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.

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.

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You’ve looked up at the wedding cake basilica of Sacré Cœur. You’ve looked down at the grey rooftops of Paris. You’ve sidestepped a beggar. You’ve seen a guy standing motionless like a statue. You’ve seen the mosaic Jesus inside the church. You’ve dodged marauding portrait sketchers as you then walked to Place du Tertre. You’ve wondered how a piece of tourist art might look in your bathroom. Perhaps you’ve had coffee, ice cream, a beer or, god forbid, lunch on the square.

You’ve been there alright. But have you done that?

Certainly not. Butte (Hilltop) Montmartre, as it’s known to Parisians, concerns the entire surrounding hump of the hill, not just the crowd-pleasing hilltop chart-toppers.

In order to “do that” you might set off on a treasure hunt to find the following:
– the Love Wall,
– the Bateau-Lavoir, a maze of studios that was a hotbed of creativity in the early 1900s.
– the sculpture of the man who walked through walls, in honor of the writer Marcel Ayme,

– the vineyard,
– the cabaret Au Lapin Agile,
– the sculpture of the man who walked with his head in his hands, in honor of Saint Denis,
– the bust of the Dalida, an Egyptian-French singer who was a cross between Maria Callas, Judy Garland and Cher,

– two or three windmills,
– the monument to Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, an artist, anarchist and cat-lover,
– the statue of the Chevalier de la Barre, a knight who was tortured then beheaded for blasphemy and became a symbol of the intolerance of a religious majority,
– and the bust of Francisque Poulbot, an illustrator of posters and other images featuring Parisians and particularly street kids, as well as one of the founders of the Republic of Montmartre.

There, I’ve just outlined many of the sights and characters you’d meet on my 3-hour Montmartre tour, minus the café, the bar and a church or two. But rather than take you on that tour in this article I wish to lead you directly to the location of the bust of Poulbot, the last on that list. Your treasure hunt ends here.

While all of the others on my list can be seen from streets and squares, you have to enter the garden at the Musée de Montmartre (the Montmartre Museum) in order to meet Pouilbot.

The Montmartre Museum is just 300 yards from Sacré Coeur and Place du Tertre yet it feels well off the beaten track. As it should since this is a connoisseur’s museum with a quiet garden café.

The museum’s permanent collection occupies a 17th-century building within a small park, just behind a zone of former studio-residences. Those studio-residences once hosted Auguste Renoir (he painted Dance at the Moulin de la Galette at this address), Suzanne Valadon, Émile Bernard and other artists from the heydays of the Montmartre art scene.

The museum pays homage to the artists associated with Montmartre from 1870 to 1914 (i.e. much of the period covered by the Orsay Museum) and to life in the cafés and cabarets during that time.

In the permanent collection you’ll meet the likes of:
– Alfred Renaudin through his painting on 1899 prior to the construction of the steps leading up to Sacré Coeur,

– Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), an artist who was drawn to the bohemian and often debauched life of Montmartre,

– Yvette Guilbert (1865-1944), an actress and singer associated here with Montmartre’s café-concert scene of the 1890s. Hear her sing here.

– And can-can dancers, of course.

You’ll see posters. (The famous illustration for the café Le Chat Noir is by Steinlen, mentioned above.)

Including the Moulin Rouge, of course.

The gardens surrounding the museum offer a view of the vineyard of Montmartre from one corner,

a secluded picnic table in another,

and mostly an airy portion around a central basin, where visitors can get a drink or a snack from Café Renoir.

The current temporary exhibition at the museum, until August 26, concerns Van Dongen and the artists of the Bateau-Lavoir.

So where’s the bust of Pouilbot? I leave that to you to find on your treasure hunt.

Musée de Montmartre, 12 rue Cortot, 18th arr. The museum is open daily 10am-6pm, until 7pm April-Sept. Café Renoir, which serves snacks and drinks in the museum’s garden, is open daily noon-6pm May-Sept., Wed-Sun. noon-5pm Oct.-April. Entrance to the museum and the temporary exhibition is 12€.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Montmartre Treasure Hunt: Been There, Not Done That appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

A former New Yorker, I moved to Batignolles, a district due west of Montmartre, ten years ago. To a Manhattanite, Batignolles is the Lower East Side with fewer croissant options. It’s a formerly dowdy enclave where unpretentious tenement buildings have gentrified at the speed of light.

