The Bread

While first and foremost a pastry chef, curiosity has led Benoît Castel to explore the pleasure and craft of making quality breads. One bread in particular caught my attention because it adds pinch of North America in Castel’s otherwise patently French pastry shops/bakeries in the 11th and 20th arrondissement.

“I have a supplier who goes around the world looking for interesting spices and then holds a tasting of them twice each year,” says Castel. “The scheduling of one tasting coincided with my reflections on creating a new bread for the shop. One of the products I tasted was alder wood smoked Salish salt from Washington State. As soon as I tasted it I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to use that,’ and I started to imagine a recipe around it. I liked the smoked woody taste that was both subtle and distinct enough that its flavor would come through while keeping the salt level down. And I decided to balance it out with the addition of the earthy-floral touch of honey.”

Save the salt allotment for the butter, that’s what I say.

Along with the honey and Salish salt bread he calls Pain du Coin, his daily bread line-up also includes a traditional baguette, a traditional rounded loaf, and a walnut, hazelnut and raisin bread called Le Granola. On weekends, two other hard-crust slow-fermented breads based on organic specialty flours join the shelves: Le Pain du Traquet Pâtre (flour from Morbihan, southern Brittany) and Le Pain des Deux Livres (flour from Lot-et-Garonne, between Bordeaux and Toulouse).

The hard-crust breads, some the size of couch cushions, nearly require a chain saw to be sliced. That’s a compliment—the play between the hard crust and the spongy heart is part of the pleasure of such breads.

The Brunch

The typical traveler is unlikely to have a chain saw available to cut into a chunk of hard-crust bread during a Paris promenade. Not to worry, it’s already been sliced for those who come for brunch at Benoît Castel Ménilmontant, Castel’s pastry shop/bakery/breakfast/brunch shop-café in the 20th arrondissement.

The bread is only a small part of the pleasure of brunching here. Above all, this is a satisfying and friendly entry to a neighborhood that’s largely off-track for tourist. It’s an ideal place to begin weekend wandering in the increasingly gentrified neighborhoods of eastern Paris. From here you can explore the 20th and 11th arrondissements as you make your way back to center. (You needn’t actually wait for the weekend; Benoît Castel Ménilmontant is also open for breakfast, as wells for a light lunch Wednesday through Friday.)

The semi-industrial décor, the old bread oven in the back, the canteen-style plates, the mismatched tables and chairs, and the haphazard décor are as much a reflection of Castel’s enjoyment of sourcing furnishings from flea market and second-hand shops as it is a sign that the space is fully at home in entrepreneurial (some would say Brooklynesque) eastern Paris.

There’s an open pastry kitchen, where you might see Castel putting the finishing touches on a pie.

That, too, is a sign of the times. In an open kitchen there are no secrets and no pretentions other than to keep it fresh, keep it simple, keep it good. (The bread is made in the basement.)

During brunch, Castel works non-stop while always available for frequent interruptions from clients.

At 29€, Benoît Castel Ménilmontant’s brunch is on the upper end of brunch prices in eastern Paris. But it’s all-you-can-eat, linger-‘til-you’ve-had-your-fill, there’s-something-to-please-everyone, and compares favorably with typical 22€ single-plate offering.

Generally speaking, brunch is not a working class outing in Paris, so a 29€ brunch in an area that was, until a decade ago, largely considered a neighborhood of working class and immigration, is a sign of how much eastern Paris has changed and is changing. It remains a melting pot, though the new arrivals represent less diversity and more financial comfort than earlier arrivals.

It’s a self-serve brunch, other than the glass of fresh squeezed juices (choice of orange, apple and carrot during our brunch) that will be brought to the table.

Castel says that it’s not unusual for brunchers to stay for two hours. We did. We took a seat at 11:30AM, tried all of the breads, croissants, homemade jams and butter for breakfast, sat for a few minutes with coffee, then eased into lunch. Whether because we take our job as travel journalists seriously or because we were feeling particularly voracious, we tasted everything: the egg dish, the hams, and the salads, then the ribs, the chicken and the other salads, all country-style and freshly prepared. There’s something for everyone. We picked from each other’s plates the ones we cared for that the other didn’t.

Brunch doesn’t include the single-serving tarts and dinner-party-size pies available in the pastry shop. Yet the family-style desserts at brunch—French toast pie, panna cotta, chocolate mousse, and watermelon with a strawberry coulis—are evidence already of Castel’s easy-going sense of the sweet life.

We lingered, and only the promise of a sunny afternoon stroll pulled us from our seats.

The Pastries

Pastries are the heart of Benoît Castel’s craft and trade. It’s a craft he began training in as a teen in Brittany and has pursued in Paris since the age of 17.

