The Room that Holds Everyone
Why the French bistro was never really only about food — and what disappears when it closes
A century ago, France had half a million bistros. Today, fewer than 40,000 remain.
That number stopped me when I read it. Not because it’s surprising, exactly, but because of what it means to lose something at that scale without anyone quite deciding to let it go. No law was passed. No policy failed spectacularly. The bistro simply became, incrementally, harder to sustain and easier to replace with something that looks similar but carries none of the weight.
I’ve been thinking about what that weight actually is.
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