L'Hermine - Traditional Breton crêperie in Fougerolles

The crêperie

A place steeped in history

Built in 1840, at a time when the church district was still sparsely built, on the corner of the “road from Dijon to Nancy” and the “rue du chemin de Blanzey”, the building that now houses the crêperie faced the Gouttes stream: the “Foireux” had not yet been covered by the pavement of rue de Blanzey.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, the present dining room remained divided into two separate rooms: the entrance door on rue de Blanzey opened into a “living room”, while the French window on rue du Bas-de-Laval opened into a “grocery shop”. This shop had two other openings: one connected it to the “charri”, and the other led to the “cellar”, where the toilets are now located.

Around 1900, the place, taken over by “Popice”, a well-known, popular and colourful local figure, became the “Café de l’Espérance”. It kept this role for more than a century. Run in turn by the Raveglia family, the Mège family (1914-1923), the Aubry family (1923-1932) and the Romary family (1933-1945), it survived the Second World War. Its tenants then began to change more frequently.

In 1997, Jean-Claude Mège gave the “Café des sports” a modern décor and had its façade rendered pink. Of the dozens of cafés that, during the Belle Époque, enlivened life in Fougerolles and its hamlets, it remained one of the last. But during the 2010s, despite the loyalty of a few regulars, customers became scarce and the interior deteriorated.

To restore the place to its former vitality, it took a westerly breeze to blow through this old eastern bar: renovated from top to bottom, it has now been transformed into a Breton enclave which, under the twin signs of the ermine and cherries, draws food lovers in numbers.