Batignolles had a rare asset: an abandoned trainyard once earmarked for an Olympic Village. Right now, like everyone in this tiny neighborhood, I’m trying to adjust to the 123-acre construction zone a few blocks away. (By the way, 123 acres is an area roughly equivalent to ½ of the second arrondissement.) Already, 24 of its acres have been allotted to parks and recreation, which everyone likes. And 3,385 new apartments are scheduled and who can argue with housing?

However, the 160-meter/525-foot-high skyscraper for the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) designed by Renzo Piano, soon to become France’s tallest (if not highest) law court, is a little less popular. For one thing, in town meetings, we are continually bludgeoned with the idea that a skyscraper will give “an identity” to our quarter. Frankly, we thought we had one, but we’ll have to check in with the people living under the shadow of the Montparnasse Tower on that.

There are, however, larger problems with the glass-sided TGI skyscraper that was signed into existence at the last gasp of the Sarkozy administration. From the start, the TGI has not been presented as “just another glass tower” but as a Very Symbolic Glass Tower embodying judicial glasnost. And that’s a bit frightening because the last expensive architectural project in Paris that got funded purely for its cute concept was the François Mitterrand National Library. The four-building complex, designed to look like airy glass book-ends, ended up flash-frying a good bit of French literature because no one asked any librarians or antique dealers how paper fared when served under glass.

The first, and very vociferous, group to protest the TGI was an organization of lawyers called La Justice dans la Cité who, very into symbolism themselves, posited that law is best dispensed in centuries-old courtrooms on Ile de la Cité. They also pointed out there were many cost-conscious alternatives to a new skyscraper, namely relocating existing archives and annexing adjacent empty space.

These were sensible suggestions because the TGI’s sticker price – 2.7 billion euros – is staggering in a recession economy. That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. There’s also a 27-year lease (90 million euros/ year) plus maintenance fees (12.8 million euros/year) to consider.

When the government changed, the new Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, professed her shock over the costs as well, but after some delays, former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault confirmed the contract. Perhaps he didn’t have much of a choice since it’s reported that the original contract promised developers big bucks whether or not the TGI was built.

The official video of the project showcases an extremely attractive (light-filled! symbolic!) building with modular aspects that are likely to prove useful in the future. After that, it places all its emphasis on the beatific panoramic views that lawyers and magistrates will enjoy from the offices and the glass elevator.

I daydream about whether French tax dollars might have been better spent on far-reaching social improvements with an eye to lowering crime instead of a site to prosecute it more glamorously. However, that train of thought doesn’t give us “a cathedral bathed in light” as Renzo Piano describes it, nor a place where people “need not fear” justice.

Paradoxically, this incarnation of the TGI leaves me feeling a little afraid for justice. Is a delicate, free-standing glass tower (albeit with gorgeous panoramic views) the best ‘form follows function’ solution for a government service conducting volatile investigations into terrorism, organized crime, and corruption? Perhaps ‘Bunker Baroque’ would have been a smarter style choice?

Or perhaps, just making do with (less transparent) existing stone.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme

Corinne LaBalme is a member of S.O.S. Paris, an association created for “the purpose of defending the architectural heritage of the city, preserving the urban environment for its population.”

For more on the Batignolles Quarter see the photo reportage If I Were a Traveler….

The post On the Rising Edge of Paris: The View from Batignolles appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Last November I was designing an issue of France Revisited by gathering together an assortment articles and stories about Jews, Jewish sights and Jewish history, particularly in Paris. I thought I’d call it the Hanukkah Issue. That was to be followed by a Christmas/New Year Issue before I would head off on my East Coast lecture tour in January and February.

But then the parties started—the cocktail events, the tapas evenings, the teatime happenings, the association dinners, the afternoon interludes, the “I’m only in town for a couple of days” pleas, the holiday celebrations—and before I knew it Christmas trees littered the sidewalks of Paris, New Year wishes came and went, and then I was on the road in the U.S..

