Bistros are Classy, Right?

“The word ‘bistro’ is classy as sh--!” Tom Haverford declares this in season two of the NCB sitcom Parks & Rec. He wants to open a restaurant called Tom’s Bistro just because of how classy the word ‘bistro’ is. This joke pays off four seasons later when Tom finally realizes his dream of opening Tom’s Bistro to (short term) raging successes. But for me, this was a joke played on the French language that paid off after two centuries. 

When you think of ‘bistro’ you think of what Tom has in mind: it’s probably French or Italian with small plates, great taste, and definitely some fancy wine. It’s all the class of France distilled into a single dining experience. But the word ‘bistro’ (probably) isn’t French.

This chart shows the usage of ‘bistro’ and ‘bistouille’ in French from the years 1800-1910. ‘Bistouille’ is slang in northern France and doesn’t show up in french writing until the late 1870s. ‘Bistro,’ the epitome of French classiness, only shows up in French in the beginning of the 1800s. Where it does show up is in Russian as the word 'быстро'.

'Быстро' is normally transliterated as ‘bystro’ in English (though the character ‘ы’ is pronounced more like the French ‘ui’ as in ‘oui’) and means ‘quickly’. As such, ‘bistro,’ and the derived ‘bistouille,’ are Russian loanwords in French! So why are Russian words entering French at the beginning of the 1800s? Answer: Napoleon. 

In America, we are usually taught that the French Revolution is a  relatively unimportant follow up to the much more profoundly worldshaking American Revolution. Elsewhere, the American Revolution is a mere footnote to the French Revolution. The French Revolution is noteworthy due in no small part to its ideals, but also to the events that followed: the Napoleonic Wars. If the Napoleonic Wars were impossible to distill into a treaty or two, it will be impossible to do so in a short article on the word ‘bistro’. But suffice it to say that it radically changed the historical and political landscape of Europe. It also gave us the word Bistro.

In 1812, Napoleon and his forces sized Moscow after the Battle of Borodino (commemorated in the 1812 Overture, aka that one classical piece with cannons). At this point only Great Britain and the Russian Empire resisted the conquest of Napoleon, and Moscow, Russia’s largest city, had fallen. However, Moscow burned, and the French forces withdrew. Russian forces pursued the French, eventually expelling them from Russia. The Sixth Coalition formed (Russian, Prussia, Austria, Great Britain, and others) eventually defeating Napoleon and entering Paris on March 30, 1814. This is how Russian words ended up entering the French vernacular in the early 1800s.

According to popular legend, the service in the French restaurants was never good enough for the occupying Russian soldiers. So they would shout at their French servers, “Быстро! Быстро!” Over time, these small restaurants became known by this shouted Russian word: ‘bistro’. Another century later, they embody all the fanciness France has to offer.

To me this is a long joke played on the French language because Russian, especially before the Napoleonic wars, had a massive inferiority complex. To be more like Europe, the official court language of Russia was French. If War and Peace was written in the language that the characters were speaking, huge parts of the novel would be in French. In fact, characters in War and Peace will often switch to French to better express themselves or to talk about more refined topics, as they believed French was better suited for such things.

So when Tom Haverford says that “The word ‘bistro’ is classy as sh--,” I imagine Napoleon turning in his grave and Tolstoy having a good laugh at his expense.