In the small village of Rilhac, located in the Haute-Loire department, there are no people, just dirty geese waddling along a muddy street lined with crumbling barns. Driving south from Clermont-Ferrand, the landscape of volcanoes flattens out into rolling pine forests. It is easy to find places here that look like the kinds of hardscrabble villages the Auvergnats left behind. By the 1940s, according to the food historian Peter Graham, Auvergnats ran the majority of the cafés in Paris, including some celebrated ones, like the Café de Flore. Over time, these operations morphed into sophisticated cafés. Each had a little zinc bar on which the more enterprising proprietors served coffee or a plate of food. When the railroad arrived in the 19th century, millions fled to Paris, where they typically sold coal and wood out of cheap corner stores called bougnats. Poverty forced successive generations to seek a better life elsewhere. Proud history and natural beauty have always been abundant in the Auvergne material wealth has not. ![]() Located due west of Burgundy, smack in the center of the country, the Auvergne is among the most rural parts of France. ![]() “This is where we go camping, not wine-tasting” one Frenchman tells me. If you tell Parisians that you are traveling to the Auvergne to visit vineyards, they will look puzzled. La Petite École in Rilhac serves ambitious local cooking in a deeply unpretentious, out-of-the-way setting.
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