Lille Dining and Entertainment

Lille Hotels

Dining in Lille

People in the North have always known how to dine and drink. With over 2500 bars and restaurants, Lille can offer its visitors a choice of regional, national or international cooking. Regional gastronomy begins with Flemish carbonnade (cooked slowly in beer and onions) or the wild rabbit with prunes, for those who like sweet and savoury dishes. Even more regional is the potjewelh, a pâté with rabbit, veal and bacon which is eaten cold, or the waterzoï which consists of sole and small mixed vegetables covered with cream.

The numerous local beers, White, Gueuze, Choulette, brewed the old way, make a great accompaniment to the cheeses - Vieux Lille - a soft flavoursome cheese, its cousin the Maroilles, which smells just as strong or the Vieux Hollande which owes its wonderful taste to a long period of maturing in the cellars of Roubaix!

The North offers a large variety of hearty dishes and sweet treats including: waffles or sugar tart made with brown sugar and Fleurs de Lille and Ryssels (praline-flavoured wafers covered in chocolate). The distilleries at Loos and Wambrechies come to the restaurant owners' rescue, by helping customers to ease digestion - with gin! But where and how can one discover these wonderful things?

When setting off on a gastronomic tour of Lille, the following places should be considered. Potj, waterzoï and rabbit can be tasted numerous taverns (serving Trappist monks' beer) in Monts de Flandres with its cobblestones leading up to a lighthouse and the unforgettable Hostellerie du Mont Kemmel. At the characteristic Taverne de l'Arbre you can have a beer to whet the appetite before stopping off at the nearby Lapin à z'os.

Lille is bordered to the south-east by Belgium, where there are more types of beer and restaurants than there are churches! It is impossible to forget the famous mussels at the Cloche in Mouscron or the sumptuous manor in which the Hostellerie Shamrock is housed. The whole of the north of Lille is covered in slag heaps, and the Salons du Manoir at Bauvin was always a good place to stop off on the way back from the mines.

Next, we find ourselves at the Grand Place, ready to sit down at a coveted table! Its no secret, that a good restaurant is a place which is always crowded. There are very few tourist traps in Lille, you can eat well almost anywhere - just let your palate guide you.

Around the Grand Place there are a number of bars and restaurants with heated terraces, where you can eat a reasonable meal on the go. There are one or two fast food restaurants for those in an exceptional hurry, and they are up to international standards. The Café Leffe is a good place to stop for an aperitif before moving on to the pedestrian precinct. The Tudor Inn is a very atypical bar, ideal for a change of scenery, before visiting the many boutiques and gastronomical premises yet to be tried.

The Brasserie André is excellent and worth a detour for its classical French dishes, and a stop-off at Aux Deux Moutons is a must for a barbecue.

The Place Rihour is only a stones throw from the Grand Place. Here too, restaurants with a terrace are numerous and one in particular: the Chicorée, is worthy of note. The food is good and the restaurant is open until the small hours! Go straight on and you will come to the Préfecture (administrative building) and the covered market. Students have taken over this area and several bars can boast more than one attraction, e.g the Boucherie with its rock music, the typically Irish Tir'Na Nog which is a little out of the way as well as the equally out of the way Salséro which is a good place to go for a chat.

Theres no shortage of restaurants in this area. There are a number of cheap and exotic restaurants - including excellent Vietnamese and Chinese - spread out along what is commonly known as Solférino, as well a few North African restaurants. One to remember in this area is the Bistrot des Halles with its marrow bone dishes, or the rather more exotic Gulistan, renowned for its Kurdish cooking. In front of the Sébastopol Theatre, in the middle of the Rue Solférino, the Passe-Porc offers northern cuisine and atmospehre.

For those who like real Italian cooking, the outlying Tramontana and the intimate Prato have had no problem establishing themselves in the Vauban-Esquermes district.

And finally we are back on the Grand Place, heading in the direction of Vieux Lille, with its abundance of restaurants. Well-informed gourmets should know that the Clément Marot is open in the Rue de Pas, with both poetry and cooking to charm your palate! A pleasant detour via the Echiquier bar will enable you to have an apéritif in the magnificent setting of a Minim convent, before heading for the Rue des Chats Bossus. Here you will find the Huitrière - one of the best fish restaurants in the whole of France and undoubtedly the finest one in the North, and the B'uf Noir - with enough meat to make you see red!

