Paul Waters at The Cake Shop

Grenoble Life meets Paul Waters, The Cake Shop’s young British pâtissier, to ask him about leaving the UK to make British and American style cakes in France.

Grenoble Life: What’s your job at The Cake Shop?

Paul Waters: My job is a mixture of things – with there only being two other people that work at The Cake Shop and so many things to do the work gets shared around. I mainly design and create the cakes but I also help out in the shop front stocking the shelves and serving clients.

I also get to make the cupcakes and other tasty goodies that you see on display when you come to the store, as well as teaching people my skills and helping to organise events. But I mainly stick to designing and creating cakes. If it’s been made with sugar paste nine times out of 10 it will have been made by me. I literally eat and breathe sugar paste – it’s my life, and a tasty one at that!

GL: How were you recruited and where did you train? 

Paul: I trained at The National Bakery School at South Bank University in London. I intended to do a two-year course there but, due to government funding, it was cut to one year. Nevertheless I left with my Diploma in craft studies. I studied pretty much everything from bread to chocolate.

It was my mother who found the job at The Cake Shop. She was flicking through my Cake magazine when she saw there was a job going for a store in France. At the time I was happily making a mess in the kitchen making something tasty when she approached me with it. I was highly interested and desperate for an adventure, not thinking I would get anywhere because at the time I was only 16 and just starting college, although I have been baking and creating cakes for people since I was eight. But my parents assured me to go for it I distinctly remember them saying “if it doesn’t go anywhere it’s all good experience.”

After sending the email, the following day I received a phone call from the owner, Ariane Zenker, who gave me a mini-interview on the phone. After the call ended I was so excited, my imagination went into overtime as I began to dream of what could happen next. After lots of talk and conversation via email I arranged to go out and see her in February during half term with my mother. After that things just took off and one thing spiralled into another.

GL: Tell us a little bit about your background?

Paul: Well, I grew up in an area called Essex just outside of London, when I was about 11 my parents sold the house brought a smaller one and another one in the south of France. That sparked my love for France and from then on it has been a never-ending love affair, holidays spent with a wall paper scraper in one hand and a paint brush in the other, whilst trying to figure out what ‘plaster’ is in French.

GL: Why did you decide to move to France?

Paul: Well the fact my parents already have a holiday home in the south and they plan to move there permently next year was a big deciding factor. I knew what to expect from my time spent there I had a basic understanding of French life and language. There have also been a lot of problems in my family, a lot of upset; I wanted to get it away from it all as well. The English weather also leaves a lot to be desired.

GL: How have you adapted to life in France?

Paul: I have adapted very well mainly because of my parents having their holiday home in the south but also, because I was so desperate to leave the UK to see the world, determination has kept me going. My advice to anyone moving to this country is to relax, clear your mind and embrace the culture. Do not make comparisons with your home town don’t try to live your life like you normally do, change it to fit the environment.

When I first moved here I was just 17 a lot of people never took me very seriously at first, not to mention the fact that my parents had to sign everything for me as I had no signing power! I couldn’t even take out a phone contract or internet as a result but now at the age of 18 things are a lot better.

I also find the French attitude to being free/open and expressing your self very strange. Paris is a place of art, fashion, the weird, the wonderful, and is filled with some of the most beautiful things. Yet when you come to express yourself through fashion and art you raise a lot of eyebrows and get some very strange looks. It seems the rest of France has no desire to follow in the shadow of Paris; if this has anything to do with French people disliking the Parisians I have yet to find out. 

GL: Tell us about a typical day at The Cake Shop?

Paul: Well I usually arrive at 11:00, Ariane will brief me in on the plan for the day, she will say something along the lines of; “you have that wedding cake to start and the cookie class at 3:00”, “I also got an email from the woman that you did the Princess Cake for, she was very happy”. Then I make a start on my jobs for the day. I could have a long list of cakes to decorate or, if a delivery has just arrived from the UK, it needs unpacking, pricing and being put on display.

I may also get the chance to develop new products or create new classes. I may be teaching people in the evening or doing things on the computer. Every day is completely different – you never quite know what obstacles you will need to overcome or what you are doing. I usually finish about eight in the evening after shutting up the store for the night.

GL: What’s the best thing about your job?

Paul: I love what I do and so many people don’t get the chance nowadays to do what they love. The best thing about my job is it’s so different, I am never bored, never creating the same cake twice, or sat around with nothing do. Working at The Cake Shop can be fun, crazy, hectic and stressful but it’s all worth it in the end.

GL: What are some of the more difficult experiences you have had working at the cake shop?

Paul: Working at The Cake Shop can be very difficult at times – when you have a lot of work to do the pressure is on to meet your deadlines. When things go wrong everything seems to go wrong at once but, because of the nature of my job, some of my worst experiences are also some of my best. For example, you have a cake rapidly melting in the heat and it’s causing the icing to stretch and expand at the sides, you have to act quickly and work out why it went wrong and how to stop it. I will then learn from that and move on, turning it into a good experience.

GL: What do you love about Grenoble?

Paul: I love the way Grenoble is so small yet has lots of big name stores here and nice shops, it gives it a city feel but at heart it has the community of a town. It’s very hard to explain but it makes it a very nice place to be, surrounded by all the mountains. I also love Grenoble’s cosmopolitan feel, the mix of all different nationalities and the students.

GL: What are your plans for the future?

Paul: I would love to take The Cake Shop to Paris; I would love to get back to the buzz of the city, its pulse runs through my blood. I would definitely consider doing my own business in Paris – what would be really good is if I could set up a company in France that manufactures or imports all the products that you can’t get here, all the kinds of things we sell in The Cake Shop. That way people like Ariane wouldn’t be my competitor but my more like a colleague as I would be helping her keep her shop stocked with my products.

Part III

12:00 pm

Lunchtime. The microwave cart is wheeled in, desks are cleared, chairs fetched. The students eat in the classroom. The children are expected to be settled quietly in their chairs, ask to go wash their hands, and then ask to get their lunchboxes before they are allowed to eat. Meanwhile, the child in charge of setting the table this week goes to get the silverware and dishes.   

12:30 pm

Everyone is finally sitting and has more or less the complete tableware set in front of them: plate, fork, knife, little yogurt spoon, and plastic cup (Martine’s cabinet has slowly but surely been rid of all the glassware glasses, not intentionally).

The table setting procedure always takes much longer than is logically necessary, probably because the child assigned to set the table is for some reason 90% of the time the same small boy, who due to his diminutive size and severely ADD nature seems the absolute worst person in the room to give the task of distributing various separate pieces of cutlery to students sitting in disorganized clumps around the big room, not to mention that when you see him trying to lug the heavy glass water pitchers around to each table you get the sinking sense of futility of watching someone trying very hard to complete a Sisyphean task. Half the pitcher will have been emptied on the floor by the time he gets to the table, and he’ll be sent to get more in five minutes.

I send the children in groups of two or three to the cloakroom to get their lunchboxes. I imagine that you can tell a lot about the home life of individual children from their lunchboxes. A lot of the older children seem to have the freedom to creatively fashion their own concept of a meal; there’s a group of three girls (who aggressively defy the assertion that social cliques don’t exist in small schools) that bring their lunches in family-style portions to share with each other: a bag of Lay’s potato chips, a Tupperware box of pasta and sauce, an entire sleeve of Speculoos cookies.

The Anglophone children belong to a different breed of household, one that clearly holds in contempt the irresponsible consumption of low nutrient-to-calorie ratio foods and environmentally unfriendly packaging. S—, a six-year-old with extraordinary feminine style (how a child of that age is able to exude such class is beyond me), declares matter-of-factly that she hates ice cream and cake. Her treat of choice is the green pressed seaweed paper that sushi rolls come wrapped in — in French it’s translated as algae, which expresses better, I think, the total bizarreness of a six-year-old reveling in the taste of a seaweed wrap (imagine an apple cheeked little girl saying with a charming missing-front-tooth smile, “My favorite food is algae”).  

1:15 pm

The kids are fairly hopping to get outside after a full morning of being together in one room. They go into the cloakroom to remove their slippers and put on their outside shoes, most of which resemble work boots or what English people call “wellies” rather than the slick bright white Pumas or the metallically shiny girl-sized heels (!) public school children wear. This is because the playground provided for amusement and the venting of various child frustrations during the lunch recess is not actually a playground, it’s an empty field behind the Montessori school building accessible only by a quick jump across a ditch (a wide step for you or me, a brief air-bound thrill for the 11-year-olds, and an unbreachable chasm for the 3-year-olds, who nevertheless enjoy the jump immensely so long as you’re holding their hand.

Supervising, I can’t help thinking that innovative playground developers, with their tangle of curved colored bars and knotted rope systems, are entirely missing the point — the kids have more fun rolling around in the grass and throwing rocks at trees than with any preconstructed equipment education authorities can buy. I’m reminded how innocent and sweet children are at heart when I hear G— and S— playing a sort of tag-zombie game which seems to consist of yelling “I’m going to suck your brain!” and attempting to grab the skull of another player.

2:00 pm

Emilie and I file the children back into school, past the company workers in button up shirts and pencil skirts taking their smoke break. Monday afternoon is devoted to art class and Spanish class, and the children are sent in small groups to participate in those activities. Otherwise, the students can continue the projects of the morning. The students complete impressive individual projects throughout the year that don’t sacrifice depth or quality for the lack of collaborators.

S— is working on a postcard project; she’s contacting friends and acquaintances across the U.S., asking them to send her postcards at the Montessori school address, teaching her about their town or state. She’s gathered a large number of postcards and will organize them into a visual presentation. O— has completed a project about the state of Israel, its history, people, and culture, and the poster is hanging on the classroom wall.

One of the goals of the Montessori school is to effectively link all subjects together in the child’s mind; to create a truly interdisciplinary understanding of the world. This objective makes for very creative project ideas, and the results are evident in the variety of student-made artwork and presentations on display around the school.

3:30 pm

The school day is over, but many students will stay for the next one to two hours, playing the gymnasium or participating in an activity Martine or Emilie has organized. I, however, say my rounds of “See you next week” and am out the door.

The next day I’ll be at one of the public primary schools in Grenoble. Not being an education expert, I’m not going to offer my judgment of the effectiveness of the education system in public schools compared to the Montessori approach. The purposes and needs of the two school systems are vastly different and require different methods of teaching and classroom management. Montessori schools may give more individual attention, but they also provide a lot less guidance and structure. This may or may not work well, depending on the character of each individual child. One thing I do know, however, is that I’ll be doing a lot more yelling in my public school.

Part I

Part II

For more information:
http://www.montessori-grenoble.com/UK/school-montessori-grenoble.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori

The crèche: in safe hands

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple blogs on his experience with French childcare in Grenoble and the difficulties getting that all-important place at a crèche.

Handing over your baby to complete strangers is not first on our list of desirable experiences but it is an everyday reality for working parents. France has a relatively high proportion of working mothers and an enviably fertile population, but a surprisingly short basic maternity leave. These are just some of the contributing factors that necessitate widely available and affordable childcare, which in turn do their bit to help get the balance right between being a parent and having a career.

The scolaire system

Getting a place at a municipal crèche, however, is notoriously difficult in Grenoble (and probably elsewhere in France). The largest intake of babies is in September when toddlers doff their mortar boards and graduate to Ecole Maternelle (nursery school), freeing up space for the newbies. Thus, unless you are confident of conceiving in accordance with the demands of l’année scolaire, you may find yourself out of luck when your congé de maternité or parental comes to an end. (For your info, nine months of pregnancy added to around three months of post-natal maternity leave - give or take – would make this September a good time to conceive in order for your baby to get into the crèche in September 2011 – you know what to do!).

Such crèches are subsidised by the Mairie, but parents still pay the bill depending on their means: making them affordable to all. The charges are subject deductions from the CAF before you see them, so that there is none of the time-consuming reimbursement admin which affects visits to many doctors. For my wife and I, it amounts to about two euro an hour. What’s more, thereafter, you can declare this expense against your annual income tax obligations (impôts) which sees this figure drop by a further 50%. In short, the piggy bank can be left intact for the time being.

In my experience the crèches are clean, well-equipped and staffed, with fresh meals prepared on the premises and bubbly personnel. At the end of each day I am given a detailed report on my daughter’s food intake, sleep time and number of nappies (couches) filled with unnerving precision. I am always reassured she is in safe hands, free to explore a terrain filled with ludic objects to peruse, which makes a change from her reordering my CD collection or trying to rewire a wall socket chez moi. 

The nanny state

The alternative is a crèche familiale: effectively smaller groups of children cared for at somebody’s home. This is billed as a municipal service and thus subsidised but is closer in spirit to having a private nanny. In our case, we were desperate for the lively atmosphere of the crèche for our daughter, with the different carers and larger number of children. Whereas many people appreciate the crèche familiale, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving our daughter with only one person: a person who wields such an enormous influence in a child’s life yet does so largely away from the scrutiny from her peers.

