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First in Europe…French Restaurant Uses Solar Power

People sit at the terrace of Paris’ landmark Cafe de Flore. AFP
People sit at the terrace of Paris’ landmark Cafe de Flore. AFP
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First in Europe…French Restaurant Uses Solar Power

People sit at the terrace of Paris’ landmark Cafe de Flore. AFP
People sit at the terrace of Paris’ landmark Cafe de Flore. AFP

In the French city of Marseille, Le Présage restaurant is working without gas and with little electricity in the kitchen, which switched into solar power.

The first of its kind in Europe, this restaurant uses a parabolic 2 by 2 meters dish covered with mirrors made by German manufacture Scheffler to operate ovens. Although this type of mirrors emerged 50 years ago, Le Présage is the first solar-powered restaurant in Europe, said Richard Loyen, executive director of ENERPLAN, an association gathering solar power experts in France.

The dish, directed towards the sun, reflects sunlight to a whole behind the kitchen, then to a solar panel that could warm up to 300 degrees Celsius in 20 minutes. Pierre-André Aubert, founder of the restaurant, and his team use this panel and solar-powered ovens to prepare their plates.

Next to each one of the served plates on the menu is featured the energy quantity it consumes. According to Aubert, "for instance, every 100 grams of pasta require a large pot of boiling water, which consumes a huge amount of energy. So we can't cook pasta."

"The idea is not to go back to using candles," said Pierre-André Aubert, 39-year-old aviation engineer who is preparing a dissertation about "the design of an enhanced restaurant with a solar-powered kitchen."

Energy consumption represents around 10 percent of the restaurant's carbon footprint, said Loyen, a partner in Le Présage's new experience, noting that "the vegan plates and local resources contribute to reducing this footprint."

"Plates change from a season to another, but they are all prepared from local products cooked with sunlight," explained Aubert.

The restaurant is located few meters from the Technology Park of Marseille and two major engineering schools.

According to local authorities, this region is the country's second best research hub in the field of mechanical energy after Paris, with 170 companies, 4,000 employees, and 2,600 students who need a restaurant serving good food at noon.

Marie-Christine Henriot, assistant director of Paris-Saclay University's school of engineering, who visited Marseille's campus, said "the food is so good, fresh, and delicious."

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Varieties

In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.