Individual pastries can be purchased as an add-on to brunch, but you’re unlikely to find room in your appetite. Better to return another time. Or zig-zag slowly through eastern Paris as you make your way downhill toward Castel’s small shop on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. By the time you arrive you be ready for a tart of one kind or another.

Fans of glossy pastry pics for their Instagram feed may be a bit disappointed to find that Castel’s creations aren’t covered in cute and cheery. He eschews efforts to raise the profile of his pastries through purely decorative means or coloring. His palette is pastel rather than acrylic. Quality classics reign, such as the simple and simply delicious tarte à la crème, along with the tartelette aux fraises, the tartelette aux framboise, the tarte citron, the millefeuille (napoleon) and the moelleux chocolat. The display counter may also include the occasional foreign (but increasingly common) intruder such as a light round of cheesecake.

Castel’s pastry signature is a tiny tart-topping square of shortbread (sablé), placed on top like a cocked cap, inviting us to enjoy, to share, and not take any of this too seriously.

Several crumbs of baking history

The Ménilmontant shop bears some Paris bread-baking history. It was here that, in 1960, Bernard Ganachaud, a son of bakers, opened his first Paris shop, Boulangerie Ganachaud. In 1968 Ganachaud turned to baking his bread in a wood-burning oven, the old-fashion way. The old oven is still visible here.

In 1981, Ganachaud created the recipe for flûte Gana, a traditional poolish pre-fermented stick of bread with a crackly crust and a tender airy crumb. The Gana is a fairly well-known branded bread in Paris, though its fame pales in comparison with that of Poilâne bread, a country-style sourdough bread baked in a wood-burning oven, whose international reputation developed under Lionel Poilâne. Nevertheless, more than 200 bakeries are licensed to produce the flûte Gana in France. The Ganachaud family sold the shop now owned by Benoît Castel long ago as they expanded their little empire in other quarters. Those on the bread tour of eastern Paris might stop at the Ganachaud boutique at 226 Rue des Pyrénées (20th arr.), a 7-minute walk from here.

Benoît Castel Ménilmontant
150 rue de Ménilmontant
75020 Paris
01 46 36 13 82
Open Wed.-Fri., 7:30AM-8PM. Breakfast and light lunch served those days. Open Sat. 8AM-8PM and Sun. 8AM-6PM. Brunch is served Saturdays and Sunday 10:30AM to 3:00PM. The space seats 50. Reservations are not taken, so arrive for brunch by 11:30AM or after 1:30PM to avoid a line. By the time the day’s crumbs have been cleared, 100 to 120 people have brunched here.

Benoît Castel Jean-Pierre Timbaud
72 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
75011 Paris
01 48 06 70 59
Open Mon.-Sat. 8AM-8:30PM, Sun. 8AM-6PM.

Castel also operates the joyfully named Josephine Bakery at 42 rue Jacob in the 6th arrondissement. The little shop isn’t big on bread but is well situated for tourists looking for a snack in the area. Open Mon.-Fri. 7:30AM-7:30PM.

Map showing the location of the Ménilmontant and Jean-Pierre Timbaud shops.

If visiting the neigbhorhoods in eastern Paris, you might find yourself on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, as an American couple who brunched at Benoît Castel Ménilmontant did in Paris Street Talk: Chadors, Cannibals, Communists and the Wall of 3 Crowns.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Benoît Castel: Bread, Brunch, Pastries in Eastern Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Preface

For over 150 years, from the mid-19th century to the early 2000s, eastern Paris was been home to a dense, working-class population, both native and immigrant, including Italians, Jews from eastern Europe, Portuguese, Muslims and Jews from North Africa, Southeast Asians and Chinese, and others. But as real estate pressures in Paris have pushed prices upward, recent arrivals to the area are more likely to be professionals and entrepreneurs with easy access to 20-30-year bank loans.

Part 1: Chadors, Communists, Cannibals

On a bright and quiet Sunday afternoon, two visitors in Paris, strolling down rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in the 11th arrondissement after languishing over brunch at Benoît Castel further up the hill, were surprised to come upon several shops selling head scarves, formless robes and Muslim prayer rugs.

Hajibs, she said. Shaylas, khimars, chadors, abayas.
Are those vocabulary words we were taught at the Alliance Française? he said. They’d met the previous fall in a conversational French class at the Alliance back home.
No, I learned them from my friend Shandra in yoga class.
How about burkas? he said.
I don’t see any burkas. You can’t wear them in the street in France, so maybe they’re sold in the back.

There were pictures of the Koran and of Mecca in one window. There was an Arab-language bookstore across the street.

Is this the hipster area you wanted to show me? he asked.
It’s the right street, Jean-Pierre Timbaud, but I didn’t expect to find Islamic shops, she said.
Or is it Islamist? he said.
Depends on who’s wearing them or is making their women wear them. Some just call them modest.
Yeh, he said, Isis.