Although I’m sure the majority of women who work at crèches familiales are professional, I have heard of instances in which they were not. And if you refuse the woman the Mairie offers you, they immediately blacklist you and you have no chance of getting subsidised municipal childcare. It seemed that if we accepted this process, it was a big step into the unknown. Private nannies were also scarce at the time, and among those we met who weren’t fully booked there were some who didn’t seem to even particularly like children. These individuals were also unwilling to accept temporary terms with us while we waited for a place at the crèche to become available, as they wanted a longer commitment.

In my local quartier, the municipal crèche is situated ideally at two minutes walk from our flat, and would have stood as a mocking reminder of what we had missed if we hadn’t got a place there. Finally we resolved to make an arrangement whereby our daughter attended the halte garderie, which is effectively the same as the crèche but only for up to two days maximum. Normally this is organised on an ad hoc basis or, as in our case, with temporary rolling contracts. Luckily we were able to make other arrangements for the remaining hours that we needed but it allowed us to ingratiate ourselves a little with the staff there and secure our position on the waiting list until a place made itself available. This happened in three months.

Baby betrayal

At first our daughter was crestfallen upon being left at the crèche, acting as if having befallen an enormous betrayal. Traitor! she seemed to cry upon being passed to the crèche staff. There is an integration system by which you can leave your child at the crèche for a couple of hours at a time, gradually building up to full days, but babies are an unpredictable bunch. One day you feel a guilty tingle of satisfaction when your baby cries on being handed over to a carer: yes, my baby still loves me best! The next day your child will cry when you come to pick her up. Traitor! you seethe in silence. In the parental logic, the latter is just the baby ‘releasing tension’ at the end of the day.

The inevitable inconvenience to all this contact with other children is what has seemed like an endless loop of spectacular illnesses. The first time you see a baby projectile-vomit (à la L’exorciste), it is terrifying, but it is impressive what one can become inured to. The winter just past has been a hard one: with the somewhat false alarm of swine flu providing unwelcome distraction from the lurid retinue of tummy bugs and gastros doing the rounds. At the crèche, there is no escape from the steep curve towards stronger immune systems, but this has to happen at some point.

The three days a week my daughter spends at the crèche currently provide most of her contact with French, despite the efforts of certain staff members to speak English to me. As my wife and I speak English at home we hope this will be an effective path towards her obtaining bilingualism; but it is interesting to see the different phonemes she manages in her babillage. Among the distinctly Anglophone syllables we have started to identify some impressively rolled Rs. Once she yelled what was clearly a resounding Merde!, but I’m sure she didn’t learn that down at the crèche.

If you want my advice, persistence is key. Where there is will there is a way.

'Retour à Grenoble'. Photo: Loin des yeux

Without wireless in Grenoble? Don’t want to use an internet café or pay to buy a clé USB from SFR or Orange? Read on for sites of reliable and free internet access at various points throughout the city. 

By Anne S.

Pain et Cie
1 bis, rue de Lafayette
Tram: Sainte-Claire les Halles (B)

Pain et Cie is located very close to Place Notre Dame and is a great brunch/lunch/breakfast place. It’s a casual, relaxed spot with long wooden tables and a nice outdoor terrace as well. They have a bunch of tartines and jus de fruits bio and an incontournable spread of brunch items – it’s usually packed on Sunday mornings with everyone from students to families to young couples. They have a good free wireless network (although one or two times it didn’t work for me) and the big tables are excellent working spaces.

Pros: I’ve seen quite a few people working on computers there and the food is really good and reasonably priced. The restaurant as a whole has a nice atmosphere and the people who work there are also very friendly. Definitely my favorite wifi spot in Grenoble proper (excluding the university).

Cons: Pigeons sometimes fly in and out, which is alarming, but has nothing to do with computers. Also, there are only a few outlets, so bring your computer fully charged. 

Université de Grenoble
Saint Martin d’Hères campus
Tram: Bibliothèques Universitares (B/C)

This was my preferred point of Internet connectivity in Grenoble, as I was a part-time student at the university. The Bibliothèque Universitaire has plenty of tables, plugs, and excellent connectivity, as do a number of other sites on campus. The Fac also offers an opportunity for connection that is not a coffee shop or eating establishment, so it is theoretically one of the few “free” hotspots on this list.

Pros: The majority of campus buildings are wireless, and the Internet is fast and reliable.

Cons: You must be enrolled at the university to gain access to the network, if I’m not mistaken. It’s locked unless you have a login from their registrar. 

French Coffee Shop
3 place Claveyson
Tram: Sainte-Clare les Halles (B) or Maison de Tourisme (A/B)

This coffee shop is actually a chain with a number of locations around France. I got the impression that it is modeled after an American-style coffee shop (think Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, or Tully’s), with blended ice drinks, smoothies, and muffins. It attracts a relatively young clientele, including a considerable amount of foreign (mostly American) students. The wireless network here was secure (password protected) and very reliable, and there are also a number of outlets to plug a power cord.

Pros: Outlets! Comfortable couches! And if you’re not in the mood for pastries, excellent chocolate muffins!

Cons: Do you really want to spend all your days at a place called French Coffee Shop?

Le 5 (Musée de Grenoble)
5 place de Lavalette
Tram: Musée de Grenoble (B)

Le 5 is the restaurant attached to the Musée but, of course, you can eat there with out paying admission to the museum. I’ve sat in there some afternoons with a coffee or a tea doing work on my computer and it’s a nice, quiet place. 

Pros: Quiet place to get things done, nice tables. At the Musée which is a nice change of pace from the average internet cafe. 

Cons: Like all museum restaurants, prices are a little higher. I also felt a little weird using my computer in the restaurant, but in the afternoon (around 4ish) when things were slow and I was lounging around with an espresso it seemed to be fine. 

Casino Géant
76 avenue Gabriel Péri, Saint Martin d’Hères
Tram: Neyrpic Belledone (C)

I’ve never actually tried this one out but I’ve been told that the shopping center here has free wifi. Where you’d use it in a grocery store is beyond me, but that’s that.

Around town

The ville de Grenoble has launched a public wireless access campaign, which gives users access in a variety of public spaces around the centre ville. Right now these spots include Parc Paul Mistral, Place Grenette, Place Saint-Andre, Place Victor Hugo, le Jardin de Ville, and le Jardin des plantes. The network (wifigrenoble or Ville-de-Grenoble) is somewhat reliable, with varying degrees of connectivity depending on where you are, but last time I checked the wifi in Parc Paul Mistral did not allow access to various media sharing sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Hulu.

Pros: Internet is accessible almost anywhere in the centre ville, including cafes or restaurants near the hotspots. I never lived in centre-ville proper, so I wouldn’t know if it is accessible if you live there, but maybe someone else can answer that question.

Cons: Checking your e-mail in Parc Paul Mistral? Really? It’s kind of awkward. Also, I have never seen anyone using a computer in that park, and when it’s sunny you get that whole problem of not being able to see the screen. You’d also run a higher risk of getting your computer stolen as it’s pretty open public place. More information here.

Also, I was told last spring that the Bibliothèque in centre ville was getting wifi, but am not sure if that has happened yet. Can anyone confirm this?

Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble

Grenoble Life’s Christina Rebuffet-Broadus walks Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble’s foremost covered market and former convent, now site to a “divine experience of another kind”.

France wouldn’t be the same without the places that fire the wanderlust of francophiles everywhere. There are the cafés for people-watching and sipping an espresso in the sun. There are the Gothic cathedrals with spires straight out of a Victor Hugo novel. Then there are the open air markets, a sort of grand mass for the foodies of France. Almost every Sunday, I show up for service at Les Halles Sainte Claire for my weekly indulgence.

The Sainte Claire site once offered a divine experience of another kind. From the 15^th century, Clairisse nuns saved the city’s soul from inside the convent that once stood here. As industrialization conquered 19^th century France, the citizens of Grenoble needed physical rather than spiritual nourishment and the city decided to build a modern marketplace—the Halles Saint Claire, in 1874. The Grenoblois have been “going marketing,” as Julia Child would say, at Place Sainte Claire ever since.

Inside the Eiffel-esque glass and metal building, all those things that we expats love about French markets swirl about. There are a few cheese stalls with wide selections of what France does best. A baker offers classic baguettes and an assortment of more sophisticated pains. There are meat, fish, and poultry sellers for the protein. A few stands offer ready to eat delights if you can’t face the stove or wait to get back home to dig in.

There are a few stands that have upped my consumption of certain dishes. I’m almost on a first name basis with the sauerkraut lady (I said almost) of La Fée Maison. This young woman is like my French food fairy godmother. Ever tried to find good take-home choucroute in Grenoble? Well, here it is. This woman hails from the hearty land of Alsace and regularly goes back to select her cabbage farmers. She’ll also help you pick out the meats to serve with all that fermented cabbage—there’s a secret to choosing, but you’ll have to ask the expert.

Al Dente is the other stand that makes mush of my will power. Their homemade gnocchi measures up to the store bought stuff about the same way discount Carrefour glace does to artisanal Italian gelato. They always have a few olives set on the counter for sampling, but it’s the colorful antipasti and dried fruits that will catch your culinary eye.

Les Halles Sainte Claire isn’t just about the food—the sellers are as much a part of the experience as the food they sell. There’s the Harley riding chicken man that invited my husband and I to a rockabilly soirée at a neon-lit biker bar somewhere on the route nationale between Crolles and Chambéry. If you’re looking for a juicy poulet de Bresse or a jumping Teddy Boy joint, he’s your man. Catty corner to the chicken man, there’s the Chesire cat-grinning butcher. This man was born to be a butcher. Not so much for the kooky smile as for the savory paupiettes de veau that he ties up by the dozen. Go early if you plan on picking some up.

In fact, go early period, especially on Saturdays. Like anywhere in France, Saturday is synonymous with shopping crowds and trying to navigate the alley ways with a caddy full of groceries can be an exercise in patience and learning to live without personal space. Accept now that you will be trampled by little old ladies. That’s when it’s time to shop not in the halles, but around the halles.

“Ooh, pour ça il faut voir avec ma femme là-bas, c’est elle qui fait la cuisine et je suis pas encore mort! C’est que c’est pas trop mauvais!”

More brouhaha from the fruit & vegetable man?

Much of the brouhaha outside comes from the vegetable man who converses with his customers as if they all wore hearing aids. That’s how everyone in line learned that the secret of sautéeing buttery chanterelles baffled me. But I got a good recipe from his wife, not to mention a free bouquet of parsley, and a complimentary kiwi before being sent off with a few kilos of fruits and vegetables (my mom would be so proud) for around 10 euros. The quantity of produce carted away always seems to defy the low price and really, who doesn’t love those hollering market sellers?

The market at Les Halles Sainte Claire is convenient as the sellers set up shop every day except Monday, until around 1 p.m. On Fridays and Saturdays, the inside stands even stay open until 7 p.m. so that shoppers can prepare for weekend dinners with friends. Shopping starts as early as 6 a.m., so technically you could pick up some groceries before going to work.

Marketing can be hard fun. After a morning of poring over produce and poultry, you’ll find me at Le Zinc, a postcard of a bistro that usually has a few tables set up just opposite Les Halles. Watching this picturesque part of France from behind a grand crème offers the perfect reward for loading up on all those vegetables.

Sainte Claire, paradoxically, is unique and much like the outdoor markets all over Grenoble. It reminds us of the France that Julia Child loved, the France that M.F.K. Fisher praised, a France that still exists somewhat, defying the million metre carré Carrefours. A France that wants to enjoy grocery shopping as foreplay to a good meal. Customers come to savor the food, not just consume it. The nuns may be gone, but Sainte Claire still serves up a certain spiritual nourishment for the gourmets of Grenoble.

Gratin dauphinois. Photo: Marylise Doctrinal

It’s a no-brainer really. Grenoble Life wants your comments about favourite things to see, do, eat and drink in Grenoble and its surroundings.

I have been asked by French Entrée to write a post on what to do and see in Grenoble. Upon tackling this in earnest I found myself baulking at the task. An increasingly poorly written list began with a walk to the Bastille, continuing through the various museums to barely legible mentions of the more attractive squares in the old town. Then, I thought, rather than regurgitating the generic Grenoble itinerary, I thought I would solicit a more idiosyncratic list of Grenoblois pleasures, open to suggestions from YOU. What and where do you like to eat, where do you drink and people-watch? Tell me about your favourite local walks, markets, parks, neighbourhoods.

Here is my idiosyncratic inventory of Grenoble favourites, a by-no-means-comprehensive list of reasons to be cheerful. I’m sorry if this heralds few surprises and all seems a bit generic … please use the comments box for your personal lists below.

