Bob and Sylvie Tharinger own and operate Pumpkins (33 rue d’Alembert), Grenoble’s only authentically American restaurant. Christina Rebuffet-Broadus of Grenoble Life talks with them about showing the French that American cooking is much more than McDo has led them to believe.

Grenoble Life: Could you tell us a little about yourselves? It seems every Franco-Anglo-American couple has a story. What’s yours?

Bob: I had traveled around the world, had already been to Grenoble once, and came back here to work. This is where I met Sylvie, then we lived a while in the United States, where our son was born. But finally, we settled down in Grenoble in 1978. We came back because Sylvie wanted to return to Grenoble.

Sylvie: I’m not originally from here, but have family in Grenoble. For me, it was more that I didn’t want to live in southern France than I wanted to come back to Grenoble. I would have liked to live in one of the Scandinavian countries, with their Nordic landscapes. Grenoble was sort of a compromise for us.

GL: How long has Pumpkins existed?

Bob: We opened in September 2004. We bought the place in June of the same year, but of course had to do some work beforehand. It’s been almost five years, unbelievable!

GL: We all know the French people’s reticence towards American food. How did you get the idea to open an American restaurant?

Bob: We’ve always done a lot of cooking, often for our friends, often a lot of American dishes. We both like to cook and eat, and realized that people didn’t really know the variety of things you can eat in the United States. Unfortunately, the French tend to have a very fast-food idea of American cuisine. They would never believe the food you can get in the United States.

Where I’m from in Minnesota, we noticed restaurants do a lot of different things, there are all kinds of influences. So we figured we could probably do anything we wanted and call it American cooking, but we didn’t really want to call it “American” for fear that people would run in the other direction. So we just called it Pumpkins.

Sylvie: We got tired of people saying “American cooking … beurk!” We wanted to show people that real American cooking exists. Plus we didn’t want to put “American” in the name because it could sound a bit snobbish or exclusive, like not everyone was welcome. But we also didn’t want to use “American” because of a certain image that the French had of Americans, especially at the time of the opening because of the political situation. We just wanted everyone to feel comfortable, not like Pumpkins was just a place for Anglophones.

GL: How did you come up with the name “Pumpkins”?

Bob: Sylvie just had the idea the one day! And I thought it was great because it’s very visual and something people remember easily.

Sylvie: I thought it sounded convivial. It made me think of the pumpkin patches in the American east coast at the end of summer when we used to visit. Plus Pumpkins sounded good and was easy to pronounce for us French.

GL: Now, for the good stuff. Tell us a little about your menu. What kinds of American food can your guests find at Pumpkins?

Bob: We really try to offer a sampling of the United States’ regional cooking. We have family all over the northern U.S., plus both of us like southern food — barbecue, seafood, and especially African-American cuisine, which in itself is extremely varied. There’s also a Jewish delicatessen influence, something relatively unknown in France. And if you go to the northwest region of the United States, there’s a great mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Native American cuisines based on the abundance of good, local products. More or less, we try to do a little of all this.

One of the hardest things is to do meat like in the United States. Lucky for us, we found a French butcher who lived and worked in San Francisco, but now he’s right on rue Nicolas Chorier. It’s great because he knows American cuts of meat. He knows what an American pork chop is and can cut a sirloin steak if we want. He even helps us to do real corned beef, which is practically impossible to find around here.

Sylvie: Every two weeks, we change one dish on the dinner menu. There are some things that we always have. We’ll always have the burger. At lunch, we always have chili on the menu, but we change the presentation — one week the chili will be in a tortilla, another it’ll be with guacamole. Once we had a couple come in and they both ordered the same dish, so I gave each one different sides. That way they could taste everything!

GL: Pumpkins also does brunches. When are they held and where did that idea come from?

