Lisa:
Nancy, can we talk about French restaurants in the U.S.?
We recently celebrated Bastille Day, a season across the country that inevitably involves red-white-and-blue bunting, often really terrible complimentary champagne and sometimes even mimes.
Mimes, Nancy.
As the daughter of a French immigrant, this is somewhat baffling to me. I have very rarely come across a restaurant that didn’t paint an almost comic caricature of what Americans think a French restaurant should be. And what Americans seem to want is the French restaurant of the late 1940s or ‘50s, depicted so well by Julia Child—even my French mother used her cookbook.
But France has moved on from that era. Across the U.S., we can now enjoy modern interpretations of cuisine from just about every culture around the globe. But from French restaurants, we expect them to stick with the classics: duck à l’orange, beef bourguignonne, steak frites, maybe some kind of fish meunière.
What are you seeing out there?
Nancy:
Bonjour, mon amie. While I’m a little put off by the image of those mimes, I do share your bafflement at the lack of French-accented restaurants here, especially from the chain perspective. After all, French culinary processes and techniques are the foundation of much of the cuisine of Western Europe and an influence in many non-Western kitchens as well.
I suspect that one of the challenges may be precisely the image of those operations that you invoke from the ‘40s and ‘50s: To wit, they’re intimidating, expensive and totally at odds with casual lifestyles.
That said, I’ve been keenly interested in developments of the very recent past. Earlier this year, Eater San Francisco reported a “wave of nouveaux French restaurants washing over Bay Area,” while its Washington counterpart noted “a surge of new French restaurants flooding the D.C. market.” The New York Times invoked a less watery metaphor when it claimed that new French restaurants are “popping up like so many soufflés.”
I’ve also been tracking a recent upsurge in openings in other cities around the country, including entries from high-profile operators like concept-developer extraordinaire Sam Fox in Phoenix. He’s unveiling Le Âme, a Parisian steakhouse, and Le Market, an all-day affair that will boast an in-house fromager, or cheese monger, which is all the bomb right now.
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay is slated to launch his Brasserie B in Las Vegas later this year, and chef Ford Fry, a prominent player on the Atlanta restaurant scene, has announced not one, but deux new openings. The “free from pretense” Little Sparrow, named for the great chanteuse Edith Piaf, will feature classic brasserie cuisine, while the upstairs Bar Blanc will have a French hip-hop soundtrack. Which surely bests those annoying mimes, non?
Lisa:
Nancy, this is excellent news.
Adding to the more-casual French (ish) boomlet is David Pisor’s planned growth for Sophie, a concept that first launched as Café Sophie in Chicago, but he tweaked the name to reflect the broader three-daypart plans. Three more Sophie locations are in the works. There are French elements, like a Croque Monsieur on the menu and a Ham & Cheese Baguette with Bordier butter, gruyère, cornichon and absinthe mustard. But the menu is really more broadly European, with wood-oven pizzas and Avocado Toast amid the croissants and kouign-amann at breakfast.
There’s also a Coffee Club, where guests can get unlimited drinks for $19 per month, a deal Pisor plans to extend with an alcohol offering. Pisor, you might remember, was once involved with Chicago steakhouse Maple & Ash, but now is building a group called Etta Collective, with the growing wood-fire-fueled Etta brand and others soon to come. (He’s also Alice Waters’ nephew. Waters isn’t French, but she certainly applied a French sensibility to Chez Panisse.)
What I hope to see is a more-casual French revolution that will reflect the shifting culinary influences in France. As in America, French cuisine now includes a multitude of influences from Africa, other parts of Europe and Asia, though that shift is rarely reflected in American versions of French food. Yet when you go to an “American” restaurant in Paris (that isn’t a U.S.-based chain), what’s on the menu? Quesadillas, tacos and pizza.
And, of course, burgers and fries, which is what the French think Americans eat every day. And, really, are they wrong?
Nancy:
Ah, well, the burgers-and-fries cliché isn’t all that different from our impression that the French eat lots of fantastic bread and pastries. Oh wait, that’s actually true, and it brings me to the second wave of operations that have caught fire recently: rapidly growing bakeries/patisseries.
They join long-running La Madeleine, which has had the French-restaurant-chain field largely to itself with its robust bakery program and customer-friendly café offerings like crêpes and quiches, salades and soupes.
Newer on the competitive front, there are Paris Baguette, an international brand owned by South-Korea based SPC Group, which says it will open 1,000 stores here by 2030; and Tous les Jours, or Every Day, another worldwide brand based in South Korea, which has set its sights on 110 stores in the U.S. by the end of this year. Both have really ramped up expansion, and having visited both, I can attest that I’m truly impressed by the quality of their Francophile offerings and the impeccable merchandising.
As an aside, each freely mixes Asian specialties with the French classics, like the pretty Green Tea Cloud Cake at Tous les Jours and the tasty Pistachio Mochi Doughnut at Paris Baguette. Both also sell Asian standards like milk bread and red-bean bread.
And as with the French restaurant boom, the bakery boomlet is also supported by a real groundswell of local independents. For example, just as I was relocating to St. Paul in early July, Marc Hue Pâtisserie Paris was making its debut only a few blocks away. Its popularity is boosted by both its eye-popping beauty and its world-class baked goods, and its success is clear from the velvet ropes that prevent Minnesotans from overwhelming the petite jewel-box space.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve had multiple opportunities to celebrate our mutual arrival in the Twin Cities with the purchase of Hue's toothsome specials like the Apricot Rosemary Tarte Tatin, or the Fleur, a “romantic” pear and honey crème brȗlée tarte.
Speaking for myself, Lisa, I just can’t have too much romance in my life, even if it does come in the form of a baked good.
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