She was blonde, athletic, in her late-40s, and wore a purple-and-yellow-striped knee-length summer dress. He was a few years older, in decent shape for a CFO, wearing knee-length shorts and a polo shirt.

He removed the cap from his Nikon and took a picture of the headless mannequins.

Among the articles that she’d printed out to bring on this 6-day trip to Paris she’d brought along two to guide them today. One was an article about Benoît Castel, the pastry chef in whose shop they’d just enjoyed an excellent brunch, from France Revisited. The other was an article about hipster hangouts and trendy boutiques on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud from The New York Times. She took out the Times article and looked at it again.

Strange, she told him, this doesn’t mention anything about Arab shops in the neighborhood.

He was now taking a picture of the Cannibale Café whose terrace splayed across a street corner at the base of a handsome beige brick building. It was one of those nonchalant café terraces that makes you want to live in Paris.

These people don’t looked like they shop for chadors, he said of the men and women scattered among the outdoor seating.

Cannibals, she said with a laugh. That’s more like it.

Walking on, they look down an opposite side street.
Bar Al Muslim, he read. I didn’t think Muslims were supposed to drink alcohol.
Dar, she said. There must be a D behind the “For rent” sign. Dar. It means place or something like that.
How do you know that?
I’ve had a life, sweety.

They were both divorced, with grown children. He had learned French while in Brussels for work for three years. She had studied French in high school and college and had continued to learn the language when she and her ex-husband lived in Lyon for two years for his job. They began dating a few weeks after meeting in French class at the Alliance Française. This was their first trip to Paris together. They both felt that their French was quite passable and headed toward fluency. They tried to refrain from correcting each other’s mistakes and pretended not hear each other’s accents. He never let on that he thought his French better than hers; she never let on that she thought hers better than his.

Just ahead the street open to a long square formed by the juncture of two nearly parallel streets.

Here we are, she said.

There were lots of bikes parked on one side, and near them a pharmacy, a pizza place, and a café called L’Arbre Jaune, the Yellow Tree. Seated in the café were the same types people as at the Cannibale, the same that stood in line for brunch at Benoît Castel, the kinds they both thought of as Parisian.

Beyond the Yellow Tree café was a building called Maison des Métallurgistes, which was divided into two parts. While she looked in at the part indicated as a cultural center operated by the city, he walked on to the other part.

He was examining the window display of what looked like Soviet-era pictures when she came over to him.
Metal workers union, he said.
Steelworkers, she corrected.
Right, steelworkers. Communists.
Are you reading that or just saying that.
Remembering that, from French class.

That’s the name of the street we’re on, she said, pointing to a plaque dedicated to Jean-Pierre Timbaud.

Parisian steelworker, she read, union militant CGT.
CGT, that’s the name of the union here. Communists.
Killed by the Nazis.

By the bus stop, where a woman with a head scarf waited beside a woman in a bright red-and-white African robe, there was a statue.

They read the title of the statue but for a moment neither of them ventured a translation because stuck on the word “répit.”
Must be “rest” of the worker, she said.
Respite, he said, of the laborer, with seven weeks paid vacation.
It doesn’t say that, she said, hitting his arm. Silly.

I wonder where Communists go on vacation these days, he said.
They probably vacation in France and complain about the system while enjoying cheese and wine, just like us.
Do I complain about the system?
Well you should. But you won’t as long as the system is lifting your stock portfolio.
My adorable lefty, he said. But you’re right about one thing, he said as two women in gray hajibs walked by in one direction and two African men in knit skullcaps passed in the opposite direction, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
That’s for sure, she said. Not a meth addict or a white supremacist slogan in sight.

They stood by a multi-colored water fountain observing people crossing the square in one direction or another: men in beige robes and slippers half off their feet; a woman with a green and yellow robe with an infant swaddled on her back; a group of young men in jeans and t-shirts hanging out by the bikes; a man wearing a yarmulke; a biracial couple.

It’s a melting pot, she said.
Some things don’t melt, he said.
I don’t like when you sound like my Nazi brother-in-law.
Just saying, he said. I’m enjoying this as much as you are.
He motioned to the Yellow Tree, where sat men and women dressed the same way they did back home, just neater and in smaller sizes.
It looks like the people in the café were just teleported there, he said, because there’s no one dressed like that walking in the street.
More cannibals, she said, confusing herself with her own joke.

They’d examined the buildings on the one side of the square and now they visited the other. There was a public nursery school next to the Saint Paul Catholic School next to the Omar Ibn El Khattab Mosque.

He’d noticed a sign on the wall of the mosque and got up close to read it. It was a simple but official-looking printed piece of paper with a letterhead in Arabic and a notice in French.

