3,500 Attend Traditional French Banquet in Colmar Amid Left-Wing Criticism of Conservative Investor

Three-and-a-half-thousand people gathered in a vast hangar-like space on the edge of Colmar last weekend for a banquet organized by Le Canon Français. Each paid €81 for four courses of local gastronomy and unlimited wine. The company was founded by Pierre-Alexandre de Boisse and Géraud de la Tour.

They began selling wine online during the Covid-19 pandemic to help a winegrower friend, then moved into events that raised money for heritage projects before launching the banquets. Pierre-Edouard Stérin bought a 30 percent stake in the company. De Boisse said he has never met Stérin and that the investor purchased the share because the business is profitable.

De Boisse described the events as a revival of an old French tradition. He said banquets républicains followed the French Revolution and that every village once held an annual banquet populaire. "Nowadays people waste so much of their time alone, in their homes, on social media.

They've lost the habit of being together and talking," de Boisse said. At the Colmar event, many men wore berets and braces. Servers brought platters of choucroute, Alsace cheeses and kougelhopf pudding while guests sang old standards by Michel Delpech and Joe Dassin.

"We come for four things: atmosphere, friends, alcohol and food," one young attendee said. Emma Fourreau, an LFI member of the European Parliament, said the company should not have accepted Stérin as an investor. She said Le Canon Français and Stérin share the same political ecosystem whose aim is to bring the far right to power.

Fourreau also said the banquets are backward-looking and do not represent modern France, which is rich in its diversity. Local authorities in Quimper stopped one banquet. In Caen, police opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of racial provocation at an April event.