• ‘Glacier Gonzales’ (Rue Servan). As good as ice cream gets, in my view.
• Driving along the Voie Sur Berge, with its colourful diaporama of the Quai opposite, reminds me of the climax of The Italian Job, even if my Citroën Saxo is not a Mini Cooper and I’m in the wrong country.
• Cycling the banks of the Isère, with its generous network of lanes.
• The crazy geometric paving stones on the University campus. Far out!
• The crumbling beauty of the St Laurent district.
• Drinking kirs and people watching on Place St André (aka Place du Trib) in the summer.
• Sitting on the sofas at the musée de Grenoble when it’s quiet, which it usually is.
• Tartes and hot chocolate at ‘Tarteline’ (Grande Rue).
• Fromage blanc at the dairy farm at Charmant Som, with bilberry coulis.
• Fondue at ‘A Confesse’ in St Laurent
• Parmigiana at ‘Ciao a Te’ (Rue de la Paix)
• Pizza in general. But if I am to be perfectly honest, my favourite pizzas come from a camionette in Montbonnot rather than one of the many along the Quai or elsewhere in Grenoble itself. However, it is my contention that you can find a good pizza more easily in Grenoble than in the tourist hot-spots in Italy itself.
• The tram. Being on the tram makes me happy, even it doesn’t go anywhere near my home. Watching it glide onto campus or snake through the old town makes me misty-eyed with pride and affection for my adopted home town.
• Bastille Day fireworks at Parc Paul Mistral.
• Being able to watch a football match at the Stade des Alpes and then stroll back into town for a beer. Even if the standard of football from the home side has been appalling this season.
• La Nef and Le Club. Old school cinemas with dependable art house programmes.
• Gratin dauphinois when it is freshly made (i.e., not resurrected after deep-freeze hibernation). To my memory, the best I’ve had in a restaurant was at the ‘Café des Alpes’ on the way up to Le Sappey ski resort.
• La Fête de la Musique. A nationwide event, admittedly, but one that impressed upon me something about the French. In England such an event could not happen without copious amounts of drink and drugs, and thus a heavy police presence – a sentiment echoed in Lucy Wadham’s The Secret Life of France (a book well worth reading by the way).
• The old town. I was surprised when I came to Grenoble how many French people – Grenoblois or not – were dismissive about the city, saying it wasn’t beautiful. It may not have great monuments of individual interest but I like the character of the old town and its attractive squares. You can give me this over the British high street, with its identikit shopping precincts, any day.
• The white-capped Belledonne massif, providing its luminous theatre scenery to the city.

Ok, your turn …

Just landed in Grenoble? Don't worry, there's a club for you. Photo: Guillaume Brialon

Just landed in Grenoble? Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple gives his rough guide to Grenoble’s expat clubs and Anglophone businesses and services.

I have been asked by the French Entrée website to write a post with general advice for expats in Grenoble and the surrounding area, including relevant clubs and associations to join. Where to begin? Maybe you have already heard claims that Grenoble has one of the biggest Anglophone communities of any French city. I’m not sure of the real stats, and I will resist the temptation to invent some here, but suffice to say you stand a good chance of meeting other English-speakers whether you wish to or not.

It can be a bone of contention. Some people get defensive about the expat thing, saying something along the lines of, “I didn’t come to France to meet other [insert relevant English-speaking nationality here], I came to meet French people etc.” I don’t really subscribe to this view. When I lived in the UK, I always gravitated towards people who were very international in their outlook, and counted many cultures among those I called my friends. Just because I came to live in France, doesn’t mean that I should only spend time with French people just to feel good about myself. Among the expat groups and associations listed below, one may find many Anglo-French couples, so-called ‘third culture kids’, and all manner of general pan-European activity that belies the widely held view of what expat communities are.

Most new English-speaking Grenoble residents, particularly those with families, are likely to encounter Open House, the city’s long-established and possibly largest expat association. Among the activities Open House organizes are children’s parties, excursions, wine tastings, lunches, outdoor activities, book groups, coffee meetings and French-English language exchange.

The more student-orientated Happy People 38 organizes intercultural social events and language exchanges. Meanwhile, Celtic Connection promotes Irish and Scottish culture and sport in Grenoble and hosts Hallowe’en and St Patrick’s parties, a Burns’ supper, and summer picnics. Scottish expats and a host of other nationals can also be found at a weekly Knitting Bee at Café Leyritz, Place Vaucanson, every Tuesday afternoon at 2pm.

Although not Anglophone I feel duty-bound to make you aware of the lovely people at Le Club Danemark – Rhône Alpes, who are known to organise Glögg parties, Danish lessons and excursions, including cross country skiing. For more info contact: danemark-rhonealpes@live.com

English Talk Radio, presented by Vivian Draper, is a bi-monthly show on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble.  The show talks about film, theatre, finance, restaurants and travel, and has a variety of topical local guests; every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble.

For those expats who want their young children to have plenty of contact with the English language, there are some associations which can help with this, including Communication Café and ABC Anglais. Alternatively, French language classes for adults can be obtained from a variety of institutions and associations outlined in depth here.

If you are looking for American or British style cakes there is The Cake Shop and Bookworm Café. The latter also hosts book and poetry groups, language classes, local artists’ exhibitions and occasional musical performances. They also buy and sell second-hand English books, and have English newspapers and magazines to peruse. Furthermore, if you meet French friends yet to be convinced of the potential merits of American cuisine, Pumpkins might be wise place to convert them.

If you can’t find the book you are looking for at Bookworm Café there are two Anglophone libraries, La Bibliotèque Anglophone de Meylan and the English Library at Babel, which also runs book groups for teenagers and adults. Many municipal libraries also have English-language selections, particularly the International Public Library.

Given the dubious French proclivity for dubbing foreign language films into la langue maternelle, you may want to exercise caution when going to the cinema. Le Club (rue du Phalanstère) and La Nef (boulevard Edouard-Rey) are two theatres with dependably interesting programmes, all in version originale. For more info on the city’s movie theatres and film festivals, check out this comprehensive guide.

For church-goers, members from about 10 different denominations and 15 nationalities are welcome to attend The English Speaking Church of Grenoble, which also has a programme of social activities including dances, crafts nights, family evenings, visits to local attractions and walks.

In terms of professional development, the most dynamic and active association is the Working Women’s Network of Grenoble, which organizes networking lunches, workshops and seminars, and is run by a very helpful and efficient body of women. For opportunities to do volunteer work there is VSArt, an association that brings cultural opportunities to disadvantaged and elderly people. The Grenoble chapter was set up and is run by American Meredith Charreyron.

Grenoble also has a number of amateur English-speaking theatre groups. Students of different ages from Cité Internationale Scolaire de Grenoble participate in an annual pantomime and Upstage, respectively. The latter puts on very high quality plays every year at Ste-Marie-d’en-Bas, a 166-seat theatre off Place Notre Dame. Likewise, students of the English department at Stendhal University put on productions on campus every year. English-speakers are also invited to join a new Grenoble English Theatre Group, run by Nathalie Joshua. Novices welcome. For more information contact her at nathaliejoshua@hotmail.com

For health and well-being, Anglo-style therapeutic massage and aromatherapy can be obtained from Amy Cannata (waterfallwellness@me.com) and Shiatsu massage from Rebecca Skillman.

Finally, of course, I mustn’t forget to mention your very own Grenoble Life, which has articles and practical info for English speaking residents past, present and future. It also includes photo sharing, free classified ads and interviews with prominent members of the Anglophone community.

If I have forgotten any essential clubs or organizations, please use the comments box below to add to the list.

Quatre cafés. Photo: designwallah

Gill Baconnier has lived in France for over twenty years – seven of them in Grenoble. A former feature writer for an English regional magazine, her articles about life in France can now be found at her blog French Windows. She has kindly agreed to share this article about French cafés and bars with Grenoble Life.

There is a wonderful cartoon by the French cartoonist, Sempé, which depicts a man standing at one end of a café-lined boulevard with an anxious expression on his face. In the next frame, he has emerged at the far end of the boulevard, having slipped around the backstreets and avoided having to walk past all those people-watchers. Believe me, I know how he feels – it takes great courage. In fact, I recently tripped and fell headlong on the pavement in front of a dozen or so cappuccino-sipping café customers. I do believe they were mildly amused – after all, it’s not every day you see a plump middle-aged English woman perform a perfect flying tackle on a lamppost.

Taverns have been around forever but cafés were opened specifically to sell coffee. The first coffee house was opened in Constantinople in the fifteenth century. When the new drink arrived in France in the seventeenth century it quickly became fashionable and in 1686, the first French coffee house – or café – was opened in Paris. It was called the Procope after its Sicilian owner and soon became a meeting-place for writers, artists and philosophers such as Voltaire, Balzac and Victor Hugo. A second café – La Table Ronde – was opened in Grenoble in 1739. Situated opposite the law courts and the theatre, it has had its fair share of famous clientele: Jean-Jacques Rousseau came here, perhaps after one of his Solitary Walks and so did Choderlos de Laclos, possibly in search of a Liaison Dangereuse. Sarah Bernardt and Fernandel drank here as did Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and a host of other actors and singers.

There is a café for everyone in France. If you are of a philosophical bent – like Sartre, for example, who spent most of his life in the Café de Flore in Paris – then the café-philo is for you. You don’t have to drink much but you do have to be able to spout a load of old rot about the meaning – or not – of life. My daughter went once and came back either drunk or extremely bewildered, I’m not sure – in any case, she was completely incoherent. She thought so…therefore, she was…or something like that.

Then there is the café littéraire where completely sober people stand up and recite poetry or prose and then talk about it over a drink or two. To be honest, I’ve never been to one of these – they remind me too much of Eng Lit lectures at University and when I go to a café, I want a drink and a good laugh – not an in-depth discussion of limping iambics.

The Irish pub has become very fashionable recently. Every French town has a Shannon Pub or a Shamrock Bar. These places are usually furnished with wooden benches and trestle tables while the walls are hung with anything remotely Celtic: Guinness adverts, pictures of Donegal, leprechauns, Aran jumpers etc. For some reason, Saint Patrick’s night is very popular in France and most Irish pubs will be holding events such as céilidhs to the accompaniment of fiddles, flutes and bearded bard. Sometimes they get it wrong, of course, and I personally know of two ‘Irish’ pubs called The Loch Ness and The Queen’s Head. Kilts, Celts – it’s all the same to them…

Another recent phenomenon was the chicha-café. They didn’t last long because of the anti-smoking law which defeated the object somewhat. They had names like ‘Oasis’ and ‘Le bar à Chicha’ and had exotic Arabian nights-type décor. Apparently (the information comes from my daughter, who is – as you may have guessed – a regular café-goer) one would lounge around on silken cushions, drinking mint tea and taking regular puffs of fruit- flavoured tobacco from a hookah pipe. In fact, my daughter’s birthday present to me a few years ago was an evening out in a chicha bar but I was afraid I would cramp her style somewhat – and I wasn’t completely sure I would be able to heave myself up off those cushions at the end of the evening, my knees being what they are. I settled for bath salts instead.

Then of course, there is the café de la gare: the station café. Seedy, moody, depressing plastic-table-topped-Gauloises-smoke-filled meeting places…the stuff obscure French films are made of, quoi … unfortunately, they are rapidly being replaced by cheap and cheerful American fast-food outlets – not half as romantic, I’m afraid, but just as seedy. And of course if you lit up a Gauloise you’d be thrown out.

The French bistrot is just a café with a name of obscure origin. A popular explanation is that it comes from the Russian word for ‘quick’ and originates from the period of the Russian occupation of Paris. However, this is much disputed and the true meaning remains a mystery. Who cares anyway? It’s just a café with a fancy name…

Bars – as far as I can gather – differ from cafés in that they cater for locals who just want a shot of pastis and a read of the newspaper – and perhaps a bet on the horses. The bar-PMU doubles as a betting shop and if you accidentally wander into one of these establishments you will be met with cold stares and frosty silence. There will always be a television in the corner broadcasting a horse race and a burly barman who will pointedly ignore you.

In all these places, you can sit at a table – either inside or out – and expect a waiter to come and serve you. This is the theory. In practice, you sometimes have to do a lot of coughing and finger-raising before you manage to catch his eye. And don’t be fooled: French waiters have phenomenal memories. You can give the most complicated order and they will have no trouble at all remembering it along with three or four other orders from other tables. They will also have no trouble at all remembering whether or not you gave a tip the first time – and treat you accordingly on your next visit. You have been warned…

Some Grenoble cafés you might like to visit:

Cafés-philo :

La Table Ronde (café philo-littéraire), 7 place St André

Le Tonneau de Diogène (café-philo), 6 place Notre Dame

Irish pubs:

The Druid’s Pub, 3 Rue Diodore Rahoult,

O’Callaghan Pub: 2 Place de Bérulle      

And if these are not to your taste, there are plenty more to choose from here.

Villeneuve d’Uriage

Rebecca Skillman talks to residents of the hamlet Villeneuve d’Uriage, near Grenoble. She shares with us her discoveries about issues of sustainability and community in Alpine village life.

Perched above the thermal spa town of Uriage, the idyllically located hamlet of Villeneuve d’Uriage is home to around 150 people. I was curious about what attracts people to live here; how people relate to each other in the village; and whether there is more to the hamlet than simply “Grenoble satellite”? 