Advice to the faithful, he read aloud.
Notice, she said coming alongside him. Notice to the faithful.
He continued: We inform you that counting from Friday 29 December 2017, following to the decision of Mister the Prefect of Paris, the occupation of the public space during the prayer of Friday is strictly prohibited.
She took over: This decision will be applied by the presence of forces of order.
Enforced by the police, he said. We invite the faithful to take their dispositions…
To make proper arrangements, and to come close to…
No, to go to another mosque such as the caserne fish shop door…
That must be the name of the mosque—in the 18th arrondisssement or the mosque of Porte Bagnolet.
Thanks for helping us to preserve our mosque.

I wonder if this is where they filmed that video, she said. Every time I post a picture of France on my Facebook page my cousin in Israel sends me the same video of Muslim men praying in the streets of Paris, with the title “America Next” question mark.
She must be friends with my cousin in Oklahoma, he said. When he heard that I was coming to Paris he sent me a video like that entitled “Death to the West.”
They looked around the quiet square. The only people passing by were two joggers in shorts.
It’s a slow death, she said.

Or maybe not, he said.
He pointed to the Amen travel agency at the end of the square, with a picture of Mecca on the wall.
From what I gather, she said, the young professionals are the ones moving in. But what bothers me is that while our cousins tell us that every Muslim is a potential terrorist, the New York Times Photoshops the Arabs out from a travel article about a neighborhood with a mosque and a dozen Muslim shops.
Maybe the Times thought it would scare off American tourists if they mentioned it, he said. Everyone’s got an agenda.
What’s yours?
He winked at her and took her hand.
They both laughed.
God, I love Paris, she said.

Text and photos © 2018, Gary Kraut

Continue to Part 2, The Wall of 3 Crowns.

The post Paris Street Talk: Chadors, Communists, Cannibals appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Part 2, The Wall of 3 Crowns

Two road diverged after the Yellow Tree café and they, standing by the Amen travel agency, they took the one less traveled by buses, thinking wrongly that it was the continuation of rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. No matter, it was just as fair, and they soon spotted a colorful wall down the block there.

Birds and words had been spray painted on the wall against a bright blue background. Along the wall was an open door.

If an open door is an invitation, she said, what’s an open door with a Doberman lying across the threshold, a guarded invitation?
A sign that the door is being repaired?

The dog’s coat was as black and shiny as a burka the beach. It gave them a lazy look and incuriously set down its chin.

That’s not a Doberman, he said. That’s a mutt hoping to find some pinscher or weimaraner in his 23andMe report.

They looked beyond the open door. Within was a cheerfully graffitied space between two buildings, with dozens of potted plants and a cabin of sorts in the back. It was altogether about twice the size of the Airbnb they were renting in the Marais. Two men sat at opposite ends of a long wooden table, one reading a newspaper, the other leaning over the table. They appeared to be waiting for Godot. For a moment neither looked over.

Bonjour, the man and the woman said from the threshold.

At one end of the table, a bearded fellow of about 30 looked up to them, muttered bonjour, then immediately turned back to what he was doing: drawing with a blue marker on the table. The other, probably in his 50s, got up, picked up a piece of paper from the table and brought it over to them.

You can come in, he said. Visit. Take pictures. Sit down. Whatever.

He sat back down at the opposite end of the table from the man who was coloring the table with a marker. He picked up the newspaper and began reading.

The man and the woman looked at each other and entered.

It disturbed him that the fellow had mentioned that they could take pictures, as though he saw them not as strollers idling by on a Sunday afternoon but as sightseers seeking photo-ops. Then he realized that his Nikon was hanging from his neck.

He read aloud, in French, a heading on the little brochure he’d been given: The 3 crowns collective, what is it?

The older man had apparently been waiting for the question. He turned to them and explained: This was an urban wasteland where people used to throw trash and was occasionally squatted by homeless people and tagged. Now it’s a project run by the Collectif 3 Couronnes, all volunteers, to lodge one or two homeless people at a time until suitable permanent housing can be found, while welcoming all comers to rest, gather and socialize and some to make graffiti. He’s one of the graffers, he said of the fellow with the blue marker at the other end of the table.

The graffer didn’t look up. Both the man and the woman thought he might socially stunted.

Which of these graffiti did you do? asked the man.
The graffer, pointing with his marker, said he’d done Coluche here

and Guardians of the Galaxy there.

How do you choose your subjects?
It’s for the fun of it, he said. You can’t take yourself too seriously. Keep it colorful.

The Guardians were obviously superheroes—he recognized Rocket Raccoon. But who was Coluche? He looked up Coluche on his phone as the men returned to what they’d been doing: drawing on the table and reading a newspaper. Coluche, he found, was a popular comedian and the founder, in 1985, shortly before his death in a motorcycle accident at the age of 41, of Les Restos du Coeur, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help and assist the poor and the destitute, particularly by providing free meals and participating in their social and economic insertion.

