Patrick Laur, the insatiable Réquistanais – ladepeche.fr

Patrick Laur, this dyed-in-the-wool 57-year-old from Aveyron, originally from Perret, a hamlet near Réquista, is today co-owner of five bars, restaurants, brasseries and hotels in Paris and two in Toulouse and its region.

Co-owner, because the one who, with his CAP as a waiter in his pocket, took his first steps in the profession at “La Renaissance” in Coupiac, then at the late “Grand Hôtel” in Roquefort (“during the three seasons that I spent there , Mr. and Mrs. Lenfant won their first Michelin star”) does not conceive of its existence other than to buy businesses in difficulty in order to improve them. By associating with investors, with some of his deserving collaborators… A just return of favor for Patrick Laur who, after having begun his conquest of the Capital at “Saint-Jean”, the largest brasserie in Melun managed by M .and Mrs. Jalbert, bounced back, in September 1987, at the “Café Beaubourg” run by other Aveyronnais, oh so famous, the Costes brothers from Saint-Amans-des-Côts.

field hospital

Good foot, good eye, a year and a half later, the demanding Gilbert Costes bombards him at the head of the forty employees. Before proposing to him to join him to acquire the restaurant “Le Brise Miche”, still near the Pompidou center. The beginning of an insatiable quest for his own Grail.

Backed by the Costes brothers, the Bertrand brewer (the company owned, at the time, by people from Aveyron now belongs to the “France Boissons” group), Kurdish financiers, but above all some of his employees, Patrick Laur has no stops restoring cafes and other bistros.

Jumble: in the Marais, “Le Saint-Paul” (“where we fought like dogs 24 hours a day, 7/7 days”) and “Le Sun Café” which has become, with its solarium and its tables massages, an address popular with homosexuals; “Le Petit Baïona”, rue de Charonne, known, in particular, for having served, on the evening of the attacks of November 13, 2015, as a field hospital for the victims of the neighboring bar, “La Belle époque”…

Fourteen cases

Will follow “Le Bon café”, “En attendant l’or”, a sublimating table, again in the 11th, aligot and other Aveyron specialties… And in the very chic 8th arrondissement, “Le Certa”, a brasserie after work, near Saint-Lazare, shared with Eymeric Assié, “an Aveyronnais that I trained”; “La Favorite”, a restaurant on rue de Turbigo, absorbed with Kurds on March 1, 2020, seventeen days before the first confinement… And, in the company of one of its staff hired at 15 as a dishwasher and, successively, clerk chef, waiter, bartender, manager, director, “Le Petit L’or” renowned for its brunches, between Trocadéro and Bois de Boulogne, in the select 16th district.

To date, Patrick Laur has applied his recipe in some fourteen stores in Paris. And if he only keeps the last five today, others could soon join the fold. “We don’t stop. That’s how it is with me, we don’t rest.”

Pétanque, the other passion

Because he wanted to get closer to his three children, Patrick Laur has been in business in Toulouse for more than three years and in Tournefeuille since… January 17th. Such an obvious destination for this pétanque enthusiast (Haute-Garonne is the French department with the most licensees, editor’s note), but also for this fan of sport and conviviality.

In September 2018, “the Aveyronnais of Paris” landed in the Pink City by buying with his daughter, Manon, and other relatives, “La Cantina San Subra” from rugby player William Servat. Themed evenings, sports, music, but also Aveyron specialties: quickly the place, baptized “Les Chimères” (like one of its previous acquisitions in Paris), was a great success with locals and the Rouergate diaspora.

The master of the rooms does not spare his efforts. He is never the last to get his hands dirty. By ensuring daily promotion on social networks or by dressing up as a zealous bougnat to spin the aligot. And it works ! Under the leadership of manager Manon, “Les Chimères” is a trendy address in the stronghold of aeronautics.

Pilgrimage to the sources

Such success could not leave this visceral businessman indifferent. And so it was that three weeks ago he opened, in Tournefeuille, “Le Bistrot Marcel-André” on the site of the former “Bistrot club”. “I teamed up with Brice Courrège and Fabrice Pouget.” It was up to these two young Luco-Primaubois in their thirties, whose efficiency he had noticed during their experience of four or five years in the capital, to run the shop.

Investors and collaborators from Rouergat, decor and renovation imagined by the interior designer from Castonet Thierry Carel, local products and suppliers (Aubrac meat from Agriviandes, preparations from the Table de Solange also in Cassagnes-Bégonhès, charcuterie from at Bories in Plaisance, etc.): everything here on the fifty-five seats set up inside and the sixty decorating the terrace smells of Aveyron.

A sort of pilgrimage to the sources for Patrick Laur.

The Aveyron spirit sublimated in Toulouse and Tournefeuille