I talked to three couples who have made the village their home. The interviews reveal the similarities and differences in how we view “nature”, our overall need to connect with each other and our search for sustainability in the 21^st century. 

Kelli (Project Manager, HP) and Olivier (Sales Manager, HP)  

Kelli: I was born and raised in Boise in the US. The decision to move to France wasn’t difficult – this was the right place to be at this time in our lives. What was hard was leaving family and friends. I told myself: part of my cost of living is getting back to the US as often as possible. That’s how I talked myself into making it work, and it has. 

People here have been very kind. At the same time I miss the feeling of community I had back home. In Boise, when you do something like running errands, you have a list of people you’re gonna do things for. You walk in and out your neighbours’ homes – you don’t knock – and it’s very informal. You garden together and you build your houses together. One time my mother’s basement was flooded and suddenly there’s a whole crowd of people fixing the problem and drinking beer, making a party out of it. If there’s an issue, you sort it but have a good time doing it. But here in the village it’s just the two of us. 

I’m very happy here but if I could change anything it would be the distance between Boise and France!  And, day to day, I wouldn’t choose again to work from home. Much as I love our place it’s one of the things that’s slowed me becoming part of the community. 

Olivier: I was looking for a balance between proximity to Grenoble, for my job, and a village that is really alive – people working here, farmers, tractors passing the house. Other mountain villages may be pretty but at 9am they are empty. When I see a tractor here, I’m happy. And it’s the first time in my life I feel content coming back home after work. 

Living in this area, I’m ideally placed for my outdoor passions. I love wild places and I like to spend my weekends rock climbing and skiing. What drives me is being challenged by nature, having the feeling that it’s stronger than me. The down side is that it means I’m rarely home at weekends, and that doesn’t help for integrating with the community. 

Pierre Yves (Research Scientist, CNRS) and Françoise (Research Engineer, CNRS) 

Françoise: My husband, Pierre Yves, discovered the village 15 years ago – and I wasn’t sure, because the road gets very iced up in winter. But the spirit of the village worked its charm on me – even though I didn’t know the place at that time – and I was captivated. 

What appeals to me is that the people who live here are very close to the natural elements, flora and fauna and this closeness expresses itself in the way they rear their animals, and gives the village a special kind of energy. I love being able to walk in the streets in the evening and having nothing but pleasant surprises, and smiles, in my encounters with the neighbours. 

With regard to village life, when we first lived here I was involved with a village association. We organised several events to help people meet each other. As time went by that stopped because we ran out of energy. But now something similar is happening around Alain and Yvette’s farm. 

The people who work on the farm have an attitude and philosophy that’s a little different from mainstream agriculture. For several years they have produced organic wheat using an ancient stone mill to create flour. From this they make bread, the main source of income. Around the farm, there is a small kernel of people who have created an association, Grains de beauté, whose main aim is to promote contact, and a meeting place in the widest sense of the word. This word “meeting” is a common theme in everything organised. For example, it could be a willow basket or bread-making workshop, or the regular choral events.

Pierre Yves: This hamlet is probably unique in the Grenoble area: it is small, isolated and surrounded by nature. The thing that struck me when I first arrived, well before I knew people here, was the timelessness of the place. When you go to Alain and Yvette’s farm, you enter another age; the place feels unchanged in centuries.

Referring to what Françoise said about how people relate to each other …  she mentioned that everyone is friendly. This didn’t happen as easily as that. What’s interesting to me is that on the one hand – of course – there are different factions. The other side of this coin is that there is no such thing as anonymity in the village. 

In Villeneuve there are three broad groups of people: those who have always been here (mostly former farmers), new arrivals such as us (one is a “new arrival” for a long time!), and farmers actively farming. The fact that most of the farming around the village is organic, and connected with nature, contributes to the atmosphere of the hamlet and the area around it. 

The smallness of the hamlet, surrounded by nature, resonates very strongly with me. We aren’t going to be able to forever extend the metropolitan areas; towns, in general, are located in the middle of the richest agricultural land. So at some point this urban expansion will have to stop. Villeneuve feels like a potential model of how we will need to live our lives in the future. 

The development of non-agricultural activities around the farm is, for me, very much linked with the question of how we make the transition to sustainable development. The farm, and the activities linked with it, represents a local approach that restores a sense of collaboration, whether material or artistic, on a human scale and in sync with the rhythms of nature. What happens around the farm seems to me to answer a need that isn’t met in the way we currently organise society in terms of how we connect with each other. It is one way in which people are trying to satisfy this need. 

Yvette (agricultrice) and Alain (agriculteur)

Yvette: I’ve always worked on the land and my life in Villeneuve began when I found a small farm to rent, way back when was 17. I arrived on my own and, at that time, there weren’t many women farming in that way. Suddenly everyone was giving me a helping hand. 

I started farming with some goats and, at the same time, Alain started the vegetable garden. From that, he developed into market gardening. Little by little, I wound down the goats and both of us worked in market gardening. We began to integrate ideas from bio-dynamic agriculture – an organic approach using an awareness of the energies that govern the land, the animals and nature in general. 

We lived through a period that was challenging, economically. At that time the local farmers were amused by our way of doing things. But, when we bought the house, that changed our relationship. They saw that we were managing to make a go of farming and we became the enemy by virtue of the fact that, as people working in agriculture, we blocked land that they wanted to develop. Overall, we had 10 years of good relations, 10 of bad and now we have had 10 years of neutrality – but at least no tension. Our closest links are with people who have moved here from elsewhere. 

In terms of the farm itself, there’s potentail for our level of activity to develop. My personal project is to develop animal rearing: in addition to the cows that we already have, introduce a few goats again, some hens and turkeys. 

Alain: This work may evolve through the support of the association ; it isn’t necessarily a profit-making activity. But you or I, or any of the people at Villeneuve realise that it’s important to have animals in a village and it’s also important to have people to look after them. That’s where I see the link between the farm association and the people of Villeneuve and around. People need to realise that animals bring a particular type of energy which helps us to live. It’s not just the responsibility of farm workers, it’s for all of us, for the future, to realise that we have a role and that it’s important to maintain farm animals. 

In today’s society 9 out of 10 people are doing a job that has nothing to do with our physical world. They live in a virtual world in terms of computers and IT, producing things that we don’t need. This may create employment but it isn’t real in the sense that if this work were to suddenly stop … where would we be? We’d still need to feed ourselves, somehow. This way of living and working leads us to completely disconnected lifestyles where we travel and lead our lives in a complex way when there is a far simpler way of nourishing ourselves. This “virtual world”, on the other hand, generates ridiculous ideas … like that it’s ok to take a plane to the other end of the world for 20 euros. For me that is completely unreal! People want to live in a “green” way but they think it’s ok to buy a plane ticket at such a low price?! There’s hard thinking is needed there.  

I believe people have a fundamental need to regenerate, to get together and do things with others. I see an alternative way forward that contacts what’s deeply important for all of us. I mean, what’s fundamental in order for society to develop. For this we need to make contact with each other, starting with those of us who are able to meet around a place and try to move towards something better, socially. 

I think that a farm is the ideal place to start rethinking how society can work. There’s already a structure, and a sense of birth and creativity – animals, the food we produce. From here we can begin, gradually, a project to develop our society.

For further information about the farm association, Grains de Beauté, and its activities, contact the association: beaute.des.graines (at) gmail.com

Mas du Bruchet, Meylan

Anne-Marie Ferguson and her husband run the Le Mas du Bruchet Bed & Breakfast in Meylan. Here is their story of how they set about restoring the building and its original vineyards. 

“In the upper reaches of Meylan, close to the slope of the mountain, there was a small white cottage, surrounded with vineyards and gardens, from where there is a plunging view on the Isère Valley”*, thus spoke Berlioz about this place in his memoirs. 

This is also how my parents discovered, when they bought the property in 1957, that they were the lucky owners of a very special place. When my husband Michael and myself took the place over from my family, the house and its adjacent barn were surrounded by five hectares of land covered with a thick forest. We found an old picture in the Archives of Meylan, showing the white house, surrounded by vineyards. It then went through our mind that we would rather have a view on a vineyard than a forest. And so started our adventure. 

To begin with, Michael took a correspondence course with the Wine School of Beaune in Burgundy, which he completed within two years. The academic part done, the land needed preparation. We hired a landscape company that spent three weeks cutting the trees, digging stumps out and burning them (we had a huge fire going on for all that time). He then levelled the land which was on a 14° slope, and finished preparing it for plantation. 

We then gathered a bunch of devoted friends over one weekend and in spring 1998, planted the first plot of 3,600 wine plants. That lesson learned, for the next plantation of 9,700 plants, we hired professionals, who spent three full days at their task. Michael chose the Verdesse grape varietal, a traditional and local plant that had nearly vanished, as it was considered as a capricious and irregular plant. Michael was convinced that this varietal had qualities that could be the basis for a great wine and set out to prove it. 

The first small harvest being scheduled for three years later, we had time to organize a cellar. We bought a second-hand wine press, a pump, and stainless steel vats from Teisseire in Bernin, from which emanated lovely lemon sirop flagrances! We have since invested in wooden barrels where our vintage is kept for 18 months. 

In 2003, we restored the adjacent barn and built a traditional vaulted wine cellar on its subterranean part. Above, we created four rooms that we turned into a Bed & Breakfast we named Le Mas du Bruchet. We welcome businessmen and travellers from around the world and if they happen to be with us during the harvest and fermentation time, they have the privilege of enjoying the sweet smell of fermenting must as they enter the building! 

In 2004 and again in 2009, our efforts were rewarded as our Verdesse won the gold and silver prize, at the concours des vins de l’Y grenoblois. We surprised many locals, who predicted that we could produce nothing extraordinary with the local grapes and terroir. We have now a regular following of people who come to our cellar on the property, and proudly introduce a bottle of Verdesse wine from Meylan on their table or counter!

* Translation © 2004-2010 Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin. All rights reserved. See the full text here.

The French Paper website

Michael Streeter, Editor of theFrenchPaper, talks to Vivian Draper of English Talk Radio, 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble. Read the full interview here.

Vivian Draper: Hello Michael and welcome to Grenoble, even if only in print. It is eight months since we last spoke about theFrenchPaper, what has happened in those last eight months?

Michael Streeter: It’s been busy! In addition to the main paper we’ve produced a number of supplements to go with it, including one on sport and another on winter sports. We have also been hard at work trying to promote the paper in various places. Obviously as your readers know France is a big country and targeting our audience of English-speakers is not always as easy at it might seem, so this has taken up a lot of time and will continue to, I’m sure.

The main thing, however, is that we’ve been trying to maintain and improve our editorial quality. Our aim has always been to produce a quality newspaper about what’s going on in France with a design and feel that can compete with, for example, the best of British national newspapers. That’s the level we’re aiming for and we spend a lot of time on getting it right. Obviously nobody’s perfect, but I’d like to think we’re moving in the right direction. Certainly the feedback we’ve got from readers has been fantastic. I think they can see that a lot of effort and thought goes into each edition. Above all they seem to find us a grownup and enjoyable read, which is great – that’s what we’re aiming for!

Vivian: Printing newspapers has changed vastly in the last 30 years, no more inky fingers?

Michael: Yes, things have certainly changed since I first started in Fleet Street many years ago. Back then you needed to wear gloves if you were handling bundles of paper. The quality of the presses and inks has improved so much – as has the ability to price good quality colour pages. When you compare newspapers of today with those of 30 years ago they are so much bigger, more colourful and, I would argue, much better value for money.

Vivian: Where is theFrenchPaper published?

Michael: It’s published in London by the printers of The Guardian and Observer, though we have no editorial or other link with them. Why there? Not for any chauvinistic reasons, it’s simply that not many presses can currently print the Berliner format we use (it’s half way between a tabloid and broadsheet in size).

Vivian: Is distribution of theFrenchPaper going smoothly?

Michael: Don’t get me started on distribution! Much as I love France there are still some things that baffle and frustrate me here and newspaper distribution is definitely one of them. Let’s just say it’s a ‘challenge’ getting the right number of copies to where we want them to go each month … and if people find it hard to get hold of a copy at their nearest outlet please do let us know. Things are getting better, but it’s a slow process.

Vivian: What is your average day like?

Michael: The first thing is to keep on top of the news. I’ll always listen to the radio news bulletins in the morning (France Inter usually) and then catch up on the Agence France Presse wire service. I also read news websites, newspapers and the weekly magazines such as L’Express and Nouvel Obs. Much of my day is spent coming up with ideas, commissioning and briefing reporters, editing stories and where necessary sending them back to be re-written! The final week before we go to press is obviously the most hectic, and the working day is rarely under 12 hours. There are pages to proofread, headlines to rewrite, captions to check, all the time making sure we aren’t missing anything major.

Vivian: Not only French news in English, you have broadened your scope to include many other areas?

