students are around, even in the city center.

TLDR: I'm not used to spending even 10 EUR for my lunch on a week day, so this part hasn't changed since then ;)

Bistros in touristic places in Paris are definitively expensive and are not used by low pay worker for their daily meal. They obviously target tourists and adjust their prices accordingly. I live in the very touristic neighborhood of Montmartre and the bistros here are about as expensive as the nice restaurants we have in the quartier.

If you go in the suburbs or less exposed locations you can find something closer to the bistro culture described in TFA, with meals for about ~12 euros not being rare.

I agree with you though, in my generation when we want to eat "fast and cheap" we don't think of bistros, instead we go to fast foods like McDonald's and kebab places or Asian restaurants which are usually pretty cheap. The problem with bistros is that they are somewhat in between: not cheap enough to compete with fast food outlets and (usually) not fancy enough to compete with actual restaurants.

I suspect bistros are a victim of development in transport (public and private alike). When it gets very easy to get from one end of the city to the other, you are unlikely to patronize mediocre establishments in your area: you'll optimize across the whole metropolitan area, either for cost or for quality.

We've had a subway for more than a hundred years, it's not exactly a new development.

It likely wasn't always as developed as it is now.

Americans have a different perception of cheap. Anything not on the dollar menu is considered expensive by a lot of them.

In general Americans spend a lot smaller fraction of their paycheck on food than Europeans. I think of this as a feature of the U.S, not a bug. And we're fatter, too, so we get more food for less money!

This is an interesting question because there are significantly different national attitudes towards spending on food, I see it every day.

For example, https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-ever...

Attention, such statistics don't answer all the questions though. Does the average person in country X spend more than in country Y because he wants to spend more, or because food is simply more expensive? That and many other questions. But I take it as a pretty clear sign that there are simply different cultural attitudes towards this spending when I compare the average supermarket in three neighbouring countries like France, Germany, and Switzerland.

The bistros set up for tourists with low quality food, often not made in-house, are doing way more damage than these other factors.

Parisian bistros aren't dying, they're just changing. Nowadays the bistros that Parisians actually frequent look more like a restaurant in Brooklyn or Portland, serving modern food for a decent price. The 'iconic' bistro is just a tourist trap serving shit food to unsuspecting tourists.

They already disappeared save a few ones. As a lifelong Parisian as well I will tell you that most of the bistros are not bistros anymore.

The quintessential experience that you can have in a parisian bistrot can only be lived in a very few places and to some people it will look like pedant.

One example of a real parisian bistrot would be La Rotonde in Montparnasse, waiters are coming from schools where they learn their art (they re not some tatooed hipsters with man buns serving natural wines), real chiefs are cooking the food and the pastries, prices are still affordable for the middle class. this is for me the real parisian experience.

Haha...I’m reading this on my third day in Paris. Seems like bistros are still everywhere, but perhaps appealing to tourists now. I honestly haven’t had a good meal at a bistro while I’ve been here...they all are basically indistinguishable and the menus basically the same. Extremely mediocre for the price (at least 25-30 euros for one entree and one glass of bad house wine). At that price I could have a much much better meal in SF or NYC!

That's funny--my impression is that it's a popular concept in America, and growing increasingly so, especially with the new-style Main St. (parodied on South Park and probably elsewhere).

That may be more true in have versus have-not cities, though.

'Bistro' here just means a tiny restaurant with $9 sliders and red wine.

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