Bastille Day: A French Affair to Remember

Bastille Day may be a distinctly French affair, but when fashion, food and mimes are involved in the celebration, it's an event that even non-Francophiles can get on board with.

, a Little Neck eatery that has been serving up French and North African cuisine for exactly 32 years, will be holding its annual Bastille Day celebration on Thursday evening. Lucette Sonigo and her husband Jean-Luc opened the restaurant on July 14 in 1979, and have been tirelessly slinging classic French favorites like quiche lorraine and duck à l'orange ever since.

That the restaurant has lasted as long as it has came as a surprise even to Sonigo herself.

"We didn't think a French restaurant would survive that long," she said, adding that weakened relations between America and France at one point put her business at risk.

"But, we did survive," she said.

Sonigo said the decision to open on Bastille Day was intentional, and that she and her husband did lots of planning to ensure that their new restaurant served its first dish on the same day that the French middle class stormed the famous fortress-prison nearly 200 years earlier.

"We wanted to remember it many ways," she said. Sonigo said

Patrons will remember the evening for the entertainment, which will include an accordion performance, a fashion show featuring a former longtime waitress, and a mime, whom Sonigo said was trained by Marcel Marceau himself.

The evening's menu is $32 prix-fixe and includes multiple courses, all of which are handwritten on a special "Bastille Day" menu (Sonigo designs each one, saying that it adds a more personal touch.)

Festivities begin at 6:30 p.m., and will likely wrap-up by around 9:30 p.m.