Michael: I think these days a newspaper has to offer more than ‘just’ the news. As a monthly paper we both have a round up of key stories that have affected France in the previous weeks and offer analysis and commentary on those stories we think really help tell the reader something about France and how it works. On top of that there are features, real life stories, lifestyle, travel, motoring, sport, puzzles and crosswords, commentary, advice pages, financial information, pages with advice for small businesses, food, gardening, nature … it’s quite a full list! I see our mission as being to entertain and stimulate as well as to inform.

Vivian: Such a variety of articles too, does each newspaper have a theme?

Michael: To an extent yes, especially if it’s linked to a time of year, such as Christmas, or the summer holidays or the start of the skiing season. However it’s also important that we cover a broad range of what’s going and we need to appeal to a wide range of people so I don’t like to get too tied down to one theme.

Vivian: What has surprised you most about theFrenchPaper since the first issue?

Michael: One has been the reaction of many readers. I did expect people to like the paper as it’s something different, but I have been amazed just how much some people say they love it. It’s not for everyone of course and some people have complained that there’s ‘too much about France in it’. Fair enough, you can’t please all the people all the time, I guess. Another surprise has been how popular we are with some French people – I really hadn’t expected that.

Vivian: Talk about the technology used in editing a newspaper in 2010

Michael: Where would we be without the internet and email? Information gathering is so much easier now because of websites, searchable databases and libraries and so on, though I still prefer to speak to people directly for information if possible – you always get more like that. In terms of the page layout and design process, it’s simply a question of using a publishing software package and having the skills to use it properly to produce the pages. These are all laid out and designed by our great design team, including the photos, and once we’re happy with the pages they are simply emailed to the printers ready for printing. It’s that straightforward, though of course you need the right skill to be able to make the pages look good (that’s down to Nadia, our art editor, not me I hasten to add). With an internet connection you could edit the paper from the top of a mountain!

Vivian: Who is reading theFrenchPaper?

Michael: As I’ve just mentioned quite a few French people! But of course our main readership is among Britons and Americans living in France or coming here on holiday or to visit their second home, as well as Irish residents, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and other nationalities who prefer to read in English rather than in French. As for age groups and profiles … very varied. Lots of pensioners read us, but then so too do young working families with children. I think the common theme among readers, though, is that they are all interested in life in France, rather than just life as a foreigner in France, if you see what I mean. They are people who like to look outside the ‘expat bubble’ and want to know what France is doing and what French people are thinking and saying.

Vivian: Your articles on Work & Money are most interesting; also The Eco Worrier, which can be quite funny, in an English sort of way.

Michael: The Work & Money section is very important for us – we want to give readers advice on running their business, on saving money or even what benefits they can legitimately claim here. As for Eco Worrier’s English wit … Graeme is Scottish so I’m not sure how he’ll take that!

Vivian: The small Ads and KidsPaper are lively too – do children really write theFrenchPaper KidsPaper?

Michael: Yes they do, though naturally they get a helping hand from adults too. It’s a section that’s gone down really, really well with young families, including young French families.

Vivian: Recipes, gardening, and giveaways – talk about the giveaways, please

Michael: Well, food and gardening are part of those lifestyle things that many people associate with their life in France so they are very important subjects for us. As for giveaways, many of our readers come from Britain where they are used to their newspaper offering them a variety of promotions, free goods, cut-price deals on so on. So it’s simply part of the mix, something that readers expect. We all like the chance to win a little treat, don’t we?

Vivian: You also have a part of theFrenchPaper called Real Living; I’m thinking of the article about sheep and shepherds, which was so interesting

Michael: Yes I loved that story. France has such a varied landscape and people, and the aim of our real life stories is to bring to life the many characters who have amazing and fascinating lives here – whether French or not.

Vivian: As Editor of theFrenchPaper, you have final say on what goes out in each issue – does it keep you awake at night?

Michael: As an editor you do get used to that kind of decision-making. To be honest, I have always enjoyed that kind of pressure as an editor. I think the toughest thing for me is that theFrenchPaper is a monthly. On a daily paper, which I’m used to, if you felt you’d under or overplayed a subject one day, you had an immediate opportunity to put it right the next day. With a monthly you have to live with your decisions for quite a while!

Vivian: Lindsey Partos on food prices in your January issue was most informative, can we expect more articles like this?

Michael: Definitely. Lindsey has a good track record in food industry journalism and I’m very keen that we do more of this type of consumer story.

Vivian: Ma Belle France is a great read in The French Paper, also the idea that we use more lipstick when the financial outlook is bleak – how about free lipsticks for your great giveaways?

Michael: Lipstick isn’t my speciality subject but I will definitely mention this to one of my better-informed colleagues!

Vivian: The Big Quiz is a super idea in theFrenchPaper – we can feel really well informed, or if we are not, we can sneak a peek at the answers, right?

Michael: Of course – it’s just a bit of fun! That said, it is also a good source of snippets of information, as well as being a lot of work!

Vivian: Of course you don’t work alone, how many permanent staff does theFrenchPaper employ?

Michael: There are two of us who oversee most of the editorial, with another two who look after the design, sourcing photos and so on. Then there are regular freelancers who work on sub-editing, proofreading, columns and other parts of the paper. The vast majority of the content is written by freelance contributors under our guidance. Then there’s the ad and marketing teams.

Vivian: What is next for theFrenchPaper?

Michael: In the paper, we’ll be seeing more supplements and specials on subjects of particular interest to our readers. Essentially my aim is to maintain the quality and reputation we have established and build from there. A key issue is marketing – getting the paper better known. Having launched in June last year I’m sure that the majority of our target audience still doesn’t know we exist. We have to put that right. Another key area is our news website – it’s under construction and we’ll let you know when that’s ready.

Vivian: How about some contact information?

Michael: Well we do have a marketing website at www.thefrenchpaper.com. Here you can subscribe from as little as €29.47 for 14 issues. And on the newsstands we are just €2.50 an issue – which I hope people agree is pretty good value for money. If anyone wants to contact me they are very welcome to email me at: editorial@thefrenchpapaper.com

Vivian: Michael thanks for this interview and we look forward to the next issue of theFrenchPaper

Michael: Thanks for letting me talk about a subject I love – newspapers!

Oven-cooked, stuffed 'Potimarron' pumpkin!

Regular Grenoble Life contributor Suzanne Bonnefond takes a seasonal opportunity to share her photos of Foire A L’Ancienne Et Aux Potirons in St Antoine l’Abbaye, and her recipe for stuffed potimarron pumpkin. Enjoy …

by Suzanne Bonnefond

On October 25^th there was the Foire A L’Ancienne Et Aux Potirons in the medieval village of St Antoine l’Abbaye, Isère. On that note, here is a stuffed pumpkin recipe.

Stuffed 'potimarron'

Stuffed potimarron

Potimarron is the small orange variety of pumpkin that you can find in all the markets.

Rub a little oil on the pumpkin to give it a nice colour once cooked. Boil the whole potimarron in water for about 10 minutes, so that it will be easy to cut. Then, open it and remove the seeds, fill it with cooked vegetables, and add fresh cream or water, grated nutmeg, and salt and pepper. You can add gruyère on top if you like but personally I keep it simple, as it already has a delicious chestnut-like taste.  Cook in the oven for a good half an hour, the flesh of the potimarron will be very tender.

Enormous pumpkins: St Antoine l’Abbaye

Pumpkin cart: St Antoine l’Abbaye

All manner of 'courges': St Antoine l’Abbaye

Walnuts and 'courges': St Antoine l’Abbaye

The market in St Antoine l’Abbaye

Il y avait une foire aux courges à St Antoine, et j’en profite pour vous donner la recette du potimarron farci

Recette du potimarron farci

Le potimarron, c’est la petite courge c ouleur orange que l’on trouve sur tous les marchés.

Enduire le potimarron avec un peu d’huile pour lui donner une belle couleur à la cuisson. Faire cuire le potimarron entier dans l’eau bouillante pendant 10 minutes environ, ensuite on pourra le couper facilement. Le couper pour pouvoir le vider de ses graines, puis le remplir de légumes déjà cuits, avec eau, ou crème fraîche, et de la noix de muscade, sel, poivre … on peut ajouter du gruyère … je n’en mets pas je le fais le plus simplement possible, car la chair a un délicieux goût de châtaigne. Laisser cuire au four une bonne demi heure … la chair du potimarron va se détacher …

Chillis. photo: u m a m i

The French are not known for their love of spices - difficult for Grenoble’s British expats such as Hannah Dee, who comes from multicultural Leeds. Here is her guide to Grenoble Spice: the specialist food stores that hold those treasured, hard to find exotic ingredients.

Coming to Grenoble from a fairly multicultural part of the UK one of the things I found myself missing was the range of foodstuff available. Don’t get me wrong: I think French food is fantastic. The quality of the ingredients here, in particular the vegetables, far outstrips anything you can find in normal shops and markets in the UK. At the local markets you can get truly fresh local produce - cheap, plentiful, and advertising the origin of their produce in terms of département rather than country… Marvellous stuff. No more rooting around Leeds City markets looking at signs saying “Tomatoes (Holland)” or “Beans (Egypt)”.

But what you don’t get is the range of produce, and particularly not the spices. In UK supermarkets you can now get pretty much any vegetable or spice you want, any day of the year. Here in Grenoble, you have to go to a specialist shop (or one of the really HUGE supermarkets) to get fresh chillis and coriander. In urban areas of the UK, they’re in every corner shop. So with that in mind, here is a brief guide to the various specialist food stores I’ve found in Grenoble.

Saïgon Store, 6 Rue Doudart de Lagrée 38000 Grenoble has a range of mostly Vietnamese products – good range of noodles, some fresh exotic vegetables and some frozen stuff, and a huge range of spices. You can get decent hot chillis here and stuff like lemongrass, galangal, and other Southeast Asian vegetables and spices.

Carrefour Asiatique, 88 Cours Berriat, 38000 Grenoble has a similar range to the Saïgon Store, and is handily right next to tram stop St Bruno on the A and B lines.

Rajah Bazar, 15 Avenue Felix Viallet, 38000 Grenoble is a small, packed and friendly store with a huge range of spices and a fairly impressive alcohol selection. They also open late (indeed, there is even a Facebook fan page calling them the “Oasis nocturne de Grenoble“).

World Market, 24 Avenue Felix Viallet, 38000 Grenoble is another small and packed shop, selling food from all over the world. A good range of Pataks curry sauces, Thai and Viet and Japanese and Chinese food, manioc flour, couscous, hummus, falafel… They even have instant “Pão do queijo” packet mixes if you’re after a cheesy Brazilian junkfood snack. And a surprisingly impressive line in hair extensions.

Indian Bazar (Wahey Guru Di Kirpa), Cours Berriat by the junction with Jean Jaures has a small range of Indian foodstuffs – all the dried spices you could want, dried goods, and some chutneys and pickles. This shop doesn’t have the largest range of stock, and isn’t very cheap. But they do have lots of spice!

Supermarché Siam Bangkok, 38, Avenue La Bruyère, 38100 Grenoble is a slightly out of town (on the A tram, stop La Bruyère) supermarket, which claims to be a Thai supermarket but is actually much more international, stocking fufu flour and couscous and a lot of other stuff I don’t know what to do with. The range is similar to that of the World Food Store, but the floorspace is larger and there seems to be an awful lot of dried fish. This one is a little run-down, but still an interesting place to browse.

It’s worth finishing with a mention that the Géant Casino at St Martin d’Heres has a reasonably good section of international food in tins and jars (including Marmite, yeah!) – presumably because of the international nature of the student population.

But what about you? Are there any ingredients you’ve not managed to find? Or any shops that I haven’t mentioned? Do leave a comment if so!

Les Caves de la Chartreuse, Voiron

Gill Baconnier has lived in France for over twenty years – seven of them in Grenoble. She teaches English, works with dyslexic children and, in her spare time, tries very hard to actually finish writing her children’s novel. A former feature writer for an English regional magazine, her articles about life in France can now be found at her blog French Windows. She kindly agreed to share this article about Chartreuse with Grenoble Life.

“They say Christianity is in decay; but no religion that invented green Chartreuse can ever die”  Saki

by Gill Baconnier

Grenoble lies in a hollow encircled by three mountain ranges: the Belledonne, famous for its ski slopes; the Vercors, a stronghold for the Résistance during World War II – and the Chartreuse, home to the Carthusian monks and their famous green liqueur. Now, I’m not a great skier and I wasn’t around during World War II but I do know a bit about the liqueur: it has a beautiful colour; it smells and tastes like a summer’s evening in an Alpine meadow and … it gives you a Day-Glo hangover that you’re not expecting because it is really strong.

