A New View of Paris

A waitress preps for the night’s first customers at Mama Shelter’s eatery, in the 20e arrondissement.

“I never thought an out-of-towner would ask me to take him here,” says my buddy Nicolas before swallowing the last bite of his seared foie gras with lentil casserole. “But don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining.” At this, our waiter, who’s listening in while refilling our glasses with a smooth malbec, gives me a knowing wink. I can read his thoughts: Nicolas’ mouth is so full, he couldn’t complain if he wanted to.

Having lived in and around Paris all his life, my friend couldn’t figure out why I’d asked him to bypass the tourist enclaves of the Marais and the 7e arrondissement and take me instead to Belleville, a working-class neighbourhood that’s undergoing something of a renaissance. While we were looking for a parking spot (needle, meet haystack), Nicolas balked at the trinket shops and gaudy restaurants along the Chinatown section of Rue de Belleville. To distract him, I pointed to the organic grocery on the corner of Rue Jouye-Rouve and the two contemporary art galleries facing Le Baratin, where we’re now eating. Despite its name, which means “small talk,” this wood-clad eatery is getting big accolades. We’re so impressed by our braised oxtails à l’orange that we fall mute (no small feat) and come close to forgetting the stony reception we got from the lanky, bespectacled host.

On the way back to the car, I convince Nicolas to push further into the 20e arrondissement. A 20-minute drive and we’re at Mama Shelter, the Philippe Starck-designed hotel where I’m spending the night, wedged between a student residence and a public library. “You realize you can’t even see the searchlights of the Eiffel Tower from here, right?” he jokes. “Are you sure this is where you want to stay?”

Robin, a waiter at Mama Shelter, writes up the board.

If Philippe Starck can build a hotel in the 20e arrondissement, miles away from the Eiffel Tower, I don’t see why I can’t steer clear of it too.

I’m sticking to my plan. For reasons I can’t quite explain, a stroll through Paris has always made me feel vaguely like a bull in a china shop. Everything’s so precious, I can’t get comfortable. Yes, the Champs-Élysées is something out of a fairy tale; yes, the Seine is magical; yes, the Jardin des Tuileries is poetic. But this week, I’m going out of my way to avoid them. As I slip between the covers, I reach over and turn off what constitutes my bedside lamp – a fluorescent tube with a Batman mask for a lampshade – and think, If Philippe Starck can build a hotel in the 20e arrondissement, miles away from the Eiffel Tower, I don’t see why I can’t steer clear of it too.

One whiff of the Gontran Cherrier bakery, in the southwest quarter of the 18e arrondissement, and I know my pigheadedness will be rewarded. I settle in at the counter facing Rue Caulaincourt and turn around to scan the loaves on display, each one big enough to feed the French Foreign Legion. “The problem with Parisian bakers is that many of them don’t even take the time to make their own croissants anymore. They buy them pre-made and just warm them up to sell to tourists,” says the young Cherrier, a serious, elegant guy despite the tousled hair and flour-covered hands.

A British student who works at the Gontran Cherrier bakery, in the 18e arrondissement.

Looking around the bakery, covered in white subway tiles as a wink to the city’s classic underground decor, it’s clear Gontran Cherrier isn’t merely following the Parisian rule book; he’s writing his very own chapter.

The black magic of Gontran Cherrier’s squid-ink bread.

The bread maker knows what he’s talking about: His business is a stone’s throw from Montmartre, one of the city’s most unapologetically touristy spots. But what’s surprising isn’t its appeal to out-of-towners, but how popular the Gontran Cherrier bakery is with locals. The reason for that becomes clear as soon as I bite into his delicately bitter and salty squid-ink bread; this is the antithesis of the traditional baguette. Cherrier – whose preferred moniker is “artisan baker” – serves it to me with a strong café-crème. He has created a number of breads to be paired (like wines) with specific dishes, including a rye bread with miso that’s designed to be eaten with oysters. As I chew, he quips, “The 18e arrondissement has traditionally been a neighbourhood of craftspeople and creative types. I thought it suited me to a tee.” I look around the bakery, tiled in white subway tiles as a witty wink to the city’s classic underground decor, and silently agree: Cherrier isn’t merely following the Parisian rule book; he’s writing his own chapter.

To burn off the calories I’ve just ingested (and mull over the artisan baker’s ideas), I set out for a stroll through the neighbourhood. Near Place Clichy, I happen upon Le Bal, a contemporary art centre recently opened in a former dance club that’s been poked full of windows looking out onto an alleyway. The minimalist space includes a small bookstore specializing in photography as well as two floors of galleries. After a good hour at an exhibition titled Cinq étranges albums de famille, in which five artists take an offbeat look at their family albums, I plop down in the café next to the bookstore. Over a glass of Sancerre, I study a map of the northern part of the city that shows the addresses of five other galleries; some of them, like Synesthésie (devoted to digital art), are all the way out in the suburbs. Just as the New York art world has moved south into the Lower East Side, the Parisian one seems to be migrating north. There’s a whole universe outside the treacly galleries of Saint-Germain.

It’s all I can do to keep from shouting. My friend has just kicked me so hard under the table that I’ll have to wear knee socks for the rest of the summer, and all because Louis Garrel, the young, skilfully dishevelled darling of French cinema, has just walked by. We’re at the bar of Hôtel Amour, south of Pigalle, where not long ago you’d have been more likely to cross paths with working girls than movie stars. André Saraiva, the godfather of Paris nightlife, is a co-owner and has brought a breath of fresh air to the neighbourhood by transforming this former short-stay hotel into a happening shrine to the 1950s. (The rooms, decorated with Terry Richardson photos, can still be rented by the hour – a nod to the building’s saucy past.) I’m sipping an Amour cocktail, a cotton-candy pink mix of vodka, elderberry sugar, apple juice and berry coulis, and taking in the bar’s surprising bustle. It’s 7 o’clock on a Monday night and all the tables are occupied. The crowd is a woolly mix of businessmen in suits and kids straight out of an American Apparel ad.

Earlier in the day, I’d met Cristelle Gioanni, program director of Le Trianon – a recently reopened horseshoe-shaped theatre on Boulevard de Rochechouart – who’d told me how places like Hôtel Amour and her space are attracting a new crowd. “They’re cleaning up the area a bit. It still has a tough side, but it’s gaining a little charm,” she said. The ladies of the night may have moved on, but Gioanni and her team are so sure of the area’s new cachet that they just opened a bistro next to the theatre.

I feel the same enthusiasm the next morning when Ernesto Novo, a painter who puts his own quirky twist on portraiture, introduces me to his friend Lamine Badian Kouyaté. The fashion designer behind the Xuly.Bët label recently opened his second shop on Boulevard Beaumarchais in the 3e arrondissement. One of Novo’s latest large-scale paintings features a Kouyaté bag on prominent display, so the artist is here to show his friend photos of the work.

While they chat, I check out the new industrial-looking store, featuring naked light bulbs and tiled floors. Novo joins me as I contemplate a black spandex dress decorated with red stitching and explains that in the late 1980s, XULY.Bët was one of the first labels to make new clothes out of used materials. (At the time, their avant-garde approach even drew the attention of Robert Altman, who was filming Prêt-à-Porter, in which Forest Whitaker plays a character based on Kouyaté.) “We don’t have the budget that the major labels have, but we don’t care,” the designer later told me. “It means we can set up shop on the sidelines and do things our way.”

Back out on the street, I make my way down Boulevard Beaumarchais and pass by Merci, a clothes shop that’s garnered a lot of attention over the last few months for its philanthropic concept; all its profits go to charitable organizations. The store owners are planning to open an eclectic restaurant nearby before the end of the year, and they’re not the only cool neighbours Kouyaté has. On a peaceful interior courtyard a few steps away, Erotokritos, a brand known for its sleek knits, has a storefront with whitewashed ceilings where the clothes are displayed like works of art. Merci was onto something with its name – this neighbourhood has a lot to be thankful for when it comes to commercial resurgence.

I’m not really the table-dancing type, at least not on a table at which I’ve just finished eating and especially not to the Jackson 5’s “ABC.” Yet this is precisely what I’m doing (sorry, Mom) while cheering on the wild show that’s unfolding before me. On the tiny dance floor of Favela Chic, a Brazilian resto-bar whose dilapidated decor suits its name perfectly, the dense crowd has parted to make way for a group of breakdancers doing moves that would make contestants on So You Think You Can Dance gasp. As I watch one of them perform an impossible backwards pirouette, I feel like I’ve suddenly been transported from the Place de la République to West Hollywood.

The artistic director at Favela Chic, Jonathan Chaoul, sure has his finger on the pulse.

In the taxi on the way back to the hotel, I can’t help but recall what Favela Chic’s artistic director, Jonathan Chaoul, said as he handed me my first beer of the night: “People come to Paris because they appreciate our craftsmanship. But over the years, everything’s become a little more commercialized. The original spirit was lost, and that’s what we’re trying to recapture.” With that kind of vision, who needs the Eiffel Tower?

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net

Where to Stay

Designed by Philippe Starck, Mama Shelter in the 20e arrondissement has all sorts of quirky details that will make you smile – like, for example, the anecdotes plastered on the elevator walls. (Did you know it’s impossible to kiss your own elbow?)

Where to Eat

As beautiful as the breads baked there, the Gontran Cherrier bakery is home to the good things in life: hot chocolate and croissants made with Montaigu hazelnut butter. Check out the ceiling, decorated in a colour explosion worthy of Delaunay.

Don’t let the quiet street fool you: At Quedubon, near the Buttes-Chaumont, Gilles Bénard breaks the wine-bar mould by serving only natural local wines and inventive bistro cuisine. Try the carpaccio of line-caught sea bass with citrus vinaigrette.

Getting a reservation at Baratin, in Belleville, is something of a feat, but persist and you will be rewarded. Our tablemate practically had to remind us to breathe between bites of the escabeche of quail served with almonds and grapes.

Miroir owners Sébastien Guénard and Matthieu Buffet (respectively ex-chef and ex-sommelier at Alain Ducasse’s Aux Lyonnais) fixed us pan-fried pollock that left us feeling like we were on the Côte d’Azur. Don’t miss the fixed-price lunch at €18 (it includes a glass of wine!).

What to Do

Weather permitting, get to Hôtel Amour early to nab a table on the terrace and watch the stars come and go amid the boho crowd that congregates here every night.

In Wolof, a language of Senegal, XULY.Bët means “open your eyes wide.” And we bet you will when you see the urban styles that fill designer Lamine Badian Kouyaté’s new boutique in the 3e arrondissement. Check out the styles decorated with red topstitching – it’s Kouyaté’s signature.

Appearances can be deceiving: Le Bal doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it conceals two floors filled with groundbreaking contemporary art and important historical works. After visiting the current exhibition, order the sweet-potato gratin with sage at the adjacent café.

Every night, from Tuesday to Saturday, the restaurant Favela Chic turns into a club that bops late into the night. To avoid the lines, reserve a table for dinner so you’ve already got your spot when the DJ takes to the decks.

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