The Abridged version:
- Northern California saw an influx of French pioneers arrive in the region thanks to the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s.
- Over time French cultural offerings have taken root here, including the Sacramento French Film Festival, now in its 25th year.
- This region is also home to a bevy of French dining options, many sharing Sacramento’s farm-to-fork tradition.
This story was reported by a member of the Abridged by PBS KVIE Community Reporters program. The Community Reporters program empowers local residents to report stories with guidance and support from the Abridged editorial staff.
Since the Gold Rush days, Sacramento has been sopping up French culture like Normandy butter on a warm Parisian croissant.
The connection began in 1848 with the migration of some 30,000 pioneers from France (mostly to San Francisco), which continued into the 1850s. Some found Sacramento to be their new home. The tech boom of the late ‘90s brought a second wave of French to the areas north of Sacramento with an influx of engineers and brains who used Folsom as a hub for computer chip process design.
Étienne Gérard emigrated to Folsom from France to work for Intel on Linux systems. In 2000, he teamed up with Béatrice Hildebrand to establish Alliance Française de Sacramento, the area’s link to French culture, history and language. Gérard has since become a board member. Hildebrand served as executive director until 2016.
Sacramento was a perfect place for the group, Gérard said.
“Sacramentans are very curious,” he noted. “The city has an appetite for French culture.”
French history, language and culture come to Sactown
Gérard and current Executive Director Frédérique Lamort run classes and events from the CLARA building at 24th and N streets.
In what looks like an old red brick and tile-roofed French schoolhouse, they are seated in the organization’s library where the French Tricolore and an American flag soar behind them. Gérard sports a crisp French blue linen shirt; Lamort exudes Parisian savoir faire with stylish sterling silver hair and Hermès scarf. The duo looks like they’ve stepped off a yacht in Cannes.
“September 2000 was our first session,” Lamort explained, noting that each Alliance Française operates as a franchise under an international foundation. The organization’s overarching goal — with its strong ties to the French Consulate and Ministry of Foreign Affairs — is to promote all things French.
Today, the local organization has over 300 members and 250 students from everywhere from Davis to Auburn to Midtown, Lamort said.
With strong Francophile interest northeast of the city, Lamort tasked Gérard with extending the organization’s events to the Folsom area, where the organization holds events like apéro aperitif socials and pétanque picnics where players enjoy snacks and converse in French while throwing chrome balls as close as possible to a target cochonnet.
The group had a recent pétanque picnic on a May Saturday at a sports complex near Mather Field, where Carol Nyman was spotted tossing a ball.
“Deux points,” she shouted. She’s a member and retired social worker who “loves all things French.”
Nyman started taking classes at Alliance Française a decade ago and loves the fun of learning another culture, she said. The organization steeps its students and members in culture, which was in plain view at today’s picnic.
In between nibbles of home-baked madeleine cookies and sips of a blood-red Bourgogne, six players gathered round tossing a shiny chrome ball on the sand court. The purpose of the sport isn’t just winning, the players explain; it’s about the convivialité it fosters between them.
“It’s an eye opener to learn about different cultures, geography and history,” said Manuel Camacho, who is in the Thursday Alliance Française night language class working toward intermediate level. Camacho, a polyglot, also speaks Italian and Spanish, while English is his second language.
Student Joe Flynn, originally from Connecticut and an athletics fundraiser, takes French lessons every Thursday night. His wife is Swiss and his father-in-law speaks French, so Joe is doing his part to bond more closely with his in-laws. Alliance Française was a natural fit.
“I got started when I went to Paris the first time,” Flynn said, holding his “Prêt à Parler” textbook after his two-hour, 10-week language class.
“I just love the Parisian lifestyle, sitting there on the sidewalk, chairs facing the street, everyone’s smoking cigarettes.”
He says people in France have avoided the American path of work-hustle and are more interested in enjoying life. His class recently had an evening classroom potluck spread that included fresh baked baguettes, wine, cheese, pâté, duck legs and dessert. As would be done in France, there were no paper plates; instead, the classroom table was appointed with silverware, candles and china.
