Rusty waiters and no salt and pepper – my first post-lockdown meal out in France
After months of closure, France's restaurants have finally reopened, with new social distancing measures in place – Anthony Peregrine went to test out the brave new world of dining
The restaurant owner adjusted the glasses under his flexi-glas visor and grinned with only mild desperation. “We expected a few,” he said, “but we got the whole world.”
The sweep of his hand took in the terrace of the Burger-et-Ratatouille restaurant on the Flower Market Square in Montpellier. Under the trees and low lights, every table and every place was taken. Some 150 people in all. Other folk stood around, waiting for tables to be freed. The hubbub was as cheerful as a hubbub can be.
“We’re overwhelmed, but in a good way, though we could have done without the beer pump packing up.” Then our man dashed off to fetch us the bottle of wine he’d forgotten to bring. Subdued vibrancy ran like a current through the surrounds.
Neighbouring terraces were equally rammed. The squares, main drags and scurrying, scurrilous narrow streets of the historic centre throbbed with people – T-shirts, shorts, summer frocks – rediscovering the pleasure of meeting, eating and drinking in the warmth of a southern evening. After 10 weeks of confinement – and dead city centres – yesterday’s re-opening of bars and restaurants found France’s seventh city demob happy.
Just back from the Mediterranean coast, Montpellier is often described as France’s most desirable city – elegant, monumental and brainy, sensuous and insurgent, with students by the truckload and Latin blood coursing through the old town labyrinth. It is fuelled by culture, exuberance and conviviality – all of which require that the heat stays up when the sun goes down.
By shutting that up, lockdown had frozen the city into suspended animation. “It’s started up again just as if we’d never left off,” said the fellow who served our beers as we took apéritifs (if you can call a pint of beer an “apéritif”) on Montpellier’s see-and-be-seen Jean Jaurès Square. “This is exactly like a normal Tuesday night. Maybe even better.”
Obviously, this wasn’t quite true. Restrictions were in place. Terrace tables were slightly further apart than before, though not so much so that it felt weird. As elsewhere in France, restaurateurs and café-owners had been given the go-ahead to extend their terraces beyond normal limits – to compensate for the loss of revenue implicit in spacing out tables. Certain shopkeepers had allowed these café terraces to extend in front of their own shop premises, by way of solidarity and also because, as one said, the re-opening of bars and restaurants would reinvigorate city centres and so be good for their own businesses.
Restaurant staff wore masks or visors, which would have been distinctly unusual, and pretty worrying, pre-pandemic. “They’re a hell of a nuisance,” said Benjamin Dalotel of the Tontons Flingueurs restaurant nearby. “Not only that, but customers also have trouble hearing us.” But few customers, or strollers, affected masks – which are, in theory, obligatory in restaurants and on restaurant terraces until you sit down at your table, when you may unmask. Hardly anyone seemed over-concerned by these strictures – though everyone on the tram which whisked us to the centre wore his or her mask.
In place of salt and pepper on the table – presently banned – were bottles of hydroalcoholic gel, to be used before and after touching the menu cards… for the Burger-et-Ratatouille had not yet had time to put in place a system of QR codes for smartphone menu consultation.
Nor was everything hunky-dory. Despite the first-night avalanche of customers, restaurateurs still had a two-and-a-half month hole in their accounts. The fear is that, despite continuing government aid, this will see off a significant number of especially smaller concerns. Even our man at the Burger-et-Ratatouille was unsure how things would develop. “We’re navigating by sight, through fog. No-one knows what will happen. Come back in a month and ask again.”
Plus everyone had been listening to the radio or TV news – so knew that the virus was still among us. It killed 107 people in France yesterday, with more than 14,000 still in hospital. And finance minister Bruno Le Maire was all over the media to remind us that France’s GDP was likely to plunge by 11 per cent this year.
But, frankly, neither health nor economic doom worries were getting through to the squares, streets and terraces of Montpellier yesterday. Further optimism was generated by the re-opening of beaches, campsites and museums. Hotels were also back in business. Most visible, though, was the joyous re-colonisation of their city by a zillion Montpellierains. The Mediterranean need to get out of doors and socialise around laden tables had been suppressed for too long. Last night, it burst forth again, at last.
That said, it took a while to get the table laden. Four of us had booked for 8.30pm. “You’ll not be alone,” said the owner as we joined the throng on the terrace. Then he brought us glasses, water and menus. Then we didn’t see him for an hour. Orders taken – salads, burgers, salmon, ratatouille – we then spotted him, and his team, charging around among other tables for a further 20 minutes. We were eventually served closer to 10pm. “Sorry,” said our man. “We’re a bit rusty.”
“It really doesn’t matter,” I said, and I meant it. As everyone else out and about last night, we were mildly euphoric – and might well have gone home happy having not eaten at all. It seemed that, for the time being at least, we’d overcome an enemy – and were on absolutely the same side as our restaurateur.
