
Is the iconic Parisian bistro dying? - ohjeez
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180709-is-the-iconic-parisian-bistro-dying
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olivierlacan
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...](https://www.davidlebovitz.com/bouillon-pigalle-
paris-restaurant-bistro/)

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bogomipz
>"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?

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olivierlacan
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.

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motohagiography
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.

~~~
stcredzero
_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.

 _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._

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."

~~~
motohagiography
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.

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Legogris
> [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.

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skywhopper
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.

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baxtr
Interesting. Where did you have your worst experience?

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magic_beans
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.

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

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wink
> 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.

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Mediterraneo10
> 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.

~~~
eldavido
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.

~~~
magic_beans
What are you even rambling on about?

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VK538FY
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.

~~~
eldavido
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?

~~~
VK538FY
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.

~~~
eldavido
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.

~~~
VK538FY
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.

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

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Mikeb85
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.

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ousta
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.

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dawhizkid
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!

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sonofblah
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.

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

