What will happen to the Paris restaurants?

There’s nothing more Parisian than sitting on a cafe terrace, or inside a bustling restaurant. But how can that work with social distancing?

And when will the Paris cafes and restaurants actually reopen?

Guy Griffin from Cafe Oberkampf and Cafe Mericourt joins the show to talk about the restaurant industry in Paris and how it’ll cope during the lockdown… and then what’ll come next.

He discusses his rethinking of the hospitality industry, the government’s “chômage partiel” for staff members (part-time unemployment), and his plans to reopen. 

And he says the days of sitting in a Paris cafe all day with one coffee and a cake may be over…

For the facts: The government has given May 11th as the end of lockdown, but that doesn’t apply for cafes and restaurants, many of which have already been reworking their strategies for home delivery and click and collect options. 

View this post on Instagram

Do you remember when we used to meet up for coffee?

A post shared by Coffee Shop (@cafeoberkampf) on

A tromp-l’oeil is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create an optical illusion (that’ll make more sense if you listen to the episode).

And as Guy said, there’s a coffee on him if you can be the first to guess which character he played in my audiobook, which you can listen to every day on Patreon here. We’re halfway through!  

Here’s today’s episode again on Spotify, though you can find it anywhere you get podcasts.

View this post on Instagram

We will be back we promise!

A post shared by Breakfast, Brunch & Lunch (@cafemericourt) on

One thought on “What will happen to the Paris restaurants?

  1. You read my mind,what a great podcast ! I love sitting in Parisian cafes and people watching and I hope this will go back to normal eventually. This Parisian pastime is a great one! I really appreciate this post.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: