Authentic Epicerie brings Paris to Brooklyn
My dear sister Carol died a year ago December 16, and this December marked the last time I would visit her Carroll Gardens apartment, which is being sold to a sweet young couple. On the date I had to meet the “man with a van” to move pieces of Carol’s furniture out of the staged apartment, I took myself on a walk down Court Street to visit old haunts: I love the shop Lily, with its eclectic accessories, every one of which I want to own but tap lightly with my fingertips and leave, just owning the dream of owning them. I buy pounds of cookies at Court Pastry Shop, one of the three Italian bakeries left in the neighborhood: Savoiardi cookies with their delicate crackling exterior, chocolate covered spice cookies, workaday reginas to accompany my morning coffee. I must stop in Brooklyn General to pick up some grosgrain ribbon and admire the impeccably arrayed rows of yarn and fabric bolts. And of course, this neighborhood will always be dear to me for memories of Carol and I having a leisurely eggs Benedict breakfast at Luluc or meeting at Cobble Hill Cinema with our sister-in-law, Susan, to see the latest film and laugh at the pre-show announcement, straight out of the 1980s, admonishing us to “turn off your pagers.” Carroll Gardens retains an old world charm and lacks the hipster veneer of other gentrified/gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods.
And there’s a welcome new (to me!) spot of old world charm that is just a block from my sister’s former apartment, and of which she would have been a frequent patron. Le French Tart Deli is an authentic epicerie run by chef/founder Laurent Chavenet, who opened his first French Tart in Staten Island in 2001 followed by a boulangerie-pâtisserie in Park Slope in 2017. This newest offering, opened right before the pandemic in February 2020, is so narrow that one person going through the shop may knock a box of Pailles d’or biscuits off the packed shelves. Not ideal for social distancing/COVID times, but that didn’t deter the line of people waiting to get their baguettes ($3.50) fresh from the oven or the croissants ($2.75) that have that paper thin crisp exterior covering layer upon layer of butter and air. I wanted to sample something more substantial, though, than bread and croissants, so I got a small quiche Lorraine ($5.00). Quiches are cooked fresh daily, and in addition to the Lorraine, there is broccoli, spinach, and mushroom ones.
The Chef and I shared the quiche one lunchtime, and, as you can see in the cross-section picture above, the inside was the perfect creamy eggy texture in which slivers of sliced “jambon” and soft onion practically floated. When you have a real French quiche it makes a mockery of all those American potluck quiches with hard thin crusts and fussy vegetable or spice combinations! You have the impression chef Chavenet tossed this off without thinking somehow (the way my Chef tosses off a perfect rustic French omelet). Each bite makes me think, for a moment, that I am not Morningside Heights or Carroll Gardens, but in the an arrondissement of Paris pressing my nose against the glass of epiceries, boulangeries, as I did on our Paris trip in 2016 (pictures below). Oh, to travel again. I can still see the Parisian light bathing the stately white buildings in gold, the warren like streets of the Marais, the small homey restaurant where we ate Breton buckwheat crépes, and, most of all, the knitting store of my dreams, L'Oisivethé, a knitting and tea salon.
So I enter 2021, dreaming of a time when we can travel again, so the Chef can see his family across the Atlantic, so we can experience new cultures and foods, but most of all my dream—and my wish for you— is that we can stay healthy, that we can connect with our loved ones in whatever ways possible in this, our still beautiful world.
Le French Tart Deli
306 Court St. (near Degraw)
Brooklyn, NY
(347) 916-0014