Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [95]
There are a number of other outstanding boulangeries in Paris, and you will discover your own, some famous and others perhaps known only within your quartier, but a trip out to the twentieth (the neighborhood is Gambetta) is very much vaut le détour—it’s worth the trip, to quote the Guide Michelin. I recommend making the journey a full-fledged excursion, also visiting the Père-Lachaise cemetery and Le Saint-Amour café (on the edge of the cemetery, at the corner of avenue Gambetta and boulevard de Ménilmontant). Le Saint-Amour was recommended by Patricia Wells years ago, and I’ve since visited several times, downing glasses of good Burgundy and enjoying the abundant bonhomie.
NAOMI BARRY wrote for many years for Gourmet. She is also the author of Paris Personal (Dutton, 1963), Adorable Zucchini (Brick Tower, 2005), and Food alla Florentine (Doubleday, 1972).
CHRISTINE, A BANK of information about her city, gave me the address of “the best bread place in Paris.” Of course I made the trip since you don’t find great bread on every corner anymore, even in France where the national image used to be a pair of crossed baguettes under a Basque beret.
The bakery was at 150 rue de Ménilmontant in the working-class district of the far-out twentieth arrondissement. Maurice Chevalier, who had been a child of the neighborhood, used to sing about Ménilmontant and he infused it with a titillating glamour, which has lingered.
The farther we progressed up the steep hill on our first foray into the territory, the more unpromising it seemed as the site of “the best bread in Paris.” I was mentally accusing Christine of a bum steer when up loomed Bernard Ganachaud’s bakery with the sudden brightness of a big ferry station in an otherwise darkened landscape.
It was huge with six times the frontage of any shop in the vicinity. Breads of assorted shapes and sizes were artfully displayed behind the gleaming windows. Thirty varieties are available in a Tour de France of regional breads. Some are better than others because in the down-home original versions, some simply are better than others. A pain d’Auvergne had a real style but it turned out to be disappointing, for instance.
On one window a girl employee was writing in large white letters the hit parade of specialties due to come forth from the visible ovens. The odors tantalizingly evoked a glorious farmhouse kitchen even if your childhood had not been that lucky. Although the French are notorious for the way they jump queues, in Ganachaud’s bread line they were a model of decorum, proving that good behavior is determined by what is worth waiting for.
Ganachaud refuses to deliver and he doesn’t care who you are. The chef of the Crillon was crazy about the deluxe baguette baptized flûte Gana and wanted it for the hotel. He was told to come and get it. Ganachaud insists on quality control of his product until the moment it is handed over to the customer. That means on the premises. Were it to spend a couple of hours in the back of a delivery van … He shudders. So the Crillon accepted to do its own fetch and carry. At the end of a year, the chef moaned, “Mon cher, do you realize that my taxi bill to get to you has been even greater than my bread bill?”
The complaint pleased Ganachaud no end. To go from the Crillon on the Place de la Concorde to the rue de Ménilmontant is like going from Eighty-first Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn. Individual customers from the chic arrondissements miles away have worked out a pool system. Whoever makes the trek is honor bound to bring back a supply for the others.
I immediately recognized the maître-boulanger, who was wearing the white work jacket with the tricolor ribbon collar and his name embroidered on the breast pocket that Bragard has made for most of