Ville Sainte: A French dining experience in the Lowcountry
What’s French for Holy City?
It’s ville sainte, and the owner of the Ville Sainte Bistro in Mount Pleasant is translating her native French food and Parisian style for the palates in Charleston, serving shrimp Provençal to those used to shrimp and grits.
Owner Carole Robert, who owns Ville Sainte in collaboration with her husband, Mark Manly, and business partner Philippe Bernier, was serving farm-to-table food before it became cool because of her early roots on a family farm, and she has a passion for supporting Charleston’s local purveyors. But the path from family farm to supporting farmers with her own restaurant was not a straight one.
Born in Paris, Robert’s paternal grandparents retired to the verdant Loire Valley and started a farm on their land. Other family followed and Robert’s family built a sort of family compound that still stands.
“I left Paris every Friday after school and went to our vacation house to work the farm with my grandparents. I did this every weekend and every vacation,” Robert says. “Of course, I hated it because I wanted to stay in Paris and hang out with my friends. I mean, can you imagine being a pre-teen or teenager leaving freaking Paris to be full of mud and poop from the animals, and dirt? But I learned to cook with my grandparents. I made everything from scratch and I knew how to preserve and how to butcher a chicken.”
Robert’s life was upended at 17 when her mother died in a car accident.
“It was heartbreaking, I was just having difficulties to go on and you know, the French families are very attached to mom. My dad and my brother didn’t do anything. I was trying to do studies, trying to feed my brother and father,” she says.
Sad and overwhelmed with assuming the role of cook and housekeeper to her family while trying to keep up her studies, she transferred to George Mason University in suburban Washington D.C., got her business degree, and married her first husband at 21.
“Washington D.C. was very charming, very European,” Robert says. “I decided to stay and I became an entrepreneur.” Robert owned a cell phone company, an accessory shop for women and a dog grooming shop. After 15 years, she divorced her husband and opened a mortgage bank. Her life changed again when Wall Street crashed in 2007.
“My bank had to close. I said, ‘That’s it, I am done with the corporate world, I am going to do what I’ve always want to do because cooking is my passion.’ The business world was too cruel for me. I wanted to make people happy with food,” Robert says.
She opened Annie’s Bistro, named after her late mother, in Middleburg, Virginia, in 2007 and moved it to Bethesda, Maryland, three years later, until she decided in 2013 to bring the restaurant to Charleston, away from the gray winters of the nation’s capital.
Annie’s Bistro, in Mount Pleasant Town Centre, served French food to rave reviews until she lost her lease.
In July 2020, at the height of covid, Robert opened the newly named Ville Sainte Bistro. Because the restaurant seats 110 inside and another 110 outside, she was able to keep open during covid, following cleaning protocols and spacing out diners.
Robert may have had a fast-paced life, but her food is pure, slow French comfort. Steak frites, seared duck breast, mini-ravioli filled with soft French cheese. Meals take a bit longer because they are made to order. She shops daily at 7 a.m., prepares food all afternoon, and opens her doors at 5 p.m.
“My menu changes daily because it’s fresh. I use local farmers—shrimp from the shrimpers, fish from the fishermen, lettuce and tomatoes from the farm—and my cheeses are imported from France, except what I can buy here,” Robert says. “Most of the recipes are my grandparents’, just literally simple, clean cooking.”
Her father was surprised at her food infatuation.
“He said, ‘I love your new career. I love what you’re doing. But please tell me, because I’ve never seen that passion. What happened?’ And I told my dad, actually I burst into tears on the phone, I said, ‘Dad, I owe it all to Grandpa and Grandma because I had it in me, but it was not ready to come out.’ My dad agreed that I fought it,” Robert says.
Now, that love affair with food is demonstrated by how she runs Ville Sainte Bistro, which does not do takeout.
“A duck breast has to be medium rare and seared and then rested,” Robert says. “If you put that in a box and ship it out to somebody’s house, it keeps cooking and becomes rubber.”
Robert says she was never affected by the sticker shock egg buyers have experienced, because she’s been paying a premium for farm-fresh eggs all along, and says supporting local farmers and the local economy is a passion she hopes to expand on as an advocate for buying local food.
“Don’t ask me to serve you something with strawberries in winter. What? It tastes like freaking water. There’s no taste to it,” Robert says. “I have integrity with food. I don’t have to do this. I do this because I want to. But I’m not going to do it halfway. I’m now 57 years old. I have nothing to lose. And I don’t owe anything to anybody.”
As executive chef, she can usually be found in the kitchen alongside Chef Jared Rhine. Along the way, Robert remarried, and Manly, her husband of 20 years, runs the front of the house.
Another translation Robert is bringing to Charleston is the French style of lingering at the table.
“When you reserve your table, it’s for the night. We do not flip tables,” Robert says. “Most clients spend an average of three hours. We are a dining experience; we are not here to just feed you. When you come to us, you are dining, enjoying your company. Take your time, put your phone away, have a human conversation! Isn’t that what dining is all about?”