A bottle of Chartreuse

The Order of the Grande Chartreuse was founded in 1084 by a German writer and academic, Bruno, who taught at the University of Rheims. Weary of the endless piles of marking, pointless administration and mind-numbingly boring staff meetings – or perhaps simply obeying a call from God – Bruno decided to become a monk. Together with six friends, he scoured France for a suitable isolated spot and happened on the Chartreuse Desert, an inhospitable snowbound place near Grenoble. The group built themselves seven simple wooden cells, a chapel and a dining hall and enjoyed a life of prayerful contemplation and light snacks, thus establishing the first Carthusian (Charterhouse) monastery. Today there are twenty-four of these communities around the world and their way of life has not changed for over nine hundred years.

In 1605, the monks at a Carthusian monastery outside Paris were given an ancient manuscript of unknown origin, entitled An Elixir of Long Life. At that time, few people knew how to use herbs and plants for medicinal purposes and the monks were only able to understand and use parts of the recipe. By 1737, the manuscript had found its way to the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble where the monastery’s apothecary managed to unravel the complex formula and create the Herbal Elixir de la Grande Chartreuse from the maceration and distillation in alcohol of one hundred and thirty plants, flowers and various other bits of vegetation.

This new medicine was distributed locally, by mule, to Grenoble and the surrounding villages. It became surprisingly popular and the monks soon caught on to the old ‘for medicinal purposes’ routine and adapted the recipe to make a milder drink – that is to say, ninety-six rather than one hundred and twenty-four proof – which they called Chartreuse verte, Elixir de Santé.

During the French Revolution, members of all religious orders were driven out of the country. The Carthusian monks fled in 1793 and as a precaution, made a copy of their precious manuscript. One monk was allowed to stay in the monastery and he was given this copy to look after while the original was given to another monk. Unfortunately, the latter was arrested and thrown into prison in Bordeaux but was able to pass the manuscript to a mysterious hero who somehow smuggled it back to the Chartreuse, where he gave it to a monk who was in hiding near the monastery.

This monk didn’t have a clue what to do with the manuscript – and who could blame him? He had his own problems to deal with (imminent death by guillotine, hypothermia, starvation and so forth), and he promptly sold it to a local chemist, Monsieur Liotard – who didn’t have a clue either, so why he bought it in the first place is anybody’s guess.

The Chartreuse massif

In 1810, Napoleon ordered all secret recipes of medicines to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior, and a relieved Monsieur Liotard dutifully sent in his white elephant of a manuscript. Despite being experts in irrelevant waffle, nobody in the Ministry could decipher the thing, but rather than admit that, they sent it back marked REFUSED. When Monsieur Liotard died, his heirs returned the manuscript to the monastery with, one imagines, a puzzled shrug.

The monks were thrown out of France once more in 1903 under a law that prohibited all religious orders. They were allowed back in 1932, when they began producing their liqueur again. In 1935, their distillery in Fourvoirie was destroyed by a landslide and a new one was built in Voiron, which is where Chartreuse is produced today. The blending of the plants, however, is done in the monastery by two monks – the only two people in the world to be in possession of the formula. Each monk knows half the recipe and because they don’t talk to anybody – not even to each other – it remains a secret. They are linked to the distillery by computer and are therefore able to oversee production while keeping their vows of solitude and silence and doing a bit of online shopping at the same time. Green and yellow Chartreuse – the yellow is sweeter and not as strong as the green – is matured in oaken casks in the longest liqueur cellar in the world.

The original elixir is still used for medicinal purposes today but frankly, you’d have to be pretty ill not to notice the taste. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to cure – although farmers here do swear by it for the treatment of flatulence in cows (note to tourists: do not be alarmed at the sight of staggering cows. They are not suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy – it’s Happy Hour on the Prairie). Green Chartreuse, however, is one of my favourite drinks; it is so sweet and fragrant that I hardly notice how potent it is – but the fact that Saint Bruno is traditionally depicted nursing a skull (even if it isn’t his own) should have alerted me. Hmm … If you ask me, these monks have a lot to answer for!

Possibly flatulent Chartreuse cows

You can visit the Chartreuse Cellars in Voiron (less than half an hour from Grenoble by car but if you’re driving, you’d be wise to skip the Chartreuse-tasting part of the guided tour!):

Les Caves de la Chartreuse
10, boulevard Edgar Kofler
38500 Voiron
Tel : 04 76 05 81 77

There is also a museum, housed in 12^th century building that was once part of the monastery, at St Pierre de Chartreuse (half-an-hour’s drive from Grenoble):

Musée de la Grande Chartreuse
“La Correrie”
38380 St Pierre de Chartreuse
Tel : 04 76 88 60 45

Xavier Darcos announces plans to combat stress in the workplace. Photo: Ministère: Travail, Solidarité, Ville

James Dalrymple of Grenoble Life asks why the French – despite sleeping more and living longer than everyone else – are so stressed. Apparently the French government wants to know too …

This month Labour Minister Xavier Darcos confirmed what I had already suspected – France needs to start dealing with stress, which has reached epidemic proportions. The proposed measures may be viewed by some as a knee-jerk reaction to the media storm surrounding the apparently high number of suicides at France Telecom since 2008, which – when taking into account the size of the organisation – may not be much higher than the (admittedly relatively high) national average. However, the new regulations likely to be implemented may not solve deeper issues related to national character: having lived in France for a few years now I feel qualified to say that, contrary to popular belief internationally, stress is endemic to the nation.

Ignore the latest OECD survey that says the French spend more time eating and sleeping than anyone else, a posteriori the French are an anxious lot. As a teacher I have come into contact with a broad cross section of Grenoble’s business community and I am constantly surprised by the amount of furrowed brows and hand-wringing I encounter, and this is not just because of a lack of love for learning English.

Despite the abundance of reasons to be happy in comparison to, say, British people (having quality healthcare, for example, or efficient public transport, good weather, a proliferation of delicious fresh produce, living two years longer on average, being paradoxically slim, etc. etc.) – the French strike me as a far more stressed people.

Call it what the British would refer to as the Blitz spirit (i.e., putting on a brave phizog in the face of abject misery) but we seem to deal with life’s inconveniences better than the French. Maybe our self-depreciating nature would simply not function in a society like France’s where, on the whole, there is much less to justifiably gripe about.

But tell that to the French. I realise now why the French hold that generous stereotype of the Brits as monocle-wearing stoics, bastions of calm in the midst of chaos. It was a view of the Brits that I found laughably alien when I arrived in France as a bruised and bewildered London commuter, but now I see why.

While a Londoner can somehow find it in himself to tolerate entire weekends (and bank holiday periods) of engineering work shutdown on the Underground and dreaded Thameslink, or the limbo of an NHS waiting list, or finding that every shop he knew from his childhood has turned into a Tesco-metro-mini-express … he can probably laugh it off down at the pub.

He may even indulge in that national sport, binge-drinking, but take refuge in regaling his colleagues about the quality of his hangover the next morning. According to recent press, the Frenchman will drink 10% more than his British counterpart, but by stealth – his habit of quaffing half a bottle with every meal perhaps slowly spiralling out of control.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the French work very hard. Yes, they enjoy unrivalled amounts of extra holiday time, but the only way to deliver France’s much-vaunted productivity is to slog it out at the desk. The French believe this too, they justify their stress by pointing out that they work harder than everybody else, something that might amuse American readers.

But no matter how much holiday is around the corner there is no doubt that the French feel the pressure in their highly regulated job market. Maybe it’s the coffee here – it makes people jumpy and brisk where the British workplace ceremony of making and drinking tea is a big cuddly arm of comfort around the shoulders: there there!

I was surprised to learn that the French sleep more than the international average, since the quality of my own sleep has declined since my arrival; it must be that coffee again. How to cure this? Making sport (sic) is the advice given by most Grenoblois as a cure-all for stress: whether it be slogging it up a 45 degree slope on a bike plastered in lycra or, even less logically, a gym, where the promise of more skin-tight neon and casual nakedness is hardly an attractive prospect to sooth my nerves.

The latter strikes me as particularly pointless in a city where – even if you don’t fancy tackling a near vertical ascent by bike dressed as an extra from Fame – plentiful cycle tracks make it the easiest of cities to work up even the most modest of sweats (my favourite kind!).

On a darker note, the relatively high suicide rate in the country may be representative of a more inherent inability of the French to cope with stress. In France Telcom’s case this has been blamed, by unions at least, on a never-ending drive for efficiency since its 1993 privatisation. The 40,000 jobs that have been lost in transforming France Telecom from public sector flagship to competitive multinational company are certainly not to be sniffed at, but I can’t help but wonder if this constant evolution - more characteristic of the American way of doing business – is a sometimes fatal anathema to a people for whom stability, security and prudence are cherished. How other nationals would react in similar circumstances is a moot point.

However, I find insistence by students of mine – who work at a recently internationalised French company - that in France one person does the job of three people in another country, as laughable. When French workers speak with misty-eyed nostalgia about the not-so-long-ago when they were less blighted by pressure, it is clear they are talking about a pre-globalised world. Is globalisation – France’s modern-era bogeyman – to blame for all this stress?

From a personal point of view, I suppose what I really want to know is: why is everybody in such a hurry? If I’m not being hassled off the road by drivers (often female I might add) for whom driving at the speed limit – or, in most cases, just acceptably above – is not fast enough, I am being harried in shop queues. The French are not quite the monster queue-pushers some Brits – sensitive in this matter - would like to suggest: it’s not quite like (and I’m talking from personal experience here) in India or Morocco, where queues are just for tourists, or in Italy (so the rumour has it), for fools.

Nevertheless, the French don’t like queues, and many try to expedite them, quite unsuccessfully, by standing as close as possible to the person in front of them. Most confoundingly, there are the women d’une certain age at my local primeur who have solved the age-old indignity of being next-in-line by placing their pannier by the cash-till before a desperate (and evidently stressful) snatch and grab job around the shop to fill it up - their place at the head of the queue secured.

I am often tempted to assuage the anxiety of those around me by saying hey, don’t stress: it’s France! when I realise how meaningless this would be. But again, what is there to be stressed about? In Britain, we have surely one of the most hysterical televisual news formats in the world, dramatised by the strokes of Big Ben: BONG! Feral youth on the rampage … BONG!! Knife crime escalation blamed on diet of Fanta and Turkey Twizzlers … BONG!!! Nuclear apocalypse beacons … etc.

How we manage to take this constant diet of failure and self-flagellation in the UK is a mystery, whereas in France the news is suspiciously neutral: 500 cars were set on fire in Paris last night but this is not representative of a wider malaise in French society and you needn’t worry your pretty little head about it.

My conclusion: maybe in Britain we are always being told that life is much worse than it really is and therefore are pleasantly surprised when we can laugh it off. In France, government promises (disseminated almost unchallenged by the television news) that the social state can cure all, can create a gap between the ideal and the reality. Anxiety may lie in between. Careful, it might be contagious!

Gill Baconnier has lived in France for over twenty years – seven of them in Grenoble. She teaches English, works with dyslexic children and, in her spare time, tries very hard to actually finish writing her children’s novel. A former feature writer for an English regional magazine, her articles about life in France can now be found at her blog French Windows. She kindly agreed to share this article about la noix de Grenoble with Grenoble Life.

Nuts about Grenoble

by Gill Baconnier

Walnuts have been around in France for a long time … a fossilised nut dating from the Tertiary era has been discovered in Ardèche and fragments dating from the Neolithic period have been found in the lake dwellings of Charavines in Isère. The image of Stone Age man cracking nuts around the fire is comfortingly familiar, even without the paper hat and the cheap sherry…

The walnut was sacred to the Ancient Romans. They thought it looked like the human brain – the outer husk was the scalp, the shell represented the skull and the crinkly nut inside, the two hemispheres of the brain (this is interesting because my own brain, judging by its performance these days, probably looks and functions exactly like a walnut.) It was the Romans who brought walnut trees to France, after having successfully cultivated them on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. They established plantations in the Narbonne area, in Perigord and here in the Dauphiné where they thrived.

During the Middle Ages, the walnut was used to pay rent and for a little farmhouse in the Dauphiné region you would have had to shell out a few sétiers (just over a pint) of walnuts. They were so important in mediaeval life that a new profession was created, that of ‘walnut measurer’, although it was a limited career choice as only two posts existed for the whole of France.

However, up until the nineteenth century, the Dauphiné peasants’ main income came from silk worm farms and vineyards. It was not until disease killed off the silk worms in 1858 and grape phylloxera wiped out the vines in 1870, that they turned to walnut cultivation. It was a wise choice. Walnut orchards demanded far less work than vineyards and the new Grenoble to Valence railway line made export easy. Certain species of trees were more prolific than others and legend has it that one in particular was brought here by a young demoiselle as part of her dowry, for her marriage to a local lord. These trees were nurtured and protected so that today, Grenoble produces the finest walnuts in the world. Over fifty percent of the total French production comes from this region while France itself is the third biggest exporter behind The United States and China.

In 1938, the Grenoble walnut was awarded an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée and – just like fine wine – it meant that the quality was strictly controlled. To qualify, the walnut must be one of three varieties: the franquette, the mayette or the parisienne. These are only three of many. All walnuts look the same to me but to those in the know, each variety has its peculiarities: they are elongated or round, pale or deeply coloured, bland, sweet or bitter. Their names are sometimes bizarre and – like roses – they are often named after events or people: Oswald, Lent or Conference Souvenir; Big John, Fat John or Distaff.

