Chartier was first opened in 1896 by Camille and Frédéric Chartier to provide affordable meals for those who couldn't manage regular restaurant prices. It was a roaring success, coinciding as it did with the arrival in Paris of tens of thousands of people escaping the poverty and hardship of life in the hills of the Massif Central: the bougnats, as they were called, in imitation of their accents and the fact that so many of them were involved in the charcoal industry – charbougna. It spawned some thirty similar establishments, but the original Chartier is the only one to have survived. Little changes at Chartier: same staff and same customers year after year.
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