Finding My Pain Au Chocolat

Beziers, France

February 6, 2024

Dear Friends and Family,

The first things that many of us think about when we think of France are bread and all sorts of baked deliciousness, wine and cheese. I’m a big fan of all these things and without a doubt I have much exploring to do and I promise to share some of my experiences along the way. Let me start with a story about finding one of my favorite things, pain au chocolat. Pain au chocolat is also called chocolatine in this area of France and according to Wikipedia some areas of Canada, and it’s also simply chocolate croissant in some places. It is simply bread and chocolate. At its best, however, it is flaky thin layers of buttery delicate bread wrapped around chocolate.

In the US chocolate croissants are found at many coffee shops, and most often delivered to the coffee shop in a cellophane package where it has been for an undetermined amount of time before it is popped in a warming machine and then handed to you in a small paper bag. I know this because it was breakfast on many occasions as I rushed to the office and grabbed a coffee and chocolate croissant on the way. They are a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, but they are just that, a facsimile of the real thing.

Interestingly enough, this US coffee shop variety can be found in the grocery store in France. They even come in a FAMILY PACK of 8 or more and individually wrapped in cellophane packages. And they’re not bad!  I won’t admit how many of these I consumed in my first three weeks here because frankly it’s embarrassing. They’re every bit as good as the ones you will find at the ubiquitous coffee shops with the green and white sign out front and found on what seems like every street corner in every town in the US. Oh, so convenient.

Many years ago, before the chains of coffee shops became so popular in the US, My friend, Kevin Neihoff, taught me that Frederick Meijer, from the very western Michigan where I grew up, invented the hypermarket. Meijer Thrifty Acres, as it was called back then, was the place where you could get your haircut, pick up your drycleaning, have your shoes resoled, ride the electric pony for a quarter and buy your goldfish, hardware, clothing and groceries all under one roof. I remember it fondly.

When I was very young, the nearest one to us had a gazebo inside the store that functioned as play area with a television set hung from the ceiling playing children’s shows and a few fiberglass animals attached to the shag carpet flooring that you could climb on while you watched tv and your parents did their shopping. We weren’t supposed to leave the gazebo, but it was strategically placed near the pet section, so the temptation was insurmountable. I always explored the pet section while my younger brother and I waited for our parents to shop. Perhaps we could talk our parents into a new goldfish or hamster when they came to gather us up before they checked out with groceries for a week, maybe some new underwear and socks, and probably something from the hardware section to repair something around the house. It was after all “one stop shopping.”

Meijer Thrifty Acers served a purpose and made a whole lot of people’s lives a little bit better. But it was also habit forming and the one stop shop does not always provide the same quality or experience of the specialty store. The convenience of shopping in a grocery store that has a little bit of everything is irrefutable, and the habit of shopping where it’s convenient dies hard. I believe that is why I found my first easily accessible pain au chocolat in the grocery store across the street from where we are living.

Even in the grocery store there are varying degrees of quality of pain au chocolat.  The passible family pack was soon passed over for the bakery section that had a sightly higher quality version, delivered daily, in a convenient plastic clam shell package that was easy to purchase while I was picking up a few days’ worth of groceries. I knew this was not the pain au chocolat that I really wanted, however, I will also admit that I think my lack of confidence with speaking in French had something to do with my bowing to convenience.  It’s easy to get by with the self-checkout at the grocery store. I only need to say bonjour and au revoir to the attendant and I’ve got that down.

I did not move to a relatively small town in the South of France to do everything the same way I’ve always done, however, the romance of the boulangerie and the patisserie were calling me.

We had been here a few weeks when Lisa and I were invited to a new friend’s house for tea. It didn’t seem appropriate to show up empty handed so I decided to visit the Patisserie Chocolatier just down the street from our new home. It’s a very quaint looking store with an attractive white and blue sign that I’ve passed by several times. The chocolates are of the variety that I remember from Belgium (that was nearly 40 years ago, suddenly I’m feeling old), petite morsels of smooth and creamy chocolate filled with delicious soft centers. Additionally, the pastries looked amazing. I have been practicing my French daily and I decided it was time to cross the threshold of that door and dare to speak the little bit of French that I have. When I entered the store, I was greeted by a lovely woman dressed in what seemed like a formal chef’s uniform. I’m almost certain she speaks no English whatsoever, but her gracious greeting was warm and friendly and I knew I had nothing to fear.

In the end it was a success, after some French, some gesturing, and a few awkward silences I was able to purchase a small box of chocolates for my new friend, a few palmier for my friend Lisa who was back at the apartment working on getting heat and hot water, and for myself a chocolatine.

As I started walking back to the apartment I reached into the bag for my treat. The chocolatine did not make it to the next block. I took one bite and stopped walking. It was so delightfully buttery, flaky, and delicately layered. I stood on the sidewalk and kept eating until I was licking the flakey crumbs from my fingers. It was a moment.

I have stopped buying the grocery store variety altogether. It was my reminder that sometimes a little extra effort for higher quality is worth the effort. For many reasons, I know that when it comes to chocolatine, I am much better off with quality over quantity!

Every morning, I get up and study French for about an hour.  After my petite déjeuner, a.k.a. breakfast, I venture out for what I call my practicum. Life in a foreign land while learning the language is full of interesting challenges. Not all of my experiences are as successful as the two I’ve described thus far, but I’ve had no colossal failures as yet either. Some days are harder than others and it can be exhausting. I am not complaining! I feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity and really cannot thank my friends Jan and Lisa enough for making this possible.

Merci d’avoir lu.

Bon journey!

And then this:

After I wrote my story reminding myself that sometimes in life you must work a little harder to get the good stuff, I decided that today’s practicum would be a trip to Auchan. (pronounced oh-shawn)

Lisa and I have heard Auchan mentioned in so many conversations that we were beginning to think it wasn’t a store but rather a region. We weren’t entirely wrong, it’s a store the size of a region. I believe it had everything Meijer Thrift Acres ever had except for the gazebo/unattended children’s play area (something one cannot imagine in today’s world) and the electric pony. It even had the shoe repair guy with the equipment that made it look just like the shoe repair shop at the old Meijer Thirty Acres store on Plainfield Avenue, of course that store has long since been torn down and replaced by a larger modern Meijer store. Everything else at Auchan looked thoroughly modern, but I swear the shoe repair shop at the front of the store made me stop in my tracks. It was surreal.

It is still true that in our neighborhood there are butcher shops, just yesterday I saw a man delivering a side of beef and a whole pig to the neighborhood butcher shop, and these shops are frequented by the people who live in the area. There are also boulangeries and patisseries where you will get the best and freshest baked goods you can imagine. It is also true that the way we live today doesn’t allow for many of us to have the time nor the money to shop in this idyllic style. And while Bezier is in so many ways a small town with many small-town ways, it is also thoroughly modern.

Bonne Journée!