There, I plotted my return, considering material that arrived from contributors and other texts that I might write. Should I transform the planned Hanukkah issue into an Semitic Food Issue, a WWII Issue, an If I Were A Rich Man Issue, an Evolution of the Marais Issue? – for I had articles on all those subjects and more.

But our first ideas are often the best, and a look at the articles I had on hand led me back to the Hanukkah Issue – except that the candles have long disappeared. So let’s get down to basics and call this issue by its rightful name: The Jewish Issue.

Here are the 9 articles, interviews and stories that comprise France Revisited’s March Jewish Issue

1. Love and Latkes. Canadian humorist Melinda Mayor, the Menschette of Montmartre, sent this piece about the trials of being a latke-lover in Paris. Melinda has previous contributed a piece about the trials of motherhood in Paris.

2. Passover and the 11th plague. New York writer and filmmaker Max Kutner tells of his first Passover in Paris and an encounter with the 11th plague.

Two articles about wealthy Jewish banking families that have left their mark on Paris:
3. The Rothschilds of the 19th century: A Riches to Riches Story.

4.  The Nissim de Camondo Museum: A Glory and the Tragedy

Views, one personal, one collective, of WWII deportations and the Holocaust
5. An exclusive interview with Paul Niedermann, a Holocaust survivor, currently living just outside of Paris. His extraordinary story is told though a text and interview by Janet Hulstrand. Janet, you may recall, previously introduced readers to American poet James Emanuel.

6. The Deportation Memorial and The Shoah Memorial. A look at two memorials that merit a place on the list of every traveler, whether Jewish or not.

7. In search of a Jewish Quarter: Rue des Rosiers, the Marais and the Jewish Food Court of Paris.

8. Noshing in Nice: Bread and the Bagel. The ever-perceptive Daniele Thomas Easton went looking bread in Nice and came home with bagels. Readers may recall Daniele’s review of the movie Sarah’s Key.

You might also want to return to an older editorial about anti-Semitism and the traveler.

Read them all, learn, discover, travel, comment, enjoy!

Gary

The post France Revisited’s Jewish Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Adidas, Kookai, Minelli, Annick Goutal, Fred Perry, The Kooples, Kusmi Tea. Does that sound like the making of “the Jewish Quarter” to you? It doesn’t to me either, but those are among the signs—along with “falafel, 5€50”—that one now finds on rue des Rosiers, the 1000-foot long street in the Marais that was once a main artery of Yiddishkeit in Paris.

Even well into the 1970s a visitor, few as they were, might have peered into storefront or observed local residents gathering in the street or returning from work and sensed a neighborhood, a community, whose lifestyle and traditions were visible, alive and collective, whether Ashkenazic, Sephardic or Parisian.

Now, however, the tradition most followed on rue des Rosiers is that of a shopping mall, with a Jewish-theme food court to one end and familiar international clothing brands to the other. It can be hard to see the history for the falafels.

Jews were known to have lived on the City Island in the 6th century and later on the Left Bank, and records indicate their presence in the Marais by the 13th century. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Still, it’s unlikely that there were any Jews in the Marais when, in 1791, during the Revolution, France became the first European country to grand Jews full rights of citizenship. By the early 1800s Jewish presence in the Marais was well established. Jewish arrivals in the quarter, and throughout Paris, took on greater amplitude in the second half of the 19th century, with large movement of Jews from Alsace and Lorraine, where more than half of the Jews of France had lived. Others arrived from Eastern Europe (Romania, Austria-Hungary, Russia), particularly between 1881 and 1914, in the same pogrom-fleeing waves that reached American shores, and Jews continued to arrive in the Paris region into the 1930s.

The Marais thus became home to a grouping of diverse Jewish communities that included Alsatian, Russian, Polish and other Ashkenazic traditions, along with Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic traditions, then in the minority here. In the initial decades of the 20th century one could therefore easily believe that the center of the Marais, comprising large swaths of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, was Paris’s “Jewish quarter,” though there were in fact mostly non-Jews living throughout this working-class area, much of it very run down.

