Our story

Rue de Gand is the road to Flanders. People left Lille through the Porte de Gand, and the street leading to it has kept the name of the road. This is the suburb through which merchants and carts from the North came in; today it is the street where people eat.

The estaminet opened in 2003, at number 60. It did not come out of nowhere. Eight years earlier, in 1995, Jean-Luc had opened his first estaminet at Mont Cassel, in the heart of Flemish country. In 1999, with Raphaëlle, he came down to Lille and opened the T'Rijsel, after the Flemish name of the city. Chez la Vieille is the house that followed, and Franck, then Hervé, joined the team.

Why la Vieille? For what the word evokes: childhood, the cooking we knew before we knew it had a name, the mismatched crockery of houses where nothing gets thrown away. The room was put together like that, by accumulation. Enamel signs, stoneware jugs, frames hung up to the ceiling: nothing was bought as a job lot, everything arrived piece by piece.

In 2008, the house launched its own beer, the 7 Péchés.

Other houses followed, in Vieux-Lille, in the hills and on the coast. Chez la Vieille has stayed what it was, with its two evening sittings when the room is full, and the gratin that bears its name.