The small streets in Vieux Lille hold as many surprises. They contain exotic bars, such as El Bacilon, or the Pirogue; good rock music venues, like the Balatum; jazz at the Bel Ouvrage, and as for the Rue de Gand: there are almost as many restaurants as here there are doors. The Terrasse des Remparts at the end of this street deserves a particular mention, as much for its cooking as for its setting.

Back on the Grand Place, you'll find roasted chestnuts in the winter and ice creams in the summer. Lille always has something edible on offer, in keeping with the the well-known tradition of friendliness in the North!

Entertainment in Lille

A town of exchange by tradition and vocation, Lille counts culture and entertainment among its assets. Being a cultural (sometimes even avant-garde) capital, Lille has a long artistic tradition. From world music to opera, from ballet to rap, from improvisation groups to the great theatrical classics: Lille is up there with the best of them! Festivals, cultural exchanges, artistic encounters ' there is something for everyone.

Museums may seem staid to some, but the museums in Lille very often host permanent exhibitions. Until June 2000, the unmissable Palais des Beaux-Arts, the second most important museum in France, with it prestigious collections and large cabinet of drawings (including 50 plates by Raphaël) is hosting an exhibition entitled 'Lille in the Seventeenth Century: from Rubens to Vauban'.

If you like old buildings, don't miss the Hospice Comtesse. Those keen on local history will find the amazing Musée des Canonniers Sédentaires as interesting as the House where Général Charles De Gaulle was born. For art fans who prefer more modern works, the nearby Modern Art Museum in Villeneuve d'Ascq - which is situated in a huge park - houses works by Braque and Kandinsky.

Photography is not to be forgotten and the Fresnoy and its studios are constantly drawing our attention to it, as are various art studios such as the Espace Croisé or the Galerie 31.

Natural Science and Technology enthusiasts will be interested in a tour around the very original equatorial greenhouse at the Jardin des Plantes. These enthusiasts will also relish a visit to the Natural History Museum or the Regional Centre of Molinology at Villeneuve d'Ascq, where real curiosities can be seen in operation. This visit can be combined with a visit to the Modern Art Museum.

There are plenty of novelties and curiosities in the metropolis. The Robersart castle in Wambrechies with its Museum of Dolls and Antique Toys is enough to make anyone nostalgic and dreamy, while in Tourcoing, visitors to the Museum of Wood and Cabinet-making will find out all there is to know about wood and the art of working with it.

Industrial tourism is also a possibility. It is possible to visit the Heineken Brewery, and the Claeyssens Distillery in Wambrechies - one of the principal manufactures of Houlle gin. Don't miss a trip down the mines led by ex-miners at the Historical Centre of Mining at Lewarde - even if it means taking a whole day out of your schedule.

Cinema thrives in Lille. Although the current tendency is for multi-screen complexes offering a whole range of facilties, (e.g the UGC or Kinépolis for all commercial films), Lille is also keen to maintain its interest in avant-garde cinema. The Métropole and the Majestic are its biggest representatives: they show films in the original language only and also hold regular retrospectives enabling people to watch older films again. With its two screens, the Fresnoy hosts 'Sunlights'- its short-film festival, which is gaining increasing acclaim.

Theatre and Dance play a major role in Lilles culture. Hardly a week goes by without there being some new show or play staged. On this subject, the Prato Theatre is a delight for lovers of burlesque. The Théâtre du Nord and the Rose des Vents are geared to more worldly drama. Although the dance troupe regularly uses the multi-purpose Grand Bleu and the Vivat at Armentières, it has set up residence in the Coliseum in Roubaix where the Northern Ballet never ceases to amaze people with its performances.

If there is one deficiency, it is in the field of opera. Lilles opera house: Opéra is currently undergoing renovation work and fans are awaiting its reopening, scheduled for 2002.

In the Music world, time is reckoned in days, or even evenings. Not an evening goes by in Lille without a troubadour, a quartet or a philharmonic orchestra attracting a crowd! High-pitched violins, rolling drums, anything and everything casts a spell on the town. Classical music lovers often visit the Nouveau Siècle, where the Lille National Orchestra often performs - conducted by Jean-Claude Casadesus - in between its world tours. The Tourcoing Lyrical Workshop complements the orchestra very well and enjoys frequent critical acclaim. Jazz fans tend to get off work in November, for the unmissable Tourcoing Jazz Festival. The rest of the year there is no shortage of concert halls for performances of Live Jazz or Grall, which tends more towards the Blues. A number of clubs have varied, good quality programmes, such as the 30 or the Angle Saxo. Rock music, techno and house play a big part in the programme at the Aéronef, with a concert every evening for the past ten years. Variety music does well with regularly staged, sometimes large-scale, concerts at the Zénit. In any case, the decibels take refuge in just about all the night-time bars in Lille, which are always willing to put on a jam session or open up their stage for local stars. The Djoloff(famous for its weekends that are wilder than its salsa nights), and the Rock Line Café (for its underground rock), are two places that are not to be missed by. Another bar to try is the Relax, on a Sunday evening, for authentic French popular songs.