During the German Occupation of 1940 to 1944 the French police certainly knew how to distinguish a Jewish address from a non-Jewish address; they had identity files, now visible at by the Shoah Memorial, indicating with a large J (for juif) which were Jews. The massive round-up of Jews throughout the Paris region in July 1942, followed by mass deportations to the death camps, removed the “Jewish” from any sense that this was “a Jewish quarter.”

After the war some of those who had managed to flee in time and some of the few who survived the camps returned to the Marais, where, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were joined by Sephardic Jews arriving from North Africa as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco gained independence from France. Though the Jewish presence in the Marais was dramatically reduced compared with the pre-war years (most Jews arriving from North Africa settled in other quarters or in the suburbs), rue des Rosiers and surroundings still visibly formed a Jewish neighborhood.

And now? Are travelers correct in thinking when coming to rue des Rosiers today that they are actually visiting “the Jewish quarter”? Is the presence of Semitic fast food and a few Judaica shops a reflection of a vibrant local community or of successful ethnic marketing or of a combination of the two?

Let’s take a look at what’s here.

Clearly there are Parisian Jews around—clearly, that is, if you walk by one of the active synagogues and religious schools just off rue des Rosiers or look into a kosher butcher shop or one of the less tourist-directed bakeries or visit on a Jewish holiday. A Jewish vocational school still operates at 4 bis rue des Rosiers. On Sundays cliques of Jewish adolescents from throughout Paris gather on the street, though they can be lost in crowd of other visitors, for every Sunday is a non-religious holiday in the Marais and the occasion for all comers to celebrate the pleasures of a stroll in the city.

Otherwise one is more likely to catch a glimpse not of neighborhood life today but of the neighborhood that is no longer here: The façade of the old  baths (closed in 1989); a plaque indicating that an attack was carried out against Jewish targets by a Palestinian terror cell on August 9, 1982 at the restaurant Jo Goldenberg , killing 6 and wounding 22 (the space is now occupied by a clothing shop); a sign in the middle of the street stating that this was the Pletzl or little square, the crossroads of the old urban Jewish village (in 1900), and signs here and on neighboring streets (rue des Ecouffes, rue des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais) telling of deportations to death camps.

Synagogues of the Marais

Attesting to the centuries-old presence of Jews in the Marais, specifically the former parish of Saint Gervais, rue Ferdinand-Duval came to be called rue des Juifs (Street of the Jews) in the late Middle Ages. It was briefly a closed street, though not a ghetto per se since Jews also lived elsewhere in the city. An unsuspecting visitor is unlikely to walk up that little street today thinking that it might ever have been “a Jewish street,” until arriving at its northern end, where it spills into rue des Rosiers. You’ll find more by going one parallel street over in either direction, to rue Pavée or to rue des Ecouffes, where the neighborhood’s Jewish religiosity is more readily visible.

For security reasons, you’ll have to settle for an outer view of the Art Nouveau synagogue at 10 rue Pavée and the religious school across the street. The Pavée Synagogue (the synagogues in Paris are generally referred to by the street on which they’re located) was built in 1913 for the Union of Communities (Agoudas Hakehilos), largely comprised of Orthodox Jews of Russian origin. This high, narrow synagogue was designed by Hector Guimard, the architect famous for designing the entrances to the first Paris metro stations. The Pavée Synagogue, the only religious building to his credit, is less exuberantly Art Nouveau than the metro work, but the rising curves are undeniably his. It was dynamited on the eve of Yom Kippur 1941 by French Nazi sympathizers at the same time as several other synagogues in Paris. Guimard wasn’t Jewish but was married to a Jew—an American at that. Already in 1938 Guimard and his wife had fled Paris at the specter of war and moved to New York City, where he died in 1942. The Pavee Synagogue was restored after the war and is now listed as a Historical Monument. The building also houses aid services for the Orthodox community.

With a kind word and perhaps a small donation, visitors may be able to enter one of the smaller synagogues just off rue des Rosiers on rue des Ecouffes.