Alliance Française collaborates with local universities, including Sacramento State’s French program, for cultural and educational exchange and often connects students to the Alliance for cultural immersion.
A year-long membership currently ranges from $35 for seniors to $85 for families and includes all activities. Tuition for language courses currently costs $330 for a 10-week intensive course. Classes are limited to 12 students but are typically smaller.
A taste for French cinema
“When my son Clément was in kindergarten, he wrote a poem about me,” Cécile Downs, founding director of the Sacramento French Film Festival, said.
“‘Everything is so big. Everything is so small,’ he wrote about me,” she said. Downs had just stepped into the Tower Café that sunny May afternoon, looking like she wandered in from a field in Provence, her signature French peasant scarf draped over blonde and grey curls. She is indeed petite.
Make no mistake about Downs’ stature, though: She’s a cultural dynamo. The Sacramento French Film festival is now celebrating its 25th season, making it the second-largest French film festival on the West Coast, trailing only Los Angeles. This year, the three-day event kicks off June 26–28 at the historic Tower Theatre. (Follow the website for ticket updates.)
Downs said that reaching this milestone was no easy feat. In the beginning, the idea ran into strong headwinds. She says she owes the success to the team of volunteers who pitch in to do everything from fundraising to ticket sales and ushering.
“We didn’t have the support of the city or the consulate,” she recalled. “We had to just start it on our own.”
Despite the lack of backing, Downs pushed forward and discovered a genuine local appetite for French cinema. She attributes the festival’s ultimate longevity to Sacramento’s “eagerness for something different.”
“Sacramento was a natural place for a French film festival,” Downs said. “We found that people here will take anything you offer culturally.”
Sacramento shares France’s farm-to-fork tradition
The appetite for French culture doesn’t end with classrooms and movies. Restaurants in the area are feeding that appetite with delicious French food. Sacramento’s farm-to-fork movement overlaps France’s regional “du terroir” approach to eating.
“Du terroir means ‘from the earth of that place,’” Gérard explained. It’s the difference between a Lodi old vine zinfandel’s fruit-and-leather and the flintiness of a Napa sauvignon blanc. “Each climate and soil gives a soul and spirit to the food it produces,” Gérard said.
Gérard, Lamort and Downs gave a few suggestions for a list of French-inspired restaurants to check out in the area. It took more than just croissants and pain au chocolat to make this cut!
Midtown classic French Brasserie Du Monde could as easily be perched along the Champs Élysée with its classic, white-orbed bistro lighting and simple hearty foods like bœuf bourguignon and melty croque-monsieur sandwiches layered with ham, gruyère and béchamel.
Similar brasserie style can be found at Plan B with its ribeye au poivre and moules mariniere plates. The restaurant serves daily special tartelettes, puff pastry stuffed with a rotating list of ingredients from fennel and leek to tomato or cheese.
Across the river, West Sac looks more like the Left Bank at Franquette, where locals lean over quartzite-topped bars, savor varietal French wines, enjoy mushroom galettes and pull apart buttery, still-warm walnut croissants served by a Paris-trained husband and wife team.
Half an hour north, Catherine’s Crêperie is a cozy mom-and-pop Parisian-style crêpe shop operated by French native Catherine Bonnefoy in the train depot in Historic Folsom. Alliance Française holds its Folsom apéro socials there.
O Café is a family-owned French bakery and bistro in Fair Oaks Village serving made-from-scratch French pastries, buckwheat galettes, quiches and artisan espresso drinks in a cozy Parisian-themed atmosphere. Meanwhile, Estelle Bakery offers laminated pastries, macarons, choux, quiche and fruit tartines from locations in Davis, Downtown Sacramento and Arden-Arcade.
James Smith is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program. A retired nurse investigator for the state of California, James studies French and bikes along the American River Parkway in his free time. He lives in Midtown with his husband of 26 years.