Anyone who has been living in Aix for the past ten years will have witnessed the strong growth of restaurants in town, and specifically the increase in casual eating.
La Provence recently reported that there are now nearly 700 places to eat in the commune – a growth of 77% since 2003.
Always queues for Pizza Capri
The growth in the fast-food counters, from 171 to 304, has been the biggest change – these are often themed (bagels, woks, sushi) or ice-cream shops – and they count the mobile pizza-camions in this category. And the reason? The article attributes it to a change in behaviour with people not happy to spend so long over lunch or spend so much money. I would also add the growing number of students in town who prefer to snack at lunchtime. Quality apparently is still high – we aren’t talking junk food here. ‘Manger vite et bien, c’est désormais possible’.
But the number of traditional restaurants has grown too, up from 267 to 383. That’s a 44%
Still popular – the tourists’ favourite in the cours Mirabeau
increase and shows that there are still lots of people who like to linger over a mid-day 3-course lunch.
They used to say there was a different restaurant for each day of the week in Aix….now looks like it would take 2 years to get round them all. Now there’s a challenge!
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