If it hasn’t been clear in my previous two letters, I live in Paris and it would be remiss of me not to live up to the aged stereotype that the French live off a steady diet of croissants, coffee and cigarettes — the three C’s.
Croissants are ubiquitous here, boulangeries grace every street corner mainlining butter and pastry into the bloodstreams of unsuspecting passers-by. The smell of baking really does hang in the air and clouds of flour escape from the air vents of bakeries dusting the pavements with a reminder to eat.
I seldom need a reminder to indulge in baked goods; however, croissants are rarely my first choice. I’m a sucker for pain au chocolat, a roulé cannelle, or even an incongruous pasteis de nata, and so for this week’s letter a croissant circuit was called for. I forwent my morning green smoothie (yes — humble brag and yes, you can hate me for admitting it) and replaced it with a buttery alternative.
For scientific purposes, I came up with a criterium with which to judge the croissant concours but this quickly fell apart as I have but a modicum of discipline and a very lacking short-term memory. But nonetheless, here are five croissants that I scoffed this week.
Du Pain et Des Idées
34 Rue Yves Toudic
Starting off the week with a less than successful trip to Du Pain et Des Idées which made me question the blind faith that I place in a queue. Du Pain is a busy bakery in the quartier of Canal Saint Martin known for their escargots pistache which are very, very good. I confidently bought two croissants au beurre, thinking I would have one as a roadie and one when I arrived at work, but after one bite I was not in a rush to eat and bike, or eat at all. One nice surprise from this bakery trip was the colour-paletting coincidence between my bicycle and the paper bag filled with pastry. I also found my bike’s identical twin in boy form.
The croissant itself was well-formed, nicely crescent-shaped and had a crackled shine which indicates a good egg wash. But sadly, it did not live up to its appearance, it crumbled instead of flaking and it managed to be both dense and hollow inside. I attempted a dip to remedy the parched pastry but ending up losing half of it into a lake of coffee — structural integrity 2/10.
At 1€90 a pop, I will not be rushing back here.
Croissant: a generous 3/10
Ten Belles
10 Rue de la Grange aux Belles
Sadly, Ten Belles is equally scoring very low on the ranking today as they did not have any croissants. I walked to the flagship store before work to pilfer a crescent pastry and ended up spending a lot of money before 10am to not even get my hands on a Ten Belles croissant. I walked in and spied that they did not have any standard pastries but my English sensibility would not let me leave and so, I took an oat milk latte so as not to mar my pastry olympics with a pain Suisse or a brioche chocolat feuilletée because they would have definitely won. I then had to speed walk and speed drink my hot coffee to find another croiss before work and even speedier walk to catch the metro as my plan to amble across the river to the office was scuppered by the croissant-less establishment.
Croissant: 0/10
The coffee however, scores very highly. France have a reputation for being coffee aficionados but, to tell the truth, the bean drink here is usually quite revolting. The French tend to take a short espresso shot with one or two sugars to blur the bitterness. According to Simon Kuper of the FT, when we, as humans, started growing, roasting, brewing, and drinking coffee, the whole world came to a mutual agreement that the Arabica beans were the best to use for this purpose. To no one’s surprise, France rejected this notion and continued to use Robusta beans that were grown in the French colonies which tend to taste a lot more aggressive and cost half the price.
At Ten Belles, however, they have taken a less than French-centric approach and have focussed on a sustainable and delicious model roasting their own variety of beans in Bonneuil-sur-Marne, just outside of Paris. So, this morning coffee was smooth and unexpected and they use Oatly milk (if you know you know).
Au Grain de Blé
5 Rue Beaurepaire
In place of a Ten Belles croissant and lack of research in the area, I nipped into the nearest boulangérie as I hot-footed it to the metro. One realistic croissant au beurre for 1€20 and I would have paid double. Without spoiling the rest of the story, this croissant is the week’s winner as it did everything you want your croissant to do.
Top-notch lamination meaning it flaked when it was meant to flake and softened when it was meant to soften. A heady butteriness left just the right amount of greasy stains on the brown paper it came wrapped in, when you see those little freckles of butter, you know that you’re in for a ride.
Croissant: 9/10
Joséphine Bakery
42 Rue Jacob
Not a lot to say about this croissant but the establishment does lose points for not calling itself Josephine Baker-y. A rookie slip was made on my part by having this croissant in the afternoon as the freshness fades quickly throughout the day, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt that it would have been a better croissant at 9h in the morning.
Croissant: 6/10
Land and Monkeys
86 Boulevard Beaumarchais
Warning — there is no butter in this croissant!
Land and Monkeys is a vegan cafe chain in Paris that will have you proclaiming in Vicar of Dibley style — “I can’t believe it’s not butter”. This forward-thinking (in carnivorous France) bakery is really great and the croissants are so much better than they should be. The lack of butter is barely noticeable, I assume that they use a margarine / veg-oil substitute and it works very well. The flavour is quite distinctive and reminds me a childhood sweet snack that I cannot put my finger on, nevertheless, for a vegan alternative, this one slaps.
Vegan croissant: 8/10
Shopping List for you
Speaking out with Sebb Masters
A Room of One’s Own not by Virginia Woolf
Marmite Truffle edition ftw
Wicked cool guitar thrashing by Maya Delilah
Feel good about your own cooking with this Twitter thread
Dream Kitchen chez Sir Terence Conran
I proofread this newsletter wearing my glasses that are the wrong prescription and with a four-beer hangover, so please forgive any errors. (Four-beer hangovers are arguably the worst kind as you do not feel as if you deserve to feel the way that you do and so you attempt to power through the day with a foggy brain and a background headache.)