One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  Eventually, rather more slowly than I would like, the truth dawns on him: ‘Ah, you were in Avenue Gallieni in Noisy-le-Sec,’ he explains happily. ‘That’s another town.’ I literally cannot believe my ears. There are two identically named roads five minutes away from each other, relying on a town limit invisible to the naked eye? I’d laugh if I wasn’t quite so furious.

  Instead, barging through the lift queue, I run up the stairs, push into the room, tear off my clothes and ring the restaurant. No answer. I leave an answerphone message apologising for my lateness through breathy sobs, wash my hair briefly with hand soap, throw on a very crumpled dress and, with sopping hair, pink cheeks and tragically unpainted toes, dash downstairs and pick up Eddy.

  It takes me 25 minutes to get to the restaurant, thanks to more roadworks and the efforts of some kind drunkards outside a bar to redirect me, and all the way I’m trying very, very hard not to cry on the basis that this will only make me look worse. I think the technique is called (barely) controlled breathing.

  The Auberge des Saint Pères, is in an unassuming suburban backstreet. Two Americans are outside phoning round other restaurants, having been turned away. Morale at an all-time low, I creep in looking like a terrier that’s been caught in a rain shower – and Madame behind the desk actually beams. ‘No problem!’ she says. ‘We got your message.’

  If they’ve been laughing at it ever since, she hides it well. She shows me to a table and asks me if I’d like an aperitif. Yes, I say, I’d very much like a glass of champagne, and a large bottle of Badoit toute de suite. The other diners, mostly couples, and a few glum groups that look like they’re out for a business dinner, watch me curiously, but, hiding my ragged toes beneath the starched tablecloth as I alternate between my two glasses of fizz, I literally could not be happier.

  PAUSE-CAFÉ – The Restorative Restaurant

  The first mention of a ‘restaurant’ occurs in 1767 – the name suggests a place which serves reviving foodstuffs such as broths and tonics to restore one’s health, though records show these establishments quickly branched out into solid foods like roast meat and desserts, much to the anger of the professional traiteurs, or cooks, who had been granted a virtual monopoly on high-class catering by King Henri IV the century before.

  The Revolution not only marked the end of such powerful trade corporations, but left an awful lot of aristocratic cooks looking for work, and many found it by opening their own restaurants: by the turn of the 19th century, writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier claimed there was ‘one on every street corner’.

  One of the most successful of the early names was Beauvilliers, who had previously been employed by the Count of Provence. His menu is described as ‘the size of an English newspaper’ and included, among other things, 13 soups, 11 different dressings of beef, 32 choices of poultry and game, 23 varieties of fish, 39 desserts and ‘wines, including the liqueur kind, of 52 denominations’.

  Brasseries, meanwhile (the word literally means brewery), usually served food and beer from Alsace – choucroute, sausages, pickled herring and onion or cheese soup (though not, crucially, onion and cheese soup, or not as far as I’ve found). The origins of the more casual bistrot are unknown, but possibly the word comes from the slang term bistouille, or bad booze, suggesting they started life as dive bars.

  Even during the Prussian siege of Paris from September 1870 to January 1871, many restaurants continued trading. That year’s festive menus included novelties such as wolf cutlets chasseur and elephant filet with Madeira sauce. A month after the siege was lifted, one commentator observed that there was not so much as a poodle left on the streets of Paris. Yum!

  I proceed to eat my way through the most ridiculous frills of the menu with a half-bottle of white Burgundy for old times’ sake: foie gras meringues, which I prefer to the foie gras crème brûlée I had in Strasbourg, but which doesn’t quite compare to the foie gras toasts I was presented with on that rainy evening in Pau what feels like months ago; my old fishy friend from Marseille, the jolie-laide rascasse, here served with mango and fennel, and best of all, a Michelin take on my newest love, the Paris–Brest – three exquisite little buns all for me, which come complete with a huge flaming birthday sparkler. I should feel self-conscious about this, but after all today has thrown at me, I just feel pure happiness at having made it this far. As I leave, I explain to Madame that this was my birthday treat to myself, because I’m on my own this evening. ‘No!’ she says kindly. ‘You weren’t alone. You were with us.’ And she comes round the counter to give me a birthday kiss.

