Parisian Food Places Named for Russian word ? Or a small fraud ?

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Barbara
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Parisian Food Places Named for Russian word ? Or a small fraud ?

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When I was posting a thread on the inspiring Archimandrite Innokenty [Bystrov ], I got to wondering whether his last name has any relation to the name of the French restaurantettes, "bistros". I remember well reading in a history book on the life of Empress Josephine that the name derived from the habit of the Russian occupiers of Paris in 1814, who called out "Bystro !" to waiters in the small French cafes. The word meant "Hurry !", hence the entire genre of such little cafes took this name. It does not sound like a French word, hence this explanation stuck over the years.

As it is the evening before the American Thanksgiving holiday where food is a factor, I thought I would look into this question before posting definitively.

Here is the best analysis I found :

"...originally, the bistro came about in Paris France, and was a small, informal, comfortable restaurant that served straightforward, flavorful home-style food, with generous portions and quick service....

"The typical story has it that these restaurants derived from French boarding houses that opened their kitchen to the public to bring in some extra money. It is often also added that these restaurants served wine, and indeed, the definition of bistro or bistrot is sometimes given as wine merchant and public house, with wine being the main item sold in these establishments. Of course, coffee was also served. As for the origins of the word "bistro" itself, etymologists are not certain, and a couple of different versions are passed around.

"A popular origin tale places the words beginnings during the Russian occupation of Paris from 1814 to 1820, when Emperor Alexander I of Russia lead during the Napoleonic Wars. Russian soldiers would come into these restaurants wanting quick service; so they would shout "bystro!" Bystro which is быстро in Cyrillic, means "quickly" or "hurry." This would have sounded more like "Vee-stra, vee-stra" to our ears but Anatoly Liberman explains that the stress would have fallen on the last syllable, not the first as in bistro. He gives the approximation of the word as bystrei.

"The French supposedly heard this word and adopted it as bistro (bistrot) for the name of any small, informal restaurant. There are many, many problems with this tale. One problem is that the story details change too often. Sometimes it's regular Russian troops; other times it's Cossacks. As well, sometimes it's said that only wine was ordered by the troops, not full meals, which is a bit strange, since what regular Russian troops would have wanted wine? Perhaps they were out of vodka or, as will be discussed below, they had no alcohol and just ordered what was available. It is possible that Russian officers who were highfalutin and into the whole French thing might have ordered wine, but it is almost certain they would have spoken French and wouldn't have shouted bystro in Russian. [ Good point ! At that time all upper class Russians spoke French as almost their native language. ]

"At times, the restaurants along [ the Champs Elysees ] are specifically mentioned and other times this is left out. A particular commander, Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov, is often said to the leader of these particular troops who shouted bystro, but Surorov was dead before the Russians ever occupied Paris. There are other problems with this story that could be discussed as well. One thing that if often left unexplored is just why the Russian troops would have come into these cozy little places and rudely shouted "hurry up" in a foreign language. They would really have no reason to behave like this. Despite the fact they were an occupying force, they were not "barbarians." Some writers have supplied the detail, therefore, that the troops were unhappy with the off-hand treatment they received at the hands of some of the restaurant keepers. Another explanation is that it was the Cossacks, and they were not allowed to drink alcohol, so they were in a hurry so as not to get caught out by their officers. There has never been any reason given why Cossacks are specifically singled out as the soldiers responsible in some versions of the story. I, furthermore, do not know whether there was an alcohol prohibition in place for Russian troops and such extended research is beyond the scope of this post, as it would do little to prove or disprove the story.

"... Regardless of all this, this would have been recognizably rude behavior from an occupying force, so why in the world would it be adopted as the general name for these little joints?

"Perhaps the most telling reason that the story is unlikely is that the earliest use of the word bistro that has been found in the French language is in 1884, a full 64 years after the Russian occupation. The word does not appear in English, by the way, until the 1920's (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1922). For Italian, it's 1931. It is not like bistro was a ... slang word so there is no good reason for it to have taken so long for it to appear in print, if it truly derived from the Russians. It is almost certain that this origin of the word is incorrect....

"Among many questions [ an authority on the subject ] brings up about the story, an excellent one is, if these establishments came to be called bistros after the Russian occupation, but obviously existed before that, what were they called prior to the Russians? They had to have been called something, but no other name has ever been recorded. The most likely explanation? They did not exist during that period and were instead a development of the second half of the century, which is when we see evidence for the word emerging.

"Although this story has been repeated over and over by the Parisian's [ sic ] themselves, which explains the many different versions, we can dismiss the Russian story"

Possible Origins of the Word "Bistro" - CulinaryLore.com

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