About The Metro Bistrot
The Metro Bistrot
The Metro’s focus is on provincial, French cuisine served in a casual, restaurant atmosphere. We are not an intimidating, haute cuisine or fusion-style restaurant with ridiculous prices, miniscule portions, post-modern effusions, or heavy butter and cream sauces. However, our days of service and seating is limited due to the economic effects of the plague, and our food is created one plate at a time. As we are more of a boutique restaurant than an all day every day full service American style restaurant, we urge people to reserve seats and even pre-order food in advance by calling, texting, or emailing us. However, we are also glad to serve you, if we can, if you just drop in. Thank you for your understanding.
Jay Livernois and Marie-Paule Marthe Chefs / Owners
The Metro’s chefs / owners, Marie-Paule Marthe and Jay Livernois have been cooking and managing The Bistrot for more than ten years. Marie-Paule learned the art of French cooking from her grandmother and mother and is descended from cheese makers on her mother's side of her family and wine makers on her father's. Jay cooked in the south of France for five years, but he also had an extensive education in food in both the US, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. They have developed palates with irreverent tongues and do not cater to either the emotionally triggered or virtue signalers in thought or taste.
Special Events
Our restaurant is available for small (6 - 30), private events (especially Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays), including but not limited to: tasting dinners, private parties, fund raisers, and cooking classes. We are also open to hosting events on other days even during regular business hours. We would love to discuss how we could create or be part of an event for you.
Our Olive Oil--Mina's
Our olive oil is perhaps the best in the world. It comes from the Peloponnese (southern Greece) in the region of Lakonia (the area of ancient Sparta). The intrepid British author, Patrick Leigh Fermor, beautifully wrote of the trees and the harvesting of the olives in the region that produce this oil.
"Throughout this peninsula the olive tree reigns unchallenged. All life revolves round them. They are treated with respect and love: the respect that is accorded to sovereigns and the love that is bestowed on one's family. Each tree has its personality: every branch and knot and hole is familiar, and to damage one is an unlucky, almost a wicked act.
"I asked how the olives were gathered: did they beat them from the branches with long reeds or poles, as I had seen it done in Crete? The were horrified. Beat them down? Only from the lopped branches on the ground. On the tree itself they were all picked by hand, to avoid bruising the twigs and the shoots: a long task."
Local and Farm to Table
Jay was raised on his great- grandfather's farm in the hills above Southbridge just over the Connecticut border in North Woodstock. There he harvests 19th century Kieffer pears (the picture is of a 150 year old tree in bloom), wild grapes, rhubarb, herbs, and venison. Plus he buys locally raised meat (Hilltop Homestead and Elm Farm in Woodstock), vegetables and fruits (Pinecroft Farm and Woodstock Orchard), and local dairy, eggs, and chickens.