Harvesting is mostly done by a harvester these days but in some places – particularly on the mountain slopes – it is still done by hand. Back at the farm, the nuts are sorted, washed and dried then packed up and sent all over the world. Technology has replaced the veillées of old where the whole village would get together in the evenings to shell walnuts and tell each other stories by the fireside, sing songs, play games and eat together. Now computers bleep, machines whirr and business booms while the ancient nut presses and dryers are quaint ruins left to crumble quietly in the shadow of the Vercors.

Both the tree and its fruit have many uses. The nut is a fertility symbol and in parts of France walnuts are mixed with onion soup and served to newlyweds or they are thrown at them instead of rice – presumably shelled beforehand. Biting on a green walnut is said to relieve toothache and a poultice of crushed walnuts and pork fat cures boils. Walnut oil was once used in lamps or as axle grease, which is hard to believe when you see the price of a tiny bottle of the stuff today. The husk was used to dye hair and clothes and stain furniture and was even used as a self-tanning lotion as recently as the 1950s.

The tree itself was considered cursed: people believed that witches held their meetings in its shade and so they would rip off its branches and throw stones at it as punishment. French folklore warns against falling asleep beneath a walnut tree for fear of waking up with a fever or pneumonia – or perhaps, quite simply, a face full of walnuts.

The wood is of superior quality – it doesn’t split, it is fine-grained and easy to sculpt and polish. It is highly resistant but also beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, it fell victim to these very qualities during the First World War, when all the trees were cut down to provide wood for rifle butts. New trees were planted when the war was over so one catastrophe at least was averted – although not the most important one.

The walnut is omnipresent in Grenoble. Eat it as it is or candied; in the form of sweets, nougat or jam, or made into wonderful tarts and cakes. Savour walnut bread or walnut-covered cheese with a salad tossed in walnut oil. As an aperitif, drink eau de Noix or ratafia, both made from walnuts. I cannot think of a better way to find out if la noix de Grenoble is really all it’s cracked up to be …

Visit a walnut museum at:

Le Grand Séchoir
Maison du Pays de la noix
705, route de Grenoble
38470 Vinay
Tel : 04 76 36 36 10

Michel Has Another Serving of Pasta

In his new blog The Franco-American Daily Deconstructionist; History and Culture in Everyday Life, John Hess’s attention is caught by a recent French road safety  advertisement. 

Michel Has Another Serving of Pasta

 by John Hess

Yes, this is the title of a public interest advertisement. And in most countries, you’d guess that it had something to do with good nutrition, perhaps to counter the carbohydraphobic excesses of the South Beach diet. But no, this is France, and it’s about road safety.

The advertisement appeared on hoardings in the summer of 2009, and may be viewed in full here. The very incongruity of its purpose and content caught my attention as few adverts do, which I suppose is to its credit: an original idea. Sort of like if an advert for Porsche featured a smiling old lady: “since Roger bought his 911T, Dora is finally proud of her son-in-law.”

But I’m afraid it may have given life-saving a bad reputation. In America for example, to be effective the ad would have had to point out the moral significance of Michael’s survival; “Michel Gets to See His Grandchild graduate from College”, or “Michel Calls his Daughter to Say ‘I Love You.’” But here in France, we get the equivalent of “Michel Mechanically Consumes Yet Another Ordinary Meal.” Yes, thanks to better driving habits, Michel is one of the statistics that has been saved, permitting him to mindlessly continue his meaningless, unproductive existence. Almost makes one want to run Michel over, then back up over the corpse just to be sure.

Of course, this is a stereotypically American point of view, and there is something to be said for simply enjoying life as it comes, from day to day, and that this enjoyment should be protected and cherished. But I do think that this is advert is an interesting expression of what I would describe as the dominant French mode of life today: social existentialism – living for the pleasures of everyday life, with as much beach time and tasty food as possible, and as little work, risk, stress, disease, etc. as possible, with a huge assist from socialism. Thanks to the welfare state, Michel has retired relatively young (the advert subtly indicates that he’s a pensioner), and thanks to the nanny state, Michel is alive.

The irony of course is that, in spite of this insistence of the importance of simply enjoying everyday life, the French are not really the most cheerful lot one could meet. While the advert claims that 12,000 lives have been saved over the last six years due to [ahem] our more careful driving, this is the number of depressives who manage to commit suicide every year. Perhaps the advert really should be called “Michel Has Another Serving of Pasta, and He’s Dissatisfied and Grumpy Because it’s not Lobster and Champagne on the Beach – But at Least He’s Alive, For What That’s Worth.”

Not very catchy, I admit. But I do wish that the government would get serious, and sponsor a much needed, and succinct, dual ad campaign: “Stop Driving Like a Bunch of Wackoes”, and “Either Enjoy Your Beautiful Country, or Give it to the English.”

Kelly Rigotti writes Almost Frugal, a blog about being smart with your spending, saving and money goals. As probably the only American living in France writing about frugal living, we invited her to share her personal finance tips for her adopted home town of Grenoble. Part I in the series is about food.

by Kelly Rigotti

Although I’ve been writing about frugality and learning how to be frugal since late 2007, this is the first time I’m writing a post about frugality from a local perspective. My blog is called Almost Frugal and most of my readers live in English-speaking countries, especially the United States. I’m American and I’ve lived in Grenoble since January 2000 and I think it’s safe to say that I’m the only American blogging about personal finance and frugality in Grenoble. I could be wrong, but I bet I have the niche covered!

Although I do talk about living in France and the challenges of trying to handle money as an expat (especially paying back my American student loans, most of the topics I cover on Almost Frugal are general enough that anyone can relate to them, no matter where they live. I’m really excited though, to finally be able to talk about frugality and living frugally in my (adopted) city, Grenoble. Today I’ll be talking about the best places to spend less on groceries.

Groceries can make up a significant part of any household’s budget. Certain French grocery chains, such as Lidl or ED are relatively inexpensive, but they don’t always have the best quality food (although I’ve never gone wrong with their canned goods, juice or wine selections). I prefer to take advantage of fidelity programs from stores like Carrefour, Géant or LeClerc. The fidelity programs from all three of these stores are free to join, and if you don’t mind your personal shopping habits being mined by the stores for information, you can recoup significant discounts on your grocery shopping.

Carrefour’s fidelity program offers discounts of 5% on their store brand products, as well as other discounts on time-limited promotions. Often these promotions don’t give the best, cheapest option, but every once in a while Carrefour will have a doozy of a sale – buy one get two free and so on. Carrefour does not put the store credit on your card, instead it mails you a fidelity check at the end of every month, good for use on your next shopping trip.

Géant is the most expensive of the three stores I’m talking about here, and in my opinion, the one with the worst customer service. But it does have one of the best selections of expat foods (Campell soup, anyone) and so I brave the high prices and rude salespeople every once in a while to stock up. Like most grocery stores, Géant will often have loss leaders: products priced quite low to get you in the store to buy everything else. As a side note, did you know that it is illegal in France for supermarkets to price products below cost? Supermarkets are not allowed to lose money on their stock. This is why you won’t find any true bargains at a French supermarket- it would be illegal.

The best supermarket, in my opinion, for customer discounts, is the LeClerc supermarket in the Espace Comboire shopping center in the town of Echirolles. Unlike Carrefour or Géant, which are both chain stores, LeClerc is a series of licensed franchises. This means that the discounts and promotional offers found at one store might not necessarily be found at another.

The LeClerc in Espace Comboire has a series of great, ongoing promotions, a different one for every day of the week. The best is Thursday’s, when, for every €50 of goods purchased you get €5 in store credit on your fidelity card. Combined with other in-store promotions, I often manage to save €20 or more per shopping trip.

Unlike the United States, France is not big on coupons. You will find them every once in a while, either on your register receipt at the grocery store, or as a manufacturer’s coupon, but there isn’t the overwhelming coupon mentality here as in the United States.

Another excellent way to save money in your grocery bill is by buying online – this way you can keep an eye on your total as you go and save money on gas. Both Carrefour (called Ooshop) and the Intermarché in Seyssins have online delivery services. Depending on where you live the delivery charge can be free to quite expensive.

If you’re looking for bio (organic) or locally sourced food, then there are two good online options, neither of which is very expensive and both of which deliver. The first is called The Label Bio and sells a variety of organic and local food. I like them because they sell preselected baskets (panniers) of a variety of food – whatever is in season for €12 to €55 depending on the size and selection of the contents. The second is called The Pannier de Johanna and although they don’t sell preselected baskets of food, they have a wide variety of products to choose from, from patés to flour, all locally sourced or organic.

Here are some of my favorite posts on Almost Frugal on saving money, food and frugality:

Food Shopping and Menu Planning
Stretch Your Food Budget
Your Favorite Frugal Food

Bio: Kelly Rigotti is American and has lived in France for a lot longer than she thought she would when she first arrived. As well as writing about frugality at Almost Frugal, she has a day job as a marketing and communication consultant. In her spare time, she attempts to ride herd over her three children, four cats and handsome French frog of a husband. You can follow her at Almost Frugal, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Pumpkins

Bob and Sylvie Tharinger own and operate Pumpkins (33 rue d’Alembert), Grenoble’s only authentically American restaurant. Christina Rebuffet-Broadus of Grenoble Life talks with them about showing the French that American cooking is much more than McDo has led them to believe.

Grenoble Life: Could you tell us a little about yourselves? It seems every Franco-Anglo-American couple has a story. What’s yours?

Bob: I had traveled around the world, had already been to Grenoble once, and came back here to work. This is where I met Sylvie, then we lived a while in the United States, where our son was born. But finally, we settled down in Grenoble in 1978. We came back because Sylvie wanted to return to Grenoble.

Sylvie: I’m not originally from here, but have family in Grenoble. For me, it was more that I didn’t want to live in southern France than I wanted to come back to Grenoble. I would have liked to live in one of the Scandinavian countries, with their Nordic landscapes. Grenoble was sort of a compromise for us.

GL: How long has Pumpkins existed?

Bob: We opened in September 2004. We bought the place in June of the same year, but of course had to do some work beforehand. It’s been almost five years, unbelievable!

Bob and Sylvie

GL: We all know the French people’s reticence towards American food. How did you get the idea to open an American restaurant?

Bob: We’ve always done a lot of cooking, often for our friends, often a lot of American dishes. We both like to cook and eat, and realized that people didn’t really know the variety of things you can eat in the United States. Unfortunately, the French tend to have a very fast-food idea of American cuisine. They would never believe the food you can get in the United States.

Where I’m from in Minnesota, we noticed restaurants do a lot of different things, there are all kinds of influences. So we figured we could probably do anything we wanted and call it American cooking, but we didn’t really want to call it “American” for fear that people would run in the other direction. So we just called it Pumpkins.

Sylvie: We got tired of people saying “American cooking … beurk!” We wanted to show people that real American cooking exists. Plus we didn’t want to put “American” in the name because it could sound a bit snobbish or exclusive, like not everyone was welcome. But we also didn’t want to use “American” because of a certain image that the French had of Americans, especially at the time of the opening because of the political situation. We just wanted everyone to feel comfortable, not like Pumpkins was just a place for Anglophones.

Bob behind the bar

GL: How did you come up with the name “Pumpkins”?

Bob: Sylvie just had the idea the one day! And I thought it was great because it’s very visual and something people remember easily.

Sylvie: I thought it sounded convivial. It made me think of the pumpkin patches in the American east coast at the end of summer when we used to visit. Plus Pumpkins sounded good and was easy to pronounce for us French.

GL: Now, for the good stuff. Tell us a little about your menu. What kinds of American food can your guests find at Pumpkins?

Bob: We really try to offer a sampling of the United States’ regional cooking. We have family all over the northern U.S., plus both of us like southern food — barbecue, seafood, and especially African-American cuisine, which in itself is extremely varied. There’s also a Jewish delicatessen influence, something relatively unknown in France. And if you go to the northwest region of the United States, there’s a great mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Native American cuisines based on the abundance of good, local products. More or less, we try to do a little of all this.

One of the hardest things is to do meat like in the United States. Lucky for us, we found a French butcher who lived and worked in San Francisco, but now he’s right on rue Nicolas Chorier. It’s great because he knows American cuts of meat. He knows what an American pork chop is and can cut a sirloin steak if we want. He even helps us to do real corned beef, which is practically impossible to find around here.

Sylvie: Every two weeks, we change one dish on the dinner menu. There are some things that we always have. We’ll always have the burger. At lunch, we always have chili on the menu, but we change the presentation — one week the chili will be in a tortilla, another it’ll be with guacamole. Once we had a couple come in and they both ordered the same dish, so I gave each one different sides. That way they could taste everything!

Downstairs dining room

GL: Pumpkins also does brunches. When are they held and where did that idea come from?