Bob: We’ve been doing the brunches for two or three years now. Our brunches are typically midwest-American. We wanted to host a brunch much like the Sunday brunch that I knew when I was a kid — eggs, bacon, sausage, plus some extras. We would like to do a real family-style brunch, with a self-serve buffet, but here we don’t really have enough room.

With all the families that come in, it would be hard for people to serve themselves with the strollers and the children and I don’t want to lose that family atmosphere by doing a buffet. It’s fantastic to see the people at the brunches — they’re relaxed, happy, even if they have to wait sometimes for their food,  they don’t care. They come in and have a good time.

It’s so successful that we have to turn down almost as many people as we accept for the brunches. We do just one service per brunch, that way the people can come and stay as long as they like. We want them to feel at home.

Sylvie: From a culinary point of view, I think we do the only real brunch in Grenoble. Our brunch is “made in Minnesota” — it’s not French, it’s not Spanish, it’s not Dutch. When we were younger, all the kids in Bob’s extended family knew they could go to his dad’s house on Sunday morning and be greeted with the smell of bacon grilling, eggs scrambling and the whole family got together. That’s the brunch we try to recreate, that family-get-together atmosphere.

Bob: In the 1960s and 1970s, my father would host these fantastic brunches and people would just stop by. Family members, friends passing through the area, and the ambiance was simply extraordinary. That’s part of the reason why we created this restaurant and really wanted to host the brunch.

GL: That’s a heartwarming story, wanting to recreate the family ambiance that you knew growing up at your dad’s. Speaking of family get togethers, does Pumpkins do anything special for American holidays?

Bob: We would like to do something for the 4^th of July, but since we’re in the city, it’s unfortunately impossible to do a backyard barbecue. Thanksgiving, however, is enormous. Last year, we had 60 kilos of turkey and I think in all we served around 150 Thanksgiving dinners, but I’m not sure. It got to the point where we stopped counting.

We also did a Christmas brunch, again with a lot of midwestern, German-American influences. We had German-American style pastries among other things because in the past, many German and Scandinavian immigrants settled in that region.

The idea behind all our dishes is family cooking. For all our meals we create a plate like if you were eating in an American family situation—all the food’s on the table and you help yourself to everything. Except we put the plate together in the kitchen, recreating that American plate, with the meat, sides, sauces and relishes all in the same plate.

GL: To finish, I’m going to ask you the impossible. How would you describe American cooking in a few words?

Bob: (with Sylvie, laughs) I remember our first cook, who was a very competent cook mind you, told us, “OK, I get it: just add sugar and hot sauce and it’s American cooking.”

There’s not just one American cuisine, there are lots of American cuisines, just like in France — the food varies enormously between the regions.  The cuisine of the southwest has touches of Mexican influence and is completely different from the cooking of the northeast where you’ll find chowders and baked beans. That cuisine has nothing to do with the cooking of New Orleans, which also has a totally different taste from the growing Cuban-American cuisine. There are lots, lots of different American cuisines.

But we’ll always have a hamburger on the menu for the French who don’t want to be disappointed and the Americans who want a real home-style burger.

Although the menu changes often, at the time of this interview, Pumpkins was serving Cajun catfish, a blue cheese burger, tortilla wrapped chili, and Los Angeles Fire Department-style chicken wings. Dinner dishes cost around 10-15 euros, desserts such as cheesecake, pecan pie, and sundaes cost 5-6 euros.

Pumpkins (33, Rue D’alembert, 38000 Grenoble) is open for lunch on Thursday and Friday; for dinner Wednesday through Saturday. Brunches are every other Sunday. Call ahead to reserve: 04 76 29 48 21

You can also sign up for the Pumpkins newsletter with the season’s brunch dates emailed in advance. Email pumpkins.restaurant@wanadoo.fr

Related Posts:

• Anglophone Grenoble, a rough guide
• How to get a time management masterclass in Grenoble
• Relocation relocation relocation – an interview with LC Mobility
• Snapshot of an Isère village
• SFM – translating and copywriting for corporate communications