Bistro!... bistro!

Unusual title isn’t it? A bistro is a bistro and there is no reason to exclamate the name, even less twice… Although it was what created the name known today, representing a French style, casual restaurant serving simple meals at a reasonable price.

My maternal grand-father was living in Paris during and after WW1 and told me the story of Russians who had fled their country after the communist party revolution of 1917, targeting particularly nobles and anyone associated with them, including the myriad of servants.

Most of them ended up in Paris, as most nobles were speaking French as their language of culture. Some ex-servants ended up taxi drivers. They were working hard, eager to make money and loosing very little time during work hours, while their French colleagues were taking time to have breakfast, lunch and dinner at a more leasury pace.

The French “bar” has always been an open business where one can have a coffee and a croissant or a glass of wine and a lunch, or another glass of wine and a dinner. In fact, the term bar is generally used as “bar-tabac” where you can also buy tobacco products.

Our Russian taxi drivers were racing through their lunch and dinner, ordering at the bar, and most of the time shouting “bistro!...bistro!, which meant in Russian “quick!...quick!

Bistro became synonymous of quick service at a bar-tabac and soon, specific, small neighborhood restaurants opened under the name of bistro, serving one or two different meals, generally stew or repasts that could be prepared earlier in the day.

The name can also be spelled bistrot and the style got imported in various countries where the theme and ambiance have taken over the original meaning.

No more Russian taxi drivers rushing in a bar-tabac…