A History of Bar Tabs at the Tour de France

A special Bastille Day edition of the race’s infamous “drinking raids”

Given that today is Bastille Day—the French national day of independence—it felt fitting to write about the Tour de France and its long history with eating and drinking. If you feel like getting in the spirit, go hit the Blackbird spots listed below.

Week one of the three week Tour de France concluded yesterday with Stage 9’s romp into Châteauroux. It was marked by a two-man breakaway that spent nearly 108 miles leading the race only to be caught 700 meters from the finish line by the charging peloton. Yes, it’s a cruel sport.

Breakaway riders are gamblers — typically the type of riders who have little chance of overall glory, so they roll the dice in a bid to win a stage. The odds are never in their favor; not with a 150+ rider-peloton chasing behind, ready to swallow them up.

A breakaway does have one advantage however: fueling. While teams in the peloton have to dispatch one rider each to drift to the back of the pack, grab all the bottles and gels and bars from the flotilla of trailing team cars, doing their best Michelin Man (ahem, “Bibendum” — real ones know) impression by stuffing everything in their jersey, before swimming back up through the field and dispensing it all to every one of their eight teammates, riders in the breakaway have their team car right beside them. All that’s required is to drift left or right and reach for their food and drink that’s being handed out by their director through the open window of the car. As Peacock commentator and former 4th place Tour de France finisher Christian Vande Velde put it during yesterday’s coverage, “in the break, the bar is always open.”

This is not an insignificant advantage in a race where each day riders burn between 6,000-10,000 calories. And while replenishing these calories has always been important (one of the riders in yesterday’s two-rider break said he threw up five times during his massive effort), in recent years the science behind fueling has made significant gains. Today’s Tour de France racers consume upward of 120 grams of carbs per hour on the bike through energy drinks, gels, and bars. That’s so much fuel that these riders have had to retrain their guts to absorb such a nauseating level of carbohydrates. The results, however, speak for themselves: average speeds have skyrocketed, records have fallen, and we’ve embarked on a golden age of competition the likes of which the sport has never seen (even more impressive, some might argue, than the peak Federer-Nadal-Djokovic days of tennis). Yesterday’s doomed two-man breakaway rode at a staggering 37 mph along flat roads for hours, pedaling to the second fastest stage in Tour history.

Drinking Raids

Of course, it wasn’t always this way, which is something our fellow restaurant heads might find interesting. Before the advent of energy drinks and food (and, ahem, sophisticated blood doping programs), Tour de France riders would stop along each day’s route, run into local bars and cafes and grab whatever they could — water, soda, ice cream bars … even beer, wine, and champagne. You name it, it was all fair game. The riders called these pit stops “drinking raids,” or sometimes the more palpable “café raids,” (in French: la chasse à la canette) and they’d push civilian customers out of the way to ransack the place for all it was worth. Riders would take their calories and hydration in any form, though alcohol was preferable to water because it was believed to numb the pain of riding hundreds of miles and climbing thousands of feet daily during the blazing heat of July, where a cyclist could lose close to 8 kilos by the end of each stage in water weight. So what if it took a good 10 minutes to catch back up to the peloton, jersey stuffed with glass bottles and other goodies? Such efforts were deemed worth it. The practice ran through the 1960s, and it was captured best in the documentary “Vive le Tour,” which deemed these raids “one of the most important moments” of the race.

So were these mom and pop bars and cafés just forced to give away their product in the name of professional cycling? Of course not. Once the Tour wrapped each year, the organizers of the race, as well as the teams themselves, were sent bills from each of the spots their riders ransacked. The delay in payment seemed but a small price to pay for the publicity, as well as the glory stories their proprietors could spin.

There are still two weeks left in this year’s race, with both the Pyrenees and Alps to come, so tune in (if you want to level up your knowledge first, there’s docuseries “Unchained” on Netflix — aka cycling’s answer to F1’s “Drive to Survive”).

And for those looking to celebrate Bastille Day tonight (or just generally celebrate French cuisine and vibes any night) in NYC, consider checking in and opening a tab at these Blackbird spots below to earn $FLY, perks, status, and more.

Allez!

🇫🇷 8 French-Forward Spots on Blackbird in NYC

• Third Falcon (open Wednesday-Sunday)
  📍Fort Greene
  Northern French fare (Langoustine, homemade brioche) with Long Island ingredients, all done by an EMP alum — no wonder the Times recently named it one of the city's 100 best restaurants. The wine list and interior design are chic, too (just ask Eli Zabar).

• La Tête d'Or
  📍Flatiron
  Daniel Boulud has long been an adopted New Yorker, but his first official steak-house seals the deal. That most American of meats x French technique? Oui, chef, plus a 🤩 room.

• Café Boulud
  📍Upper East Side
  Le legend himself returns with his seminal French fare and his eponymous café. The room is stately, so too the crowd, and the menu exceptional. A classy joint the UES was made for.

• Le Gratin

  📍FiDi
  The details—Art Deco lighting, antique tiles—scream Lyon, as does the fare, like the spot’s namesake potatoes. Chef Boulud’s ode to Lyonnaise “bouchons” delivers.

• Le Pavillon
  📍Midtown
  An ode to an icon, Daniel outdoes himself with this one: soaring ceilings, olive trees, Chrysler Building views, plus a seafood-leaning tasting menu dialed in for Midtown machers.

• L'Express
  📍Gramercy
  Behold the type of bistro every self-respecting New Yorker needs in their rotation, from brunch to lunch, dinner to late night, dare we say drunk eats (4 a.m.!), this OG does it all.

• Little Prince
  📍Soho
  It’s the details that make this spot, from the Serge Gainsbourg and Daft Punk photos gracing the walls to the hand-painted tiles and chesterfield banquettes to the cognac-laced French onion soup (which miraculously comes in burger form, too).

• Quatorze
  📍Upper East Side
  Does Quatorze do the best salade de Chèvre Chaud west of France? Quite possibly, and certainly here in the city. Also, oysters and the half chicken with frites are absolute musts. The perfectly sleepy UES vibes? Divine. The vintage decor? On point.