The largest synagogue in the Marais is at the district’s eastern edge, on rue des Tournelles, between Place de la Bastille and Place des Vosges. The Tournelles Synagogue, also listed as a Historical Monument, isn’t open for impromptu visits. Those interested in visiting this beautiful structure, built 1867-1876 with Gustave Eiffel’s company involved in the creation of its metallic skeleton, can contact the synagogue in advance to request permission (Synagogue de la rue des Tournelles, 21 bis rue des Tournelles, 75004 Paris). The Tournelles Synagogue backs up to the Vosges Synagogue whose entrance is at 14 place des Vosges. During the Jewish harvest-time holiday of Sukkot passersby will see a hut or sukkah installed on the balcony above the arcade on the square. There’s another handsome synagogue, built in the 1850s, in the northern part of the Marais, at 5 Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth. Taken together, these synagogues attest to the diverse community of Jews had spread throughout the Marais by the end of the 19th century, a century that saw the number of Jews in Paris increase six- or seven-fold. Many more would arrive in the following decades

Neither Rue des Rosiers nor any other area of the Marais was a closed ghetto, though portions might be considered a ghetto in the sense of being extremely run down. Jews were clearly a sizable presence in the Marais by the end of the 19th century, their numbers continuing to climb, however Jews lived throughout Paris in varying density. Rue de la Roquette (past the Bastille just east of the Marais) and Belleville were also had noticeably dense Jewish populations. While some who had distinguished themselves on the social ladder remained in the Marais, others preferred to live in the city’s upscale quarters, such as near the boulevards and quarters being modernized by Haussmann’s transformations of Paris. (Read about the Rothchild family here and the de Camondo family here.)

Wealth in the Marais

Even when Jews returned to the Marais after the war the strong Jewish presence had existed on the southern side of rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine was, by the late 1940s, largely absent; the homes of French and foreign Jews and non-Jews had been expropriated for the purposes of rehabilitating an “insalubrious” zone. Little by little the Marais lost its craftsmen and its peddlers as it became home to the middle class and to government projects. Yiddish, so frequently heard and read in the Marais prior to the war, had largely disappeared by the end of the 1950s. Another accent arose, that of Sephardic Jews arriving in numbers from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Sephardic rituals replace Ashkenasic rituals in certain synagogues, notably the synagogue on rue des Tournelles that was split in two to accommodate the distinct ritual interests of the Marais. On rue des Rosiers and nearby streets the neighborhood’s Jewish presence remained clear in the cafés and restaurants, local grocers and shops, with some now preferring couscous and bricks over herring and latkes. But the Marais as a whole was on the way upscale. “The Marais” wasn’t yet a call to stroll and shop, to see and be seen, but by the 1980s public funding was pouring into the area to restore its noble historical buildings—the 17th-century mansions and the town houses on Place des Vosges—and poverty, the hallmark of pre-war Jews in the Marais, no longer had a place here; the working class had been pushed to the edge of the city and into the suburbs. The Picasso Museum opened in one of those mansions in 1985, a turning point in terms of the neighborhoods visibility to visitors to Paris. The decade witnessed an acceleration of a transformation of the district’s local population, in the use of its storefronts and in the way in which the Marais was viewed from outside the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Visitors from elsewhere in Paris and from abroad began to arrive. Gay bars and businesses opened just west of rue des Rosiers and within a few block of rue des Archives.

With rising real estate prices and an increasing number of visitors through the 1990s, shops began catering to clients from beyond the neighborhood. Rue des Rosiers, the remaining portion of the Marais to stake a claim to being the Pletzl—the ever shifting center of “the Jewish Quarter—, once again began to lose its local Jewish identity, though this time without anyone being murdered. Briefly Paris had the distinction of having side by side a Jewish village by day and a gay village by night. That held for about a decade, but as the Marais gained in desirability for increasingly upscale residents and visitors, any sense of neighborhood anywhere in the district largely evaporated.

Of course, Addidas, Kookai and Fred Perry shops on rue des Rosiers can be Jewish operated, as can the real estate on rue des Rosiers, but only foreign Jewish visitors and native anti-Semites consider this a Jewish quarter anymore. Similarly, only visiting LGBTQ individuals and French homophobes consider the area around rue des Archives a gay quarter. Otherwise, visitors are unlikely to have any idea who actually lives in these areas.

