Between two mouthfuls of couscous, Alizée waves at the pianist who is playing at the back of the restaurant where she is seated with a handful of friends. “Do you know Dalida? Or Nina Simone?”, asks the thirty-year-old, laughing. The musician nods then complies, and begins a cover of Die on stagebefore sounding the first notes of FeelingGood. On this calm Wednesday in January, the twenty or so customers present continue to dine while soberly moving their shoulders. Some dare to take a few selfies, accompany the singer by humming, while others approach the piano, glass in hand, and offer other standards of French song. “You can play In Emilie’s eyes ?”, attempts Alizée at around 11 p.m., while the lights in the room dim. Missed: her interlocutor instead chooses a reprise ofAisha, sung joyfully by a waitress – here, even the staff participates in the festive atmosphere of the place. “Tonight, it’s quite calm. But often, you have groups singing at the top of their lungs, standing in front of their plates, competing in different corners of the room,” she confides after her performance.
Every Wednesday evening, La Casbah, an emblematic establishment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, offers its customers a “festive dinner” around couscous – charged at 39 euros per person – and a “piano-jukebox”, where the artist performs the audience’s favorite songs. Throughout the days of the week, consumers will also be able to discover dance shows or other artistic performances, before extending, if they wish, their evening in the restaurant’s club located in the basement. “The Covid forced us to make efforts to create content,” explains Arnaud Delaeter, co-founder of the Bonjour/Bonsoir group, owner of La Casbah. Since then, this type of evening has been a hit. “It really helped to boost attendance at the start of the week, with around 15% more customers on Wednesday and Thursday,” adds the manager.
Coming to celebrate a birthday, Manon and Emilie confirm: for several months, these thirty-somethings have only sworn by Parisian festive restaurants. Intimate piano atmosphere, electro DJ or standing dance on the benches… They claim to have already tested “six or seven establishments” of this type, all over Paris. “There are places where it goes away in a few seconds and you end up singing on the tables or on the bar. And then sometimes, like tonight, it remains more intimate and calm,” comments one of the partygoers, slightly frustrated by the calm of this mid-week. “In any case, I am much more motivated to go out than if we had gone to a traditional restaurant,” adds another, getting up to join the club located a floor below.
“You absolutely have to stand out”
In Paris, La Casbah is far from being the only establishment to offer its customers this type of festive dinner, which rarely ends before 2 a.m. President of the Union of Hospitality Trades and Industries (UMIH) Paris, David Zenouda even saw the trend “gain impressive momentum over the past five years” in the capital, particularly thanks to the Covid pandemic. “There were already festive restaurants, particularly in the mountains or in towns like Saint-Tropez or Cannes. But when the nightclubs closed, many consumers rediscovered the principle, and loved it. The establishments then multiplied “, he says. While traditional restaurants record a drop in attendance of 20 to 30% depending on the region for the year 2023 according to the UMIH, David Zenouda even estimates that this phenomenon would have allowed certain establishments to survive the shock of Covid, and to reinvent itself in a particularly tense economic context. “Competition has become so fierce that it is absolutely necessary to stand out. Festive restaurants are working better than ever, and the big groups have understood this well,” he explains.
The Paris Society group, which owns around twenty establishments throughout France – including several festive restaurants – is delighted, for example, with the success of Piaf, a Parisian establishment which offers live piano concerts at the end of the week, with musical entertainment. which rises to a crescendo and can last until 2 a.m.”, describes communications director Alexandra de la Brosse. “From the first year, in 2017, we were sold out almost every evening. So we decided to work on this type of proposition in the majority of our restaurants, to eat and party in one and the same place,” explains -she. Le Piaf is now exported to Megève and Val d’Isère, and is one of the establishments cited by Emilie and Manon, who admit to having spent “more than one evening” there with friends, despite higher prices than in a restaurant classic – count at least 30 euros for a main course, with the side dish extra.
Same success for Eleni Group and its festive Greek restaurant Yaya, opened in 2017 in the Paris region. “We started with a few evenings per month, then every weekend… And the concept worked so well that we are opening our fifth establishment this month,” says Grégory Chantzios, co-founder of the group. However, the bet was far from won for this restaurateur: “Very clearly, I am not sure that we would have held on after Covid if we had not started to offer this festive side. We had to adapt to the new demands from our customers, who come looking for, in addition to food, a real experience,” he confides.
“There’s a bit of a bling-bling side”
“Today, that’s what matters. Customers don’t just want to eat well, they especially want to show their friends that they sang to Dalida, danced between courses and were served straight from the set of table”, analyzes David Zenouda. Charlotte, customer of a festive restaurant in Bordeaux, confirms. “After a certain hour, the waiters set the bar on fire, make the girls sit on the tables, and the majority of customers are glued to Instagram to make stories. There’s a bit of a bling-bling side,” says she jokes. On social networks, the hundreds of videos featuring young people in their thirties dancing in front of their plates in establishments in Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and Lille prove him right. Delighted, customers pose in front of meat dishes cut before their eyes by charismatic cooks, film bottles of champagne served with sparkling candles, appear standing on a bar filled with flaming shots… Without always realizing the bill that awaits them.
In the most chic neighborhoods of the capital, certain festive restaurants – which even impose on their customers an “elegant dress code” or a minimum expenditure per head – offer gnocchi for 34 euros, burratas for 44 euros, or even cocktails for more than 23 euros… “You are captivated by the place, you recommend drinks, but you can end up paying 130 euros for your evening. Which is a little expensive for the portions offered”, testifies Tanguy, a thirty-year-old Parisian who has tested this type of restaurant several times.
Enough to trigger the anger of certain consumers, whose online opinions are sometimes sharp. “Great decor which is only at the service of Instagram. The goal of the establishment is to attract as many customers as possible in a short time,” says a party-goer in despair after spending the evening in a festive restaurant near the Champs-Elysées. “We eat well, but it is well below the expectations that we can have by paying this price,” writes another about a competing establishment. “Some have chosen a selection from above, for example requiring a minimum of 200 euros consumed per person, for a quality of food that is not always justified,” admits Thierry Fontaine, president of UMIH nuit. Himself the manager of a festive restaurant, he points out that all establishments of this type “are not successes”. “It’s a different job from that of a restaurateur: safety standards are not the same, insurance is three times more expensive, and the investment in terms of artists and communication can be colossal,” he says. -he: “Many underestimated the work, and ultimately had to stop working.”