How long do they stay? she finally said. The homeless.

It depends on how long it takes to find more permanent lodging, said the older man, and if they’re willing to stay.

We couldn’t get some to stay here at first, said the graffer. They didn’t like the place.
There’s no electricity, said the other, and that’s a dry toilet over there behind the curtain.
But it’s shelter? said the man with the camera. And they need shelter.
You might think so, said the graffer. But if the goal is to get real lodging of the kind we all deserve—and that’s the goal—then this is unacceptable to some. And some didn’t like all that was going on in the neighborhood, you know, out in the street, up there.
It’s calmed down though, said the other.

She realized that the graffer, far from socially stunted, had been sizing them up before speaking.

Where else do you do graffiti? she asked.

That led to a conversation between the two of them about the evolution of graffiti-friendly neghborhoods in Berlin, Budapest, Tokyo, Boston and elsewhere. As they spoke, the man with the camera took pictures. Listening to the conversation he was as surprised by the graffer’s knowledge of the world as he was by her apparent knowledge of the places he spoke about. She’d never mentioned knowing anything about street art or that she’d ever been to Budapest.

The graffer spoke about art squats, squatters, travel and graffiti. She thought him too well traveled to have ever been homeless in a needy sense. He seemed to be more of a traveler, seeking out people, places, experiences—someone on a personal quest. She politely asked how he lived, meaning how he managed the economics of his life, and he mentioned his paid decorative work for clients.
What do you like about squats? she asked.
Studio space, he replied, and the people. We need to help people—help each other—on a local basis rather than look for mega solutions from politicians. Money doesn’t help in that case, it corrupts.

She, for her part, believed in mega solutions and in the importance of education, statistics and the fight against demagogues and fake news. Helping people individually, we should all do that. But only top down had significant results. Didn’t the French think that? Or had she misunderstood something.

Sometimes I think about leaving the city to live in a small town and help people there, he said.

There was a pause in the conversation. She got up and examined the potted plans while he continued to take pictures.

The older man had said little since she’d begun speaking with the graffer. It was as though they took turns entertaining the guests. The graffer then brought him back into the conversation by saying it was he, the older one, who cared for the plants.

We ask the person we’re housing to take care of the plants when I’m away, but if I come back after a two- or three-week absence they’re dead.

I hope you mean the plants, said the man with the camera, but the fellow didn’t seem to get the joke. Where do you go? he asked.
I leave, said the gardener.

I’d like to take a wide shot with the table in it, he announced. Do you mind if you’re in it?
I don’t want to be in any pictures, said the gardener, getting up from the chair.
How about you? he asked the graffer.
I don’t care, he said. I don’t believe in copyright.

They chatted with the men a bit more then nodded to each other that it was time to go. They shook hands and said good-bye. They stepped over the dog and out to the street.

Did I ever tell you how good your French is? he said to her.
Yeh, the first time you tried to get me into bed.
Well it is. I just want to say it again, sincerely this time.
He offered his hand and she took it.
I guess it’s true what they say about visiting Paris, she said.
What’s that?
That it even turns pigs into romantics.

Text and photos © 2018, Gary Kraut

Return to Part 1, Street Talk Paris: Chadors, Cannibals, Communists.

The post Paris Street Talk: The Wall of 3 Crowns appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The 20th-century scourge of dog doo on the sidewalks of Paris has given way to the nuisance of tossed cigarette butts. While smokers continue to deploy their arms on the terrace of cafés and restaurants, the fight against butts on the ground is now underfoot.

Toxic, harmful to the environment and expensive to clean up – though good press for meticulous crows – throwing a cigarette butt on the ground in Paris can lead (since 2016) to a fine of 68 euros. But it’s a highly unlikely penalty.

Now, however, where there’s smoke in the park, there could be a fine. Corinne LaBalme sent in the news having seen a no-smoking sign at the entrance to Square des Batignolles (17th), her local green space. Since July that’s one of six parks and gardens that have been declared non-smoking zones as part of a trial policy by the City of Paris. Warning signs have been posted in Square Anne Frank (3rd), Square Yilmaz Guney (10th), Square Trousseau (12th), Jardin Henri Cadiou (13th) and Parc Georges Brassens (15th) as well. If adopted citywide later this fall, she writes, that nicotine hit in the park will cost 38 euros. Smokeless park-strolling is already enforced in Strasbourg.

Sparkling water is in

While Corinne was enjoying the smoke-free greenery in her neighborhood, I visited a new garden in the 11th, the city’s most densely populated arrondissement and one of its least green.

