95 Years in Saint-Germain: Inside One of Paris's Historic Bistros
- Restaurant Roger la Grenouille
- il y a 6 jours
- 1 min de lecture
Paris has older restaurants — Le Procope claims 1686 — but very few places where the décor, the specialty and the spirit have stayed intact for nearly a century. Roger la Grenouille, opened in 1930, is one of them.
From cobbler's shop to legend
Roger Spinhirny, an orphan born in 1900, turned a cobbler's workshop into a restaurant and gave it his nickname — "Roger the Frog". Success was immediate. Every Thursday, he served free meals to the orphans of Paris; every night, the dining room filled with artists and partygoers from Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
What "historic" actually means here
The 1930s dining room is the real thing, not a reconstruction: vintage frog memorabilia, old instruments and kitchenware on the ceiling, tightly packed tables and a noise level that belongs to another era. Picasso painted Guernica on this very street and ate here; so did Saint-Exupéry and Mistinguett.
Why visit now
Because the house specialty — frog legs — has all but vanished from Paris menus, and because the restaurant is counting down to its 100th birthday in 2030. Eating here isn't nostalgia: it's catching a living institution in motion.
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