Eating out on Sunday evenings in France

We have just come back from a trip through France and will try to write about various things that struck us there over the next few weeks.

Finding a restaurant that is open on a Sunday in France is an activity that can be difficult. Sunday lunch is a very busy time for French restauranteurs and restaurants often shut on Sunday evening. This means that in small towns often only one restaurant is open. If it is an expensive restaurant and you need to eat, well, grit your teeth and pay the price or cycle up to 10 or 15 km to the next village where there might be a restaurant open. Count yourself lucky! We once found ourselves in a village on the Canal du Midi some years ago on a Sunday evening. We waited patiently outside the only Auberge in the village for it to open. It didn’t open and we found out later that if the landlord had a good Sunday lunchtime, he took the evening off. We were forced to boil up a dried chicken soup using our primus and pan. If I remember correctly the soup packet had the immortal words "No animal was harmed in the making of this soup" on the back.