Short description

Customers rating : 3,7 - Very mixed rating, mainly price/quality low rating.

Localisation
To discover
Open hours
  • 9h00 to 2h00 in the morning - 9am to 2am
Address

Mère Catherine Restaurant
6 Place du Tertre
75018 Paris

Coordinates Latitude Longitude
Sexagesimal (°, ', ") 48° 53′ 11″ N 2° 20′ 26″ E
Degré décimal (GPS) 48.88644 2.34093
Full description

Mère Catherine was founded in 1793 after Catherine Lamotte bought and transformed into a café-restaurant the presbytery. It was seized by the state (Révolution period) and was occupied by the priest in charge of the neighboring church..

The Revolutionary Danton was one of its first famous customers. Catherine Lamotte gave her customers a warm welcome and didn't hesitate to drink with them, leading her customers to nickname her "La mère Catherine". She died of an accident in 1844 at the age of 76.

In 1814, and according to the commutative plaque at the restaurant's entrance, Cossacks passing through during the Allied occupation (after Napoleon I's defeat at the Battle of Paris in 1814), use to stop at the À la Mère Catherine restaurant. They ordered drinks with "Bystro!" (Cyrillic: "быстро!"), i.e. in Russian: "Vite!". However, according to specialists, this etymology is fanciful , and the real origin of the word is not known with certainty.

The restaurant then belonged to a certain Gros Guillaume. M. Lemoine (second mayor of the Commune Libre de Montmartre) took over the business at the beginning of the 20th century. Mr. Lemoine's nicknamed was "le père la Bille", as he installed a wooden billiard table on the premises. As the restaurant was not sufficiently profitable, part of the premises was sold and turned into a bakery.

After the Second World War, Albert Mériguet and Thérèse owned the premises, but Montmartre had lost its cultural influence. The restaurant is frequented mainly by tourists. In June 2012, Figaro food critic François Simon described the restaurant in an article denouncing the lack of authenticity of the premises and the disastrous quality of the food served to tourists thinking they were consuming French gastronomy.

However,  La Mère Catherine is part of the Montmartre hilltop scenery. As the other shops around the Place du tertre, it is in the heart of the Montmartre district, just a few steps from the Sacré Coeur basilica.

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