A Pop-up Café, with a Long Backstory

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.

Marie-Jeanne shows us photos of the café, autrefois.

"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.

The sign reads, "The Historic café that only opens in summer".

 "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.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Martin]

St Gengoux is a wonderful little town and holds lots of happy memories for Helen and I.

[J]

Hello,

Your articles are well-received!
Thank you for including us in your French adventure.

I noticed in this photo people are not wearing a face mask. Is COVID-19 under control in your area?

[Suzanne Dunaway]

Have just finished Writers and Lovers, a book I recommend to everyone. After that I will finish off the last of my Ann Tyler's, having miss two of them and now re-reading Dinner at the Homesick Cafe. After that Louise Penny's new Gamache will surface on Sept. 1st, joy of joys. Then after that, The Boy in the Field and Two Extraordinary Women. Loved the pop-up cafe but would love to know what she cooks! A lovely tradition and so wonderful to do it only 6 weeks...that would be a perfect length of time to do a summer. Thank you for the lovely story. And I am so glad to have book suggestion. I run out all the time as books for me are like chocolate truffles for others, haha.

[Ellen]

What a lovely overview of one of the lesser known but loveliest medieval towns around us. It's so ancient and yet so comfortably lived in today. I never knew about the little cafe. What a charming history.

[Mindy]

Wow! So many things to love about this story! I have never heard of a pop-up cafe. Sounds like she has a book waiting to be written.

[Paula]

This is one of the many things I love about France—perfectly beautiful little villagees too numerous to make it into any guidebooks. “Un café ephémère” typifies what my French friends call “le doceure de la vie”.

[Judy Klinck]

It was good to revisit St. Gengoux through your photos and see Nicole looking so chipper!

[Natalia]

Lynn,this is absolutely charming!!Always enjoy another meeting with Nicole,and now with her friend,
Marie-Jeanne (the French have the most wonderful way with names!)Your time together in such a lovely and picturesque place absolutely takes me away and captures my imagination.What a wonderful day!!
Another book discovery is The Collector's Apprentice by B.A.Shapiro.This is the first book I have read,(and really enjoyed!) by this author(who has written others in the art genre).A real page turner with a great ending!!

[Marsha Alexander]

Thank you for the lovely story about 'cafe ephemere' and the charming owner who carries on the tradition...wish I were there. Loved seeing Nicole and Ron. Thank you also for going down memory lane in beautiful San Gengoux...great pictures of a wonderful medieval village. And the village cat that I must show to my new kitten Maisie named after the Maisie Dobbs books written by Jacqueline Winspear...lovely summer series about female British sleuth and spaning the two world wars. I am on book 12.

[anne marie]

Since I missed my vacation in France this year, I'm reading stories set in France and watching 'Meurtres en......' series set in France. Recent reads include:
Shooting at Castle Rock, Martin Walker (Dordogne)
Tales From the Hilltop, Tony Lewis (Cordes-sur-Ciel)
My Grape Year, Laura Bradbury (Côte d'Or)

[Page Robertson]

Grainger's The Star and the Shamrock is superb and easy reading! The sequel is The Emerald Horizon, equally as good. The 3rd is The Hard Way Home, which I anticipate being great as well, though I have not started. The subject matter of the children on Kindertransport and treatment of Jews in WW ll is sad, but they are "family stories".

[Francine Martinie Chough]

Hey Lynn
J’espère que vous avez passé de bonnes vacances à Annecy. Annecy me manque beaucoup. Oui St Gengoux le National (thé full name) est très joli en effet. Belle balade depuis Autun ou Beaune.
Merci de votre reportage! J’adore !!

[Connie Rice Allen]

Thank you Lynn for giving us a refresher on this lovely village. I have so many good memories of going to the markets and eating at the small cafes. Say hello to Nicole for me and wish her a happy birthday! (we share the same birthday)

[Michaela Rodeno]

OK, here's another book you all might like: Julian Barnes' The Man in the Red Coat. The cover is this mémoire's handsome hero as painted in his dressing gown by John Singer Sargent. Set in the Belle Epoque in (mostly) Paris, about (mostly) an Italian "society" surgeon and gynecologist (not above seducing his patients). Well-researched and beautifully written. Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, and other luminaries the period included.

[Suzanne Hurst]

I LOVE this story. I wish I could hop a plane and visit Le Cafe, but even if I could, I couldn't. :( I am SO kicking myself for not making a second trip to France before I began to have health issues. Now I think I could do one, but...I don't mean to be a downer, but I see no quick end to our crisis.