With locals away and tourists not turning up, Paris is strangely quiet during the Games.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Alain Fontaine is, by nature, an optimistic man. When you have worked in restaurants for nearly 50 years and owned them for most of your adult life, there is no sense lamenting the trials and cancelled reservations that come with the trade.
Paris is ready for a party but, at the midway point of the Games, is watching the ice melt in the Esky, and the chips grow stale. There are plenty of people here for the Games, but they are not stopping at Mesturet for a beef tartare. “Paris is empty,” declares Charles Compagnon, who owns three restaurants in the city but will shutter two of them on Sunday, the hump day of the Olympics. “We’re doing half the business we used to. You can walk like you’ve never walked before.”
According to figures compiled by the French Association of Master Restaurateurs, which Fontaine serves as president, July table bookings were 20 per cent below what they normally are. For restaurants in the ancient Ile de la Cite in the middle of the Seine and Trocadero area near the Eiffel Tower, business has slumped by up to 80 per cent.
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