When our châtelaine Nicole, who now lives in the little town of St. Gengoux, said she wanted to take us to a café éphémère, I puzzled over the word.
"Ephémère," said my professeur de françcais, "like 'ephemeral' in English. It's a café that only opens for a few weeks a year, when my friend Marie-Jeanne, who owns it, returns from her home. a couple of hours away.
"Oh, I see," I said. "We'd call it a pop-up café." But why was it open so short a time? It's hard to make a lot of money in a few weeks on a café in a very small and somnolant Burgundian town.
Nicole arranged for us to visit it during our weekly French class, to find out the answer. From her house, which we now call Châteauneuf ("new château", though it's a fairly recent house which nonetheless has a turret), we strolled into the medieval town, past the boulangerie and the Romanesque église, then up the hill to the café. Which looked like a large house, with three tables shaded by the dense plane trees out front, and facing an open place.
Inside, it was cool and dark and the decor was basic and simple. There was one occupied table on the terrace, a pair of mecs having their morning petit blanc, deep in conversation(a petit blanc is a glass of white wine. Usually taken late morning at a café with friends, a rural French tradition). Madame greeted us shyly and showed us to a table under the trees. After she had settled us in with cool drinks, she sat down to join us, and tell us her story.
"My family is the fourth generation to own this café", Marie-Jeanne explained. "Long ago, it was also a hotel. When my great-grandmother owned it, there was also a dance hall, called a salle de bal. These were very common in the early 20th century, when there was no TV, or other entertainment. People would come and dance in the evening, usually there was an accordian player. In our salle de bal, you had to pay for each dance. There was a cord strung across the dance floor, and you ducked under the cord after you paid.
"That is the way that couples met each other back then, and my husband and I were one of them! Even now, older couples will stop by and tell me they met at the salle de bal, way back when.
"I remember", Madame said wistfully, "when there was a baby pig market once a month in the village, in the place right out in front of the café. The buyers would come to the café first thing in the morning, and discuss the prices for the pigs over an espresso. Then they would go and pack their pigs into the wooden crates, then come back to the café for a petit blanc."
But I was still puzzled: why was it now open only for six weeks?
"I live in a town two hours away" she told us. "But I come back here for my six weeks of vacation, and I always open the café. In France you must have a license to operate a village café, and if I don't open it sometime during the year, I will lose my license." And lose a very long thread of tradition, it seems.
"When my daughters were teen-agers, they would come too, just for July, then I wouid stay through August. When my daughters were here, the café crowd was different: rugby players, young people, all very lively. Then when they left, the clientele would change completely, to the older village crowd."
An ephemeral café , but one that has nevertheless endured for generations of French families.
Nicole and her friend Marie-Jeanne:
Nicole and Ron approach the place and café, site of the former baby pig market:
And then we strolled back to Nicole's house. Here are some of the things we saw on our short walk through St. Gengoux:
The Romanesque church
Girl reading book, with cat
A town full of turrets
Yet another ginger cat, a village cat fed by residents
In the COMMENTS: My sister has started reading my blog, and I'm not sure I want her revealing the family secrets! She knows too much! Vicky, that is some serious hiking. Natalia, how could we forget Eaton Mess (which is good, by the way!). Toad in the Hole though Martin, I don't know about that one. Francine has managed to improve on the Knickerbocker recipe! Ellen, thanks for the additional info for folks trying to get into France. By the way, you CAN get into Croatia, the only EU country welcoming Americans.
Favorite READS: Lots of good book recommendations this week from our book-loving readers. (I'm afraid we've gone low-brow this week, Ron and I both read the Dave Barry Book of Guys, as we needed some good laughs. You will love it). Vicky has several to recommend: Trail of Broken Wings and The Storyteller's Secret by Sejal Badani, The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger, and The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd. I can recommend this last one, a great historic novel set in our Charleston stomping grounds. Natalia suggests The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel, which Inspired by a true story during World War II, a talented woman forger helps Jewish children flee the Nazis.