  For the third or fourth time today, I’m close to tears as I ride off, but by the time I get back to my hotel, I’m feeling merry enough to exchange some of Gemma’s World Cup predictions with the security guard as I casually wheel Eddy into the lift. Okay, it hasn’t been the best birthday ever, but I probably won’t forget it in a hurry – and it seems to me as I lie in my little bed, listening to the roar of traffic outside, that today, my last in the saddle, in many ways sums up the trip as a whole. There were some tough and very thirsty times on the road, but there was good food, beauty, even in the suburbs of Paris, and most of all, many small kindnesses from strangers. France, je t’aime, I think, dropping off.

  Km: 184.1

  Croissants: 2 (average score: 7.7/10)

  High: The sparkler in my birthday Brests

  Low: Where do I start?

  STAGE 21

  Bondy to Paris

  Croissant 101

  The croissant needs no introduction. A flaky, buttery pastry the shape of a new moon (though not always, as we shall see), they’re an international shorthand for all things French, though in truth, they’re only good freshly baked, and even France is not immune to the crappy croissant. Warm from the oven, however, they are pure bliss.

  I wake up feeling weird. Not a glass of champagne and half a bottle of Burgundy weird, and not post-birthday blues either. No, it’s the tristesse of my last proper ride; once I hit Paris, it will all just be commuting. I lie in bed already nostalgic for all those desperate lunch hunts and the dark kilometres at the end of the day, when your feet have lost all feeling and each pedal stroke feels like pushing through treacle.

  Perhaps fortunately, I have a deadline to get me out of the best bed I’ve slept in since the Alps: the prospect of a good lunch, booked weeks ago as a celebratory full stop. I’m determined to make this reservation without tears, so it’s back on with the Lycra for almost the final time, and out into the traffic.

  Thanks to the British couple we met at the campsite in Bar-le-Duc, cycling in the other direction, I won’t be doing battle with the Parisian equivalent of the M1 for long; their tip-off about a well-paved cycle path along the Canal de l’Ourcq, which runs right into the centre of the capital, proves the saviour of my sanity. Initially lined with factories and sprawling, occasionally beautiful graffiti, as I pedal into Paris proper it starts to feel more like East London: towpath cafés, floating bookshops and the shiny mirrorball of the Parc de la Villette across the water, beaming the morning sun back at me.

  I peel off at the Villette basin and head for the Gare de l’Est, where I take several triumphant selfies, get changed in the world’s smallest loo and then dump my stuff in the left luggage for the day. Dressed only slightly more appropriately for the (alleged) fashion capital of the Western world, and with time to spare, I head over to the 12th arrondissement for a late-morning croissant at Blé Sucré, a tiny patisserie run by the former pastry chef at the very grand Hotel Bristol. Their viennoiserie comes highly recommended by local resident Harry, of tarte Tatin fame, who annoyingly, and not a little inconsiderately, happens to be in London while I’m in her hometown.

  I take a table outside, next to an elegant woman eating salad, and to the happy screams of children in the playground opposite, tear into what is comfortably the best croissant of the trip so far: absurdly crisp on the outside, so damply elastic within i
t’s like pulling apart string cheese. A clear 9/10, right off the bat. I didn’t want Paris to be the cut above it clearly thinks it is (as surely all capitals think they are), but if this is the standard, it’s going to be hard to beat.

  After this 12.30 breakfast, it’s straight on to lunch at Chez Georges in the financial district of the Bourse, a place chosen partly because the only fault Jay Rayner can find with it is that the floor could do with a bit of a clean – ‘When people wax unendurable about the joys of the classic Parisian bistro, Chez Georges is exactly what they are describing: a battered and weary wooden facade, lightly grubby net curtains in the windows, and inside a tiled mosaic floor with decades of grime in the cracks’ – and partly because Michelin also rate it. Rayner is not a man shy in his opinion that the famous guide is ‘a complete irrelevance’, so if it’s pleasing both of them, it’s probably worth a try.

