January's Breakfast Scrolls: Rise and Shine
Got your coffee on the bedside table?
Thanks for being a What’s Up, Paris? subscriber. I appreciate you being part of the community here!
Are you more toast or croissant? Coffee or tea? What gets your weekend started? I hope this first ever Breakfast Scrolls will be an extra-tasty, extra-buttery reason mid-month, to wake up for at the weekend. Next time, there’ll be a special gift… so keep your eyes peeled!
Breakfast reads 🥞
Who said reading is dead? From newspapers to magazines, Substacks to social media, here’s what’s new this week.
Five overlooked corners of France to visit in 2024 | The Telegraph
The coolest hotels you haven’t been to (yet), with a little listing from me | Bitchen
Paris places to put on your radar in 2024 | What’s Up, Paris?
A guide to Julia Child’s Paris | Vogue US
The mystique of France’s 442-year-old ‘Ratatouille restaurant’ | BBC
52 places to go in 2024 | The New York Times
What it’s like to fly on a business-class-only airline between Paris and New York | Condé Nast Traveller
Editor Kat Craddock on how Print is back | Saveur
Morning Mingle ☕
Plump those pillows behind your head and get to know Jane Bertch. When she arrived in Paris, she loathed it. But one night, an idea took root and sparked something unexpected.
When she stumbled upon ‘Deep’, a run-down brothel for sale, with two huge cement lions guarding both sides of the door, Jane knew this was the spot for her cooking school. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was desperation. Either way, after opening in 2010, La Cuisine became known among the world’s francophile foodies across the world as the place to learn how to make your own French fancies, from macarons to croissants. It was no ride in the park though.
A former banker from Chicago, Jane threw herself into a business she knew nothing about. “I wasn’t even a good cook,” she says. “I just knew creating a cooking school was what I wanted to do.” Opening a business in France was a rollercoaster of a ride with so many unforeseen twists and turns, that it fuelled a whole book “The French Ingredient - A Memoir. Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time,” which is available for pre-order and will be out in April.
“I think the secret to La Cuisine’s success is that I never wanted to put myself forward. I wanted people to come and feel like it was their kitchen, not Jane’s kitchen,” she explains as we sit down for coffee at a little local spot close to the cooking school. From Chicago, Jane moved to London and then Paris in 2005 for a career opportunity in banking. She hated Paris when she arrived, not expecting to stay longer than a year at the very most. “Paris is like the friend you're always really keen to do things with but that wants little to do with you… eventually, when you finally figure out how things work, living here becomes like a trophy for having made it,” she laughs, taking a sip of her large cappuccino.
Guilty of always wanting what she didn’t have, she persevered. “People believed in me at my work, and they gave me the gift of believing in myself, which is so important in life, I think, no matter what you end up doing.”
One year, she took a real knock when she was faced with the tragic deaths of three family members. “On the back of that, I started to question what I was doing here. As I went through the trauma of losing people dear to me, I felt like I needed to reassess my values.”
On a wine-fuelled evening at a friend’s place, the idea of La Cuisine dawned on her. It wasn’t her lifelong passion but it was an idea that needed to be born. “I’m a big fan of the book “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. She believes that ideas are like little energy spirits and that if we don’t give birth to them, they go elsewhere to be born. And it’s how it was for La Cuisine. The idea popped out of nowhere, I took it on, and that was that.”
Getting it to where it is today was complex and took a while. “It was draining. I initially opened it near Saint Michel, in a spot that had to be closed down due to licensing issues… It was heartbreaking. All that money, all that work. But I wasn’t ready to give up. When I found the current location across the road from the River Seine, steps from Notre Dame, it felt right, even if it was a grimy brothel with zebra fishnet wallpaper, a dubious name and hideous lions outside! I think that my newfound Frenchness back then truly came through in that the more I couldn’t have something, the more I believed it was mine!”
After creating a successful business in France, Jane wanted to write a book about the ins and outs of the process. “I was going for more of a technical book, but then friends suggested I write a narrative about my actual experience, a memoir,” she explains brushing back her thick red hair. “The French Ingredient” is all about navigating the complex landscape of setting up a business in Paris, which she retells through honest, witty, entertaining anecdotes that inspire, inform and give courage to those with similar ambitions. “It wasn’t easy at all, I won’t lie. But I am happy with how far La Cuisine has come and seeing all these people from all over the world come to make their own memories here. I think the happiest bit of the whole story for me though, has to be when I was standing outside the building with the former owner of the brothel and he finally agreed to sell after a lot of persuasion: fine, I’ll sell you the place, he said almost begrudgingly. But I’m taking my lions!”
“The French Ingredient - A Memoir. Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time,” by Jane Bertch is available for pre-order now and will be out in April. In the meantime, you can follow the goings-on at La Cuisine on Instagram or book a cooking course on the website.
Micro-itinerary: Eating Your Way Around Jourdain 🍳
Time to get up! Take a stroll through this quiet village in Paris that holds untapped secrets from great bistros to independent boutiques.
Locals love this quiet little corner of the city sandwiched between the beautiful Buttes-Chaumont park and buzzy Belleville because it has a village vibe and is a little out of the way, meaning it’s not overrun with people. There are a few spots not to miss when in the area, like the Jourdain restaurant, which serves up a fresh spin on French fare at less than 30 euros for three courses at lunchtime and a little more at dinner. Don’t miss Soces, where the owners’ raison d’être is to use well-sourced produce mainly from France and serve dishes that evoke Paris’ extravagant historic brasseries like plates of oysters, muscles and buttery sole meunière in a parred-back space of a building that’s said to have been voted the most beautiful in Paris a hundred years ago. Other spots to have on your list are the French-Japanese Cheval d’Or and Super Frais, a fab grocery store for modern-day tastes that’s packed with well-sourced products from all over the world - and their generously filled signature sandwiches. You’ll find lots of treasures in between on this map.
That’s all for today, folks! And on that note, I’ll leave you with a little something French to get up and get dancing to 🎶. Bon week-end!
Brava 💕🥐👋🏻