Open since July and officially inaugurated this month, Jardin Truillot is a 1.4-acre swath of path and greenery between Boulevards Richard Lenoir and Voltaire.

While one exit of Jardin Truillot faces Saint Ambroise Church (1860s), the opposite exit faces the sidewalk where Ahmed Merabet, a policeman on duty near the offices of Charlie Hebdo, was killed during the Islamist terrorist attack of January 7, 2015.

Considered the capital’s 500th green space, Truillot continues Paris’s contemporary vision of the role of green spaces in the city in reminding Parisians of the importance of agriculture, biodiversity and wine,

providing space for children to play – or at least place their toys,

promoting the drinking of city water, including sparkling city water,

and offering damp grass to sit or lie on.

Truillot is an uninspired choice of a name by the City of Paris; he’s a fellow who once owned the land. Nevertheless, to judge by the crowds on a sunny weekend, neighborhood residents are clearly pleased to see it open to the public after years of talk and planning. But since you can’t please all the people all the time, some neighbors are unhappy that Truillot remains open round the clock. So while garden-goers may take to nap on the grass during the day, several neighbors who overlook the garden claim that this strip of greenery is infringing upon their right to sleep (droit au sommeil) at night.

It may be little consolation on a sleepless night, but there must be quite a few smokers in Paris who would love have a balcony where they can step outside at 3am on a warm summer night and puff away with a view of a garden and a church, before flicking the butt out to the path below.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut, with assistance from Corinne LaBalme.

The post Green Paris: Smoking Is Out, Sparkling Water Is In appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

You’ve read the articles, the books and the blogs telling you that you can be one with the City of Light by wearing the right shoes, by tying a scarf comme ça, by learning to choose a fresh baguette or a perfect pastry, by lunching at this restaurant and dining at that, by taking a seat here and a promenade there, by speaking a chirpy bonjour and a dainty s’il vous plaît?

Do that, they say, and Paris will accept you, Paris will embrace you, Paris will love you as much as you love Paris.

Yet, when all is said (in French) and done (with flair), what if your long-dreamt, blue-skied, night-sparkling love for Paris is unrequited?

What if Paris does not, cannot, will never love you?

You arrive—or stay far too long—pleading, “Paris, love me.”

And Paris replies…

[Readers are invited to note below the response that Paris makes to that plea for love.]

© 2014 Gary Lee Kraut

The post You Love Paris But Does Paris Love You? appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

By Kate Robinson

“I’m a fan of beers that are facile à boire, that you can drink the whole evening,” Daniel Thiriez said with a wry smile as he introduced the latest creation of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez.  (Brasserie means brewery in French.) He’d been invited by the owners of Paris’s new craft beer bar La Fine Mousse to present his various brews, including his latest, La Petite Princesse, a pale gold, low-alcohol beer brewed in collaboration with the Austin-Texas-based Jester King brewery. The crowd at La Fine Mousse was in for a special treat that evening. “You’re probably the very first people in France to taste this on tap,” he said.

Until recently, opportunities like this to meet craft brewers or discover beers outside of the Heineken-AB-InBev-Kronenbourg industrial triumvirate on tap in Paris were few and far between. But the Great Beer Desert finally has an oasis: La Fine Mousse, the first bar in Paris to seriously specialize in craft beer. Located on a discreet corner of the 11th arrondissement one block from the heart of the lively Oberkampf neighborhood, La Fine Mousse, roughly translated as “The Delicate Head [of Beer],” offers a revolving selection of 20 craft beers on tap and nearly 150 bottled references, as well as a program of brewery nights, brewing classes, and tastings—all proof that good beer is making its comeback in Paris and in good company.

From couch to counter

Romain Thieffry, Cyril Lalloum and Laurent Cicurel, the trio behind the counter at La Fine Mousse, which opened in September 2012, are also behind Les Soirées Maltées, a Paris-based organization that has been bringing craft beer fans and brewers together since 2010. Their diverse backgrounds did not include experience in the bar or restaurant industry, but they shared a love of good beer and the frustration of not having a place to enjoy it.

“With Les Soirées Maltées, we discovered that there were many difficult-to-find craft beers in France and no bar, even in Paris, that represented the diversity and quality of French breweries,” says Romain. So the three beer-lovers, together with Simon Thillou, owner of the beer shop La Cave à Bulles near the Pompidou Center, decided to create a place dedicated to good beer.

The craft beer revival in France is recent, but the country’s dormant affinity for a good brew goes back a long way. At the end of the 19th century, soon after Pasteur demystified fermentation and long before Americans started putting their own spin on European brewing traditions, France was home to 2,827 large breweries, and thousands of small local operations peppered the country’s northern regions.