The night moves, Lille comes alive and night owls flutter their wings on bar after bar. Calmer people prefer the tranquility of the cocktail bars. When it gets really late and the wiser birds have returned to their nests, the festivities really get going as people take to the nightclubs. Before this, it is customary to take certain precautions food-wise! Some people choose to go to the cabarets, which are always unusual and never boring. There are sequins and glitter galore at the Les Folies de Paris, in the spectacle de transformiste, which remains in the tradition of Frances big cabarets. At the Pétrouchka sketches and songs are performed in local dialect, and French songs are on the programme at the Petite Cave. Another place and another style at the Péniche du Pianiste, which offers quality entertainment on a real barge. Others, having eaten their fill, drift out into the night, knowing that there is no charge to get into Lille discothèques. Credit where its due, the Opéra Night is the Babylon of nightclubs, where a giant sumo routine takes everyone by surprise. At the Sombrero, the atmosphere is more Wild West style, with pistols aplenty. The Scala, in the heart of Vieux Lille, has a great party atmospehere and is a good laugh with all genres of music guaranteed. A little less tasteful is the Dukes Club which nevertheless has a red-hot atmosphere. The very trendy CirqueClub or the 100% techno OXO Club are both very 'in'. The hardcore clubbers take a wander down the 'night-club road' in the direction of nearby Belgium, in search of more venues. The 747 in Tournai will take you on a turbulent night flight, while those who prefer techno can treat themselves to plenty of bpm at the Bush.

But nightlife in Lille is also about bars'there are quiet ones, exotic ones, jazz, rock ' something for everyone! They are concentrated mainly in two areas: Vieux Lille and around the covered market, with a few more scattered around the Vauban and Wazemmes districts. In Vieux Lille they are rather spread out: there is relaxed, informal atmosphere at the Illustration or the Balatum, salsa reigns at the Africa Bar and the Pirogue and jazz at the Ubu Pub - the list endless. The easiest thing is to discover them one by one, working your way round the district, which holds as much magic by day as by night! The Vauban area, with its large student population, is host to the Pirates Carribean. Wazemmes doesn't like to be left out and is also as colourful by day as by night: the Salséro and the Djoloff are very friendly. And finally, the area around the market... the Rue Masséna is packed every evening and in summer it is lined with outdoor tables, forming one long terrace. All sorts of music, be it rock, salsa or techno, is served up here along with the beer. There are many bars here, e.g. the Yéti.

Entertaining oneself in Lille should also involve wandering through the streets, admiring the beautiful sights the town has to offer. Most of them are included in our recommended tours. You will no doubt set off from the Grand Place, so don't hesitate to start with the Vieille Bourse (Old Stock Exchange) and the Rang du Beau Regard. From then on the choice is yours!

Parks and gardens are also popular places to spend free time. If, by tradition, Northern towns, hemmed in by their ramparts, had very few green open spaces, the nineteenth century completely changed living habits, replacing fortifications with parks. The very romantic Jardin Vauban is just ten minutes walk from the Grand Place. Those who are keen on sport can don their active attire and go round the Citadelle or jog round the pathways of the Bois de Boulogne. For those who enjoy botany and big green parks, there is the Jardin des Plantes. Lille doesn't lag behind when it comes to sports and attractions! In joggers' paradise, the Bois de Boulogne, visitors can, for a small charge, visit a number of sports centres. At Mov'in (in the Euralille centre) you can enjoy a jacuzzi or do an hour of stretching exercises. More contemplative, but nonetheless active, sportsmen can make use of the LOSC facilities, at the Grimonprez-Jorris stadium, or go and shiver with excitement at the Flanders race course. Ten-pin fans of all kinds will enjoy a trip to the Métro or Planet Bowling Alleys. As for big family outings: theres no need to head for the capital where Asterix and Mickey rule when nearby Belgium offers a number of parks such as Bellewarde, with rides and attractions to delight both the young and old.

Trans. by S. Monnereau