  Jay clearly has stricter hygiene standards than me: to my eyes, the place looks more like a set from ’Allo ’Allo, the pleasantly womb-like interior shaded from the uncouth sunlight by some (fairly clean-looking) nets, and just the faintest glow of ancient nicotine above the red leather banquettes. From my table next to the dessert trolley (best seat in the house), I can see a broom, two mops and a broken chair only half concealed behind a nylon curtain. It feels like what it is: an old-school Parisian bistro, with an overpriced wine list and a curious mixture of city workers (it’s just round the corner from the stock exchange) and tourists – the American couple next to me are, I think, on their honeymoon, and talk wistfully of bologna sandwiches as they eat steak and salad. ‘Go on, have a glass of wine,’ he says to her hopefully. ‘Oh no!’ she says. ‘Not at lunchtime!’

  Feeling sorry for him drinking on his own, I have a tiny cold beer with my dish of radishes and butter as I consult the menu. Truly, I have never eaten so many radishes in one go in my life, and I still think they’re nicer with mayonnaise, however lovely the idea sounds of smushing them with cold, creamy beurre and the merest sprinkle of salt. I still manage to put away the entire pat, though, to the slight surprise of the black-uniformed waitress who, with her stout, sensible shoes and frilly white pinny, looks like she’s stepped out of central casting.

  Jay’s description of the entrecôte, served with ‘so much bone marrow my Irish-born companion at first thinks it’s potatoes’, makes choosing a doddle. I haven’t had a steak since those faintly disappointing versions in Limoges, but this is enough to banish any ideas that the French produce great beef and cook it badly (unlike Americans, who tend to do just the opposite). Deeply branded on the outside, rare and juicy within, it arrives attended by a huge platter of golden, rustling frites and two wobbly cylinders of blushing marrow that make my arteries contract on sight. A glass of house red feels in order to help tackle this lot, and it takes me a very pleasant half an hour to make a decent fist of it, while the Americans sweetly share a dessert and the Parisians peel back to the office. As I’m mopping the plate with a piece of bread, the curtain in front of me is drawn back for the retrieval of some utensil or other and I spy a defibrillator concealed behind its folds.

  I decline pudding.

  The rest of the afternoon is spent wandering in the way that Paris seems designed so perfectly for, peering in the windows of patisseries, watching the human traffic pass by – a tattoo artist and his canvas stepping out for a smoke in the Marais, a crocodile of immaculately dressed children in the Jardin du Luxembourg and enjoying a little scene in the famous Une Glace à Paris when a small boy is told by the counter staff that he can’t have an EU flag in his ice cream like his brother, ‘because it’s only for vanilla’. What particular political point they’re trying to make is unclear, but however much I want one too, there’s no freedom of movement here, and not even a flag will persuade me to order vanilla instead of Provençal lavender ice cream and ewe’s milk sorbet.

  As I’m passing (sort of) and it’s been recommended by almost everyone I’ve spoken to, I also pop into Du Pain et des Idées, where the baker is so good he doesn’t need to work weekends. The queue, even mid-afternoon, is staggering: Dutch, Singaporeans, Americans – and that’s just the people I sit down with outside. Customers jostle to photograph the counter, with its magnificent displays of flaky ‘escargot’ with pistachio swirls and perfect triangles of yolk-yellow flans, but the croissant itself is a bit of a let-down: crunchy and flaky, it’s more a skinny curl of puff-pastry, with little but air in the centre, a mere 7/10. Not my style.

  Full as I am, I’m delighted to have a dinner date for my first night in Paris: Harry may be on the other side of the Channel, but I get the next best thing in the form of her sister Georgie (the very same who will, some months later, cycle a very merry Harry and Caroline round Paris on the front of her bike when they should be preparing for operation tarte Tatin) and husband Max, who’ve just moved into the 3rd arrondissement after several years in Beijing. Despite not even having had a chance to unpack, they are kind enough to invite me over for an aperitif beforehand. I know I’ve got the right door when I hear shrieks of childish glee and the rapid-fire of Chinese from within.

  Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age, but it’s delicious to sit and listen to their nanny read a bedtime story with a warm pyjama-clad toddler nestled carelessly against my knee. Clearly, my Mandarin being considerably worse than my French, I understand nothing of what the family of ducks concerned is up to (I’ll be honest, it sounds anything but soothing), but I’m still a bit sad when the kids are all chased off to bed so we can have a glass of fizz and go out.

  Harry’s restaurant recommendation, Les Philosophes in the 4th, has a queue out of the door – as Parisians are not known for their patience, this feels both promising and very ominous. ‘Go in and mention your sister,’ Max suggests to Georgie, and lo and behold, a table appears like magic. Clearly, Harry’s a good customer at this local institution, bustling to the point of downright loud, with bright lights, red banquettes and barely room to swing a chat.

  The menu begins with a stern letter on the importance of provenance. Owner Xavier Denamur is a fierce critic of the French food system and its weaselly regulations, and has launched legal action against TripAdvisor, which he accuses of falsely linking his restaurant to inferior establishments. Thankfully his food is less angry. Though they’ve already run out of their famous tomato tarte Tatin, I finally get my steaming tureen of wine-soaked onion soup, and the chocolate mousse that follows, served completely unadorned in a plain white ramekin with a careless, cocoa-coloured drip down the side, is a thing of simple beauty, perhaps the best pudding I’ve had all trip.

  Our talk flows like the lightly chilled Burgundy, and on hearing my tale of birthday woe, Georgie and Max very generously insist on buying me dinner, a kindness that makes my heart sing with pleasure. As I ride over to my bed at Harry’s neighbours’ apartment in the 10th, through the beautiful Place des Vosges and round the Bastille for what feels like the twentieth time that day, I feel quite at home suddenly, in a strange city perhaps, but among friends.

  The fact that I am not, however, at home is reinforced by my abject failure to actually gain entry into the apartment. Like almost all Parisian buildings, this one boasts a complicated system of keys and codes, and I have to haul Eddy as quietly as possible through a high wicket gate set into a vast outer door, through a second, more ordinary-sized door across the courtyard and up a narrow spiral staircase (bikes, apparently, being interdit in communal areas) before I can even begin to tackle the two locks on the apartment itself.

  Once I’m finally in, I discover that the flat, whose tenants are on honeymoon, has the tall Parisian windows I’ve always craved, yet having never had them, I have no idea how to work the shutters to avoid giving the people opposite a live strip show. Giving up and wriggling out of my clothes on the floor instead, I fall into bed like a dead woman and don’t wake up until my alarm shrills at 7.30 a.m. to tell me it’s time to get on the croissant trail.
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  The Official Finish is scheduled for noon under the Arc de Triomphe, which doesn’t leave me much time, so I’ve decided to hit as many of the patisserie power-list as possible in one fell swoop, starting with La Maison d’Isabelle on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which, though it seems to fly somewhat under the radar of all of those ‘Top 10 pastries in Paris’ lists, has recently been named as producing the best croissant made with AOP butter in the Paris Île-de-France area.* There’s a huge banner proclaiming the fact on the outside of the shop, and as I hurriedly lock my bike to the Metro railings, I can already see a crowd forming outside.

  Thank God I got up early, I think, fumbling with the keys – this line looks serious. As someone who once stood in the snow for an hour and three-quarters for a cheeseburger, I’m resigned to the fact that people are inherently ridiculous, but thankfully, as I found with those famous moules marinières back in Normandy, queuing for food doesn’t seem to be a French hobby – getting closer, I realise the people outside are just standing around drinking coffee and smoking as they wait for the little market out front to get going. Embarrassed, I drop my pace and try to look casual as I duck inside and join the three people who are waiting. Later, Harry explains to me that there are so many good bakeries in Paris that the lucky buggers who live there don’t generally deign to travel outside their arrondissement – you find your favourite local place and stick to it. Unlike in the UK, the difference between them is never big enough to be worth the price of a Metro ticket.