At the time, beer and wine were happy tablemates: both were products of strong local industries with deep connections to the land. But the early years of the 20th century were not kind to traditional beer-making. Many village breweries were run by men who ended up fighting and dying in the world wars, which left fewer people to carry on the tradition of craft beer. In the absence of strong local breweries, the industrial giants found an easy foothold. By the mid-1970s, only 23 breweries were operating in France.

It would be the mid-nineties before the first French craft breweries appeared and another decade or more before the public started taking notice. Today there are nearly 500 breweries in France—that’s more than there are in Belgium. While many limit themselves to a small locally-distributed production, altogether they reflect beer’s enormous diversity. Before the recent revival of craft beer, however, as wine continued to evolve in quality and diversity, beer in France followed an inverse curve of standardization and homogenization. From there, it was easy for wine sympathizers to cast beer as a second rate drink. In fact, much of the advertising for wine focused on reinforcing the wine-is-good-beer-is-bad dichotomy.

As a result, many French people were left with the impression that French beer was unfit for anything but guzzling on the couch while watching a football (soccer) match—and definitely not worthy of “tasting.” However, the brew-bashing may actually have supported beer’s transformation from maligned second-choice into a sought-after beverage in its own right that remains accessible even as it grows in prestige.

“People are afraid of making mistakes with wine and this has made it inaccessible and intimidating,” says Romain. Because beer lost the battle for preeminent national beverage, it still has a friendly, guy-next-door kind of approachability that makes it easy to get into. “People don’t have any complexes when it comes to beer.”

Raising the bar

La Fine Mousse is a friendly little bar where the uninitiated rub elbows with seasoned professionals. Having themselves evolved from beer enthusiasts to connoisseurs to mini beer geeks, as Romain puts it, the owners are as attentive to the novice as they are to the most accomplished brewer. “We tried to break the stereotypes with this bar,” explains Romain. La Fine Mousse has nothing in common with a typical zinc-inflected brasserie (in addition to meaning brewery, brasserie also means a large café-restaurant that naturally serves beer), nor is it a wood-paneled beer den. It’s a stone-textured place with subdued modernity that reflects both the terroir of craft beer and the demands of an urban clientele.

From the row of glistening taps to the rustically modern concrete bar to the custom-designed cold room and draft system, everything in La Fine Mousse has been thoughtfully chosen to create an environment conducive to discovery that reflects the exceptional beers available. “We want people to discover different styles and different breweries, to wake up their sense of taste and change their perception of beer. There’s real work and craftsmanship behind it and there are now excellent products out there,” Romain explains.

La Fine Mousse also wants to overturn the stereotype that a craft beer is an expensive beer. “We set out to prove to people that they can drink an excellent, high-quality product at the same price as an industrial beer,” says Romain. Most craft beers here cost 3.50€ to 7€ for un demi (a 25 cl glass of beer), about the same price as a Heineken at many bars and cafés in Paris. Bottles run 6-10€ plus some exceptional higher-priced beers from select brewers throughout Europe.

A chacun son goût – To each his own

The clientele at La Fine Mousse is as diverse as the beer on tap. From the elderly couple looking for a beer they tasted in Flanders to the group of women starting an evening out to the beer geek regulars who know every brew on the menu, La Fine Mousse has something for everyone. And half the fun of an evening at the bar is figuring out what exactly that something is.

The statement “I’d like a beer” triggers a series of questions to identify what you’d really like: Dark or light? Fruity or floral? A touch acidic? (In French or in English if you prefer.) “Some people find it a little disconcerting at the beginning because most of us aren’t used to making a choice about beer, like we would naturally with wine,” explains Romain.

Nevertheless, he says, most people get hooked once they begin to get a sense of the variety of tastes that beer can have. “They see very quickly that this beer is more flavorful than what’s usually available. Once they get into the game they’ll come in and say, ‘I want something that’s not too bitter, with a hint of fruit, a little bit of spice’—and when we find the beer that fits their taste and aromatic profile, they’re enchanted.”

A beer near you

Romain sees the current interest in craft beer as part of a more general shift toward a “consume less, consume better” attitude, one that’s making people more receptive to a new way of thinking about beer. “We have so many good breweries [in France] that are making an incredible diversity of beer with a real savoir-faire,” says Romain. “Someone will try a beer and say, ‘Wow, this is excellent, where’s it from?’ When we tell them Paris or another region they know, the response is often ‘I had no idea.’”

That’s not too surprising considering that the craft beer revival in France is still quite young. “I was the only one in Esquelbecq when I started 16 years ago,” Daniel Thiriez explained to me during the evening dedicated to products of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez. Esquelbecq is less than 10 miles from the Belgian border in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The village once had five breweries and more than 50 estaminets (the name for traditional northern pubs), but no beer had been produced in the village for 50 years by the time he moved into the former Brasserie Poitevin in 1996.

But Daniel Thiriez is no longer alone. While statistics show the decline of the French beer industry in general, the smallest breweries are maintaining double digit growth. In the last 15 years, the craft beer movement has produced some excellent breweries, including at least six in and around Paris.

Part of the charm of craft beer is that it starts out local somewhere. Rather than go through big distributors, the team at La Fine Mousse goes directly to most of the brewers. That might involve traveling a few hours from Paris to a beer fair or brewery or making a quick trip to Bagnolet, 15 minutes from the city center.

“There are talented brewers all around us,” says Romain. His advice to anyone interested is to go out and meet them. “Find the brewers in your area. They will be thrilled to show you what they’re doing. That’s what local is all about. You’ll see real craftsmanship at work, you’ll smell the grains that go into it, and you’ll drink a beer with the person who made it.”

The cream of the crop

Of France’s nearly 500 breweries a growing fraction are exceptional. Romain and his colleagues hunt down these liquid gems and offer them a wider audience. They decided from the beginning that French beers would represent half the menu at La Fine Mousse. Most of the other half are European brews though some come from overseas. “When we made our list of what we wanted to see on tap and in bottles, we realized that half were already French. We didn’t have to force to find them and that was a really nice surprise,” says Romain.

With so many good beers in France and elsewhere, choosing what to keep isn’t easy. Deciding on a selection of eclectic and refined flavor profiles accessible to both the inexperienced drinker and confirmed beer amateur means making some sacrifices. Stout, I.P.A., cervoise, barley wine and lambic are among the styles that circulate regularly through the 20 taps. “We made it a priority to have a truly diverse selection of breweries and styles,” explains Romain. “We might have 15 different styles of beer on tap so we rotate them frequently to feature different styles, but also different breweries and different styles within the same brewery.”

The beer that binds

There’s a strong spirit of exchange and innovation associated with craft beer and it’s one that La Fine Mousse actively supports. The bar already plays host to beer tastings, guest brewery nights and even beer-making classes with My Beer Company, a microbrewery just beyond the edge of Paris in Levallois. The bar and its owners are bubbling over with curiosity and passion which comes across in the attention they lavish on clients and the beers they serve. “There are still so many breweries that demand to be known,” says Romain.

The many small breweries appearing all over the country are redefining beer as a local product of quality. La Fine Mousse and a handful of other bars and beer shops are finally giving people a place to discover them, proof that wine isn’t the only drink worth ‘tasting’ anymore.

La Fine Mousse, 6 avenue Jean Aicard, 11th arr. Tel. 09 80 45 94 64. Metro Saint Maur or Ménilmontant. Open daily 5pm-2am. Cold cut and/or cheese plates can be ordered after 7pm. See the bar’s site for special events.

Other notable craft beer bars in Paris

Brewberry, 18 rue du Pot de Fer, 5th arr. Tel. 01 43 36 53 92. Metro Place Monge or Censier-Daubenton. Open Mon. and Tues. 3-9pm, Wed.-Sat. 12:30-11pm, Sun. noon-9pm.

Le Super Coin, 3 rue Baudelique, 18th arr. Metro Jules Joffrin or Simplon. Open Tues. and Wed. 11am-midnight, Thurs.-Sat. 11am-2am, Sunday 4pm-midnight.

Beer shops in Paris with a wide selection of craft beers
La Cave à Bulles, 45 rue Quincampoix, 4th arr. Tel. 01 40 29 03 69. Metro Les Halles, Rambuteau or Chatelet. Open Tues.-Sat. 10am-2pm and 4pm-8pm; closed Wed. Owned by Simon Thillou, co-owner of La Fine Mousse.

Bieres Cultes, 14 rue des Halles, 1st arr. Tel. 09 81 98 93 32. Metro Chatelet. Open Mon. 5-8pm, Tues.-Fri. 1-8pm, Sat. noon-8pm. Also stores in the 17th and 18th arrondissements.

Chop’In, 45 rue de Gergovie, 14th arr. Tel. 01 45 42 93 71. Metro Plaisance or Pernety. Open Tues.-Fri. noon-8pm, Sat. 10am-8pm.

La Moustache Blanche, 16 rue des Tournelles, 4th arr. Tel. 01 75 57 15 06. Metro Bastille. Open Tues.-Thurs. 11am-8:30pm, Fri. noon-9:30pm, Sun. 2-8pm.

People’s Drug Store, 78 rue des Martyrs, 18th arr. Metro Pigalle or Abbesses. Open daily noon-midnight, until 2am Fri. and Sat.

© 2013, Kate Robinson  for publication in France Revisited

Kate Robinson is originally from the Pacific Northwest and has lived in Paris since 2004. A freelance writer and editor, she also organizes the reading series “Pause on the Landing” for the Paris literary journal Upstairs at Duroc.

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