Guinguettes back in business as French seek the simple pleasures of life

Many reasons have been offered for the recent return of guinguettes, but the most plausible is that people are simply yearning for the return of the simple pleasure of a lazy afternoon or evening by the river.

“Perhaps people are also seeking a return to conviviality,” said Pierre-Marie Chevallier, who has run the Guinguette de Fléac on the banks of the Charente river since 2012.

“I started back in 2012, when I was running a boat hire business, which is still going. I started cooking my own lunch and sitting down at an outside table to eat it.

“Almost immediately, people walking and cycling along the river stopped and asked if they could join me, and if I had a meal they could buy.

“Now, after Covid, people adore the fact that everyone eats at one large table on the terrace I built next to the river, and they inevitably start to talk amongst themselves.”

Mr Chevallier, who came to Charente after years in the fashion industry, cooks all his food on an electric plancha (flat-top griddle) including his “famous pizzas”.

“It is food all the way from the Basque and Béarn region where I grew up,” he said.

“People think guinguettes are associated with Paris, but that is not correct – they are associated with conviviality, which exists everywhere.”

The menu is à la carte, with Mr Chevallier’s signature Axoa dish – a bowl of minced veal and ham, cooked with sweet peppers, onions, tomatoes and white wine, served with chips and salad – priced at €17.90. 

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What does guingette mean?

It is thought the word ‘guinguette’ comes from a white wine grown near Paris, which was served very young and cheaply in the drinking establishments which sprang up just outside the Paris boundary after authorities put a tax on wine in the city.

Most were situated on river banks and they took on a life of their own, especially on Sundays when families and other groups would leave Paris for some country air.

Boat and canoe trips to guinguettes were popular, as were bicycle rides in the early 20th Century.

With Fléac situated just 5km from Angoulême, many customers come from the city to relax, just as the Parisians used to, said Mr Chevallier.

Local bands play on most Saturday evenings in the summer.

One of the most famous artworks inspired by guinguettes is Auguste Renoir’s Le Dejeuner des Canotiers (Lunch of the Boating Party), which was painted between 1880 and 1881 and depicts the terrace of Maison Fournaise, a guinguette on the Ile de Chatou on the Seine, now a museum.

Another painting thought to have been inspired by lazy afternoons at the guinguette is Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), from 1863, where a nude woman consorts with fully dressed men, while another figure in the background seems ready to take a dip in the river in her underwear.

It shocked the public in Paris when first exhibited in 1863 in the Salon des Refusés ( the French Academy’s annual exhibition).

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Counterculture undertones

The counterculture undertones of the pictures are echoed by some modern guinguettes – an example being the Port du Lys further down the Charente river at Salignac (Charente-Maritime).

Run by an association called Utopy, its motto is “Procrastinateurs – unissons nous demain” (Procrastinators unite – tomorrow).

Despite the idle ethos, it has organised a kitchen restaurant overseen by Cognac restaurateur Stephanie Fritz, which serves lunches and suppers from Wednesdays to Sundays, with menus at €9 and €15 (for a barbecue brought to the table), as well as light crépes and drinks.

There is often live music, especially at weekends, as well as wider cultural activities. One recent Monday saw a two-hour conference on how transactional analysis in psychology, developed in the 1960s, can be used to understand human behaviour.

The association has the support of the local town council, with local mayor Jean-Michel Marchais hailing the guinguette as an ideal space to “communicate and observe”.

Other support comes from local authorities, which have publicised five guinguettes on the Charente in a guide.

Similar initiatives are now found along countless other rivers in France, and the guinguette, which was very unfashionable for a long time, has once again entered into popular culture.

One of the best-selling home decorations this year, according to Le Monde newspaper, is a guirlande guinguette – a string of coloured lights typically used to festoon their terraces.