The 2000s saw the arrival of something new on rue des Rosiers and perpendicular streets, a new kind of Diaspora. This time it wasn’t a wave of Jewish immigrants arriving but of Jewish recipes, from New York—deli fare, pastrami sandwiches and the like. Oh, there had been pastrami sold here before, but the new deli restaurants marked the transformation of this small portion of the Marais into a Jewish-theme food court.

Though regrettable for those expecting to be visiting a Jewish enclave and a local community, this is simply part of the evolution of the city, just one of many formerly distinct neighborhoods that have been transformed by market forces in recent decades. The neighborhoods of Paris can still be distinguished by architecture, monuments, museums and history, but they are increasingly homogenous with regards to populations living and visiting there.

Wealth is the historical feature that the central Marais most recalls. After all, nobility and financiers began buying up lots here in the second half of the 16th century, and during the 17th century this became the most fashionable quarter of Paris thanks to the construction of Place des Vosges and of dozens of noble mansions. That was before there was a significant Jewish population here. It was the downfall of French nobility during the Revolution that gave Jews the freedom and elbow room to increase in numbers in the Marais. It was persecution elsewhere, hope for a better life and a need for community that caused the number of Jews in the Marais to swell in the late 19th century. It was also sense of security, hope and community (along with fun) that led to the opening of gay bars and businesses nearby in the late 20th century. The Marais was less desirable for business ventures then. Now, 400 years after the royal inauguration of Places des Vosges, the re-establishment of the Marais as a prized destination and residential area is a sign not such much that it has lost its Jewishness as that it has regained its lettres de noblesse—at least de bourgeoisie.

The Jewish Food Court

French and foreign visitors from beyond the quarter now frequent rue des Rosiers primarily for the shopping and the falafels—falafels, enjoyable as they may be, aren’t a reflection of local community or agriculture or known-how but of what visitors are happy to purchase. Hungry visitors will line up at the falafel window at L’As du Falafel as though the several other similar stands on the street had all failed their latest health test or lost the recipe for frying chickpea balls and slicing cabbage. The devotion to queuing there, particularly on Sunday, is partially due to the perverse lingering effect of an old article in the New York Times, partially due to the hawkers out front (once you’ve paid you’re stuck waiting), partially due to the fact that it’s kosher, whatever the latter may mean to the vast majority of those in line. As to quality, if you’re a serious student of fried chickpea balls and sliced cabbage in Paris then you should try them all. But if you simply want to eat a falafel pita sandwich any stand will suffice.

The street’s other hotspot is Chez Marianne, which takes its French republicanism seriously enough to present itself as French first, Jewish second. Chez Marianne, at the corner of rue des Rosiers and rue de l’Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, serves all kinds of delicious Mediterranean mush (eggplant, hummus, tzatziki, tarama, tapenade, etc.) as well as falafel, so there’s something for everyone. It isn’t kosher and so is open daily noon to 11pm. There are other choices in the area for a decent pastrami sandwich and well-oiled latkes, as well as some fine Ashkenazic bakeries. And there’s one remaining café that on weekdays still maintains a neighborhood feel, Les Rosiers, at #2 on the rue. Meanwhile, while fast foodies are now able to enjoy pastrami sandwiches and other New York imports in other quarters of Paris as well (e.g. meaty Freddies Deli in the 11th or vegan MOB in the 13th), while falafels are more common than crepes on some streets.

But I digress. The purpose of this article is not to recommend specific eateries in the Jewish food court or to speak of recent influences to the Paris fast food scene but rather to encourage those interested in Jewish history to look beyond the 20 years of Marais history represented by the Mediterrean-meets-NY-deli food offerings on rue des Rosiers. Enjoy them, enjoy that lingering scent and that occasional glimpse of the Pletzl and an old Jewish quarter—and why not enjoy them insightfully after working up an appetite at more instructive sights? The Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center would be fine places to start. You can begin by reading about them in this next article.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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