Bob: We’ve been doing the brunches for two or three years now. Our brunches are typically midwest-American. We wanted to host a brunch much like the Sunday brunch that I knew when I was a kid — eggs, bacon, sausage, plus some extras. We would like to do a real family-style brunch, with a self-serve buffet, but here we don’t really have enough room.

With all the families that come in, it would be hard for people to serve themselves with the strollers and the children and I don’t want to lose that family atmosphere by doing a buffet. It’s fantastic to see the people at the brunches — they’re relaxed, happy, even if they have to wait sometimes for their food,  they don’t care. They come in and have a good time.

It’s so successful that we have to turn down almost as many people as we accept for the brunches. We do just one service per brunch, that way the people can come and stay as long as they like. We want them to feel at home.

Sylvie: From a culinary point of view, I think we do the only real brunch in Grenoble. Our brunch is “made in Minnesota” — it’s not French, it’s not Spanish, it’s not Dutch. When we were younger, all the kids in Bob’s extended family knew they could go to his dad’s house on Sunday morning and be greeted with the smell of bacon grilling, eggs scrambling and the whole family got together. That’s the brunch we try to recreate, that family-get-together atmosphere.

Bob: In the 1960s and 1970s, my father would host these fantastic brunches and people would just stop by. Family members, friends passing through the area, and the ambiance was simply extraordinary. That’s part of the reason why we created this restaurant and really wanted to host the brunch.

GL: That’s a heartwarming story, wanting to recreate the family ambiance that you knew growing up at your dad’s. Speaking of family get togethers, does Pumpkins do anything special for American holidays?

Bob: We would like to do something for the 4^th of July, but since we’re in the city, it’s unfortunately impossible to do a backyard barbecue. Thanksgiving, however, is enormous. Last year, we had 60 kilos of turkey and I think in all we served around 150 Thanksgiving dinners, but I’m not sure. It got to the point where we stopped counting.

We also did a Christmas brunch, again with a lot of midwestern, German-American influences. We had German-American style pastries among other things because in the past, many German and Scandinavian immigrants settled in that region.

The idea behind all our dishes is family cooking. For all our meals we create a plate like if you were eating in an American family situation—all the food’s on the table and you help yourself to everything. Except we put the plate together in the kitchen, recreating that American plate, with the meat, sides, sauces and relishes all in the same plate.

GL: To finish, I’m going to ask you the impossible. How would you describe American cooking in a few words?

Bob: (with Sylvie, laughs) I remember our first cook, who was a very competent cook mind you, told us, “OK, I get it: just add sugar and hot sauce and it’s American cooking.”

There’s not just one American cuisine, there are lots of American cuisines, just like in France — the food varies enormously between the regions.  The cuisine of the southwest has touches of Mexican influence and is completely different from the cooking of the northeast where you’ll find chowders and baked beans. That cuisine has nothing to do with the cooking of New Orleans, which also has a totally different taste from the growing Cuban-American cuisine. There are lots, lots of different American cuisines.

But we’ll always have a hamburger on the menu for the French who don’t want to be disappointed and the Americans who want a real home-style burger.

Although the menu changes often, at the time of this interview, Pumpkins was serving Cajun catfish, a blue cheese burger, tortilla wrapped chili, and Los Angeles Fire Department-style chicken wings. Dinner dishes cost around 10-15 euros, desserts such as cheesecake, pecan pie, and sundaes cost 5-6 euros.

Pumpkins (33, Rue D’alembert, 38000 Grenoble) is open for lunch on Thursday and Friday; for dinner Wednesday through Saturday. Brunches are every other Sunday. Call ahead to reserve: 04 76 29 48 21

You can also sign up for the Pumpkins newsletter with the season’s brunch dates emailed in advance. Email pumpkins.restaurant@wanadoo.fr

Bookworm Café

Denis Rivière of Grenoble owns and operates the Bookworm Café (91 rue Saint Laurent), Grenoble’s newest English-friendly establishment. Christina Rebuffet-Broadus of Grenoble Life talks with him and his English wife Dawn about setting up a used book shop and tea room in one of Grenoble’s historic neighborhoods.

Grenoble Life: Could you tell us a little about the people behind the Bookworm Café?

Denis Rivière: I’ve always lived in Grenoble and I’ve been working since I was 18, in several different jobs. After having obtained a BTS in sales, I worked especially as a sales administration manager.

Thanks to this professional experience, I knew what it was to run a company. However, the times being what they are, I was laid off, like so many people today. I wanted to take it as an opportunity to work for myself. And people gave me lots of suggestions as to what kind of business to set up, but it was my wife who had the right one. So I’ll let her tell you about it.

GL: Yes, please tell us, how was the idea of Bookworm Café born?

Dawn Rivière: Originally from Shrewsberry, England, I’ve been in Grenoble since 1991 and the idea of a tea room/book shop had been running around in my head for quite some time. Before, in the quartier des antiquaires, there was a bookshop called Just Books. It was magnificent, an intimate little boutique, with tons of books—used books, new books and I always thought it would be great if there was a tea room right there in the book shop. Quite a lot of us felt the same way. We said why not, in Grenoble, have a used book shop that was also a tea room?

So, Denis and I discussed it for a long time, we thought about its potential and viability, and finally we said, “why not?” It’s something that didn’t exist in Grenoble and that market needed to be filled.  English book shop tea rooms exist in Paris, but Grenoble had yet to have one. I remember when I was in a student in Coventry, we had such a tea room, where my friends and I would eat and buy our books for school. The whole atmosphere was really fantastic.

GL: Where did you get the name, The Bookworm Café?

Dawn: We had several ideas. We considered The Literary Café, but thought it sounded a bit pompous. We were afraid that the name would frighten people who didn’t consider themselves to be very literary or intellectual. Of course The Bookworm Café was in consideration. So we made a list of four or five names and passed around to friends of ours, and The Bookworm Café won.

GL: True, The Bookworm Café sounds warm, cozy, like wrapping up with a good read. And what was it like to start your own business in Grenoble?

Denis: Everything went really well. As all new businesses, I had to register The Bookworm Café with the Chamber of Commerce and they gave me lots of advice on building a business. Thanks to my professional experience, I found the administrative aspects quite manageable. I met lots of people who were very willing to help with the project. Of course, I had a solid project and an accountant who helped with the financial aspects, but the people at the Chamber of Commerce were very pleasant to work with, very helpful.

When you’ve got an idea and you’re sure of it, you have to go for it. And the Chamber of Commerce is not naïve. They know that half of all new businesses fail within their first year, but if you have a viable project, they’re very willing to help. You just can’t be afraid of paperwork and bureaucracy, but once the ball was rolling, everything happened quite quickly.

The Bookworm Café terrace

GL: Grenoble boasts France’s second-largest Anglophone population. Does The Bookworm Café have a mission regarding this population?

Denis: No, not necessarily. It’s true that the Anglophone community likes to get together, in the pubs for example. It’s true that we serve English tea and pastries, but we’re open to everybody, English and French speakers who enjoy the coziness of a typical English atmosphere.

Dawn: We want the Bookworm Café to be a meeting place, like Denis said, for English and French speakers. You don’t have to speak English to enjoy a good cup of tea! Perhaps if we do have a mission for the English community, it’s to provide a good cup of real English tea, which is not so easy to find here in Grenoble!

GL: Tell us a little about the literary side of the Bookworm café. How do the book sales work?

Denis: It’s very simple! We sell used books. Paperbacks start at 50 cents and for the other books, the price depends on the age and the condition of the book. We’re considering putting into place a fidelity card system — each time someone donates a book, we’ll put a stamp on their card and once they’ve earned a certain number of stamps, they get a free cup of tea or something like that. But that project hasn’t been finalized yet. We want to know what our clients would like and then adapt to them.

GL: You also mentioned a book club. That sounds like an exciting idea.

Denis: Starting around mid-September, the Bookworm Café will host a free book club. There will be two groups, surely on Tuesday and Thursday, both starting at 5:30 p.m. We’ll have two groups — one for native speakers and French people who have spent some time abroad or who speak very good English; the other will be for people who enjoy reading in English, but who have more difficulties speaking. And of course both will be free and open to the public.

Dawn: As a teacher at the Université Inter-Ages, I realized that my students liked to get together and speak English together. This would give them, and others who are interested, the chance to practice English. We’ll also have an English server who will take orders and chat in English, just like what the participants would experience if they were in a café in England.

GL: Do you have any other programs that you are considering organizing?

Denis: We’re thinking about doing a class for younger children based on games, songs, things like that. Wednesday morning will surely be for younger children, with classes for older children and teenagers Wednesday afternoon. Since these would be classes, there would be a fee.

We’ll also have a Children’s Hour, with storytelling and and such. This would be a free program to help children have fun and just enjoy listening to English.

These programs will be put into place starting around the rentrée, so if anyone is interested, they should contact us for more information.

GL: The Bookworm Café is in the Saint Laurent neighborhood, which is one of Grenoble’s historical districts. What are your impressions of your neighborhood?

Denis: I’ve known this area for a long time, and back in the day, it was very lively, with butcher shops, green grocers, but since, these things have closed. But the neighborhood is being revived and there is a project underway to renovate the area and create a second city center.

Dawn: It’s a beautiful neighborhood, very charming, very historic – really worth discovering. For us, it’s a bit of a risk to have chosen this neighborhood, as it’s out of the way. There are fewer passersby than in the city center, but we think the people will come here because they like the atmosphere, the books, and the tea. In the city center, no other places that we looked at had the charm of this neighborhood, and we think that will attract people.

GL: Now that we can’t wait to have a comforting cup of tea and get cozy with a good book, where and when exactly can we find you?

Denis: We’re at 91 rue Saint Laurent in Grenoble. The Bookworm Café is open Tuesday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, please contact us at 04.76.25.29.98 or by email at bookwormcafe@gmail.com

The Bookworm Café is currently closed but will reopen on Thursday. July 30.

Photo: mikeandanna

Last Saturday evening was an important occasion for my wife and I. Not only were we celebrating our second wedding anniversary but it was our first evening out since the birth of our daughter, now three months old, who was kindly being babysat ber grandparents. Now I may have Scottish ancestry (albeit watered down through several generations – but hey! I still have the tartan surname) but I don’t mind pushing the boat out once and awhile and spending a little extra on a quality restaurant.

Where I live we are not exactly spoilt for choice, but there is one Michelin guide-recommended restaurant on the border of Meylan and Corenc called Restaurant Le Provence, so we made a reservation there. Just to put it into perspective, there is a restaurant in the same street – not without a decent reputation but which ought to remain nameless here – whose owners have an enormous and very shaggy German Shepherd which I have seen loitering in the kitchen.

Having made our reservation for Le Provence with little difficulty less than one week before, we were pleased when we arrived to be warmly greeted by a bustling, professional waiting staff. Modern and informal, the young, all-female team led by Danielle Gaggio, the chef’s wife, made a refreshing change from the surly owners and disinterested career waiters one often finds in Grenoble.

In fact I noted that the service was not only exclusively female and young, but all conspicuously Mediterranean in appearance: no men or blondes serving table at Le Provence. There was an annonce for a vacancy in this capacity – so I’d be curious to see how applications from anyone male or gold of locks would fare as a candidate. Luckily I already have a job, as I would be particularly disadvantaged on both counts.

We were ushered into a pleasantly lit courtyard of aromatic trees and plants which was quickly filling up with diners. This outdoor dining space, which has a retractable canvas roof, is the perfect ambience in which to fully appreciate Le Provence’s beautifully prepared fresh fish dishes garnished with carefully selected Mediterranean ingredients.

Having ummed and ahhed for a period over which menu to take, we finally opted for the three-course Privilège. At 35 euros, it was the cheaper choice (I am a Scot by name after all!) of the three, the most expensive of which was in the environs of 50 euro and had to be ordered in advance. I chose Foie Gras with a Provençal-sytle salad for a starter; my wife a tartine with roasted Meditterranean vegetables and Serrano ham.

For the main course we both had a Plancha of tuna with a light potato mousse, grilled veg and a kind of cuttlefish chutney. Despite the sensational variety of flavour and texture to indulge in, it was never too busy or rich – a harmonious spirit of Provençal cuisine ran throughout. While certainly gastronomic, the dishes were not pretentious, remaining faithful to Mediterranean ingredients.

Unfortunately we had to rush our equally delicious dessert in order to return to our hungry baby, so were unable to linger in the courtyard as long as we would have liked. But we did have the pleasure of meeting the highly personable chef, Eric Gaggio, as we paid at the reception on the way out. Simlultaneously smart and modern but informal and unpretentious, Le Provence is by some distance the best restaurant I have tried in the Grenoble area. Check out their informative website, where you can find information on the menus and prices but also cookery courses, their range of olive oils and catering options.

Restaurant Le Provence
28 avenue du Grésivaudan
38700 Corenc
04 76 90 03 38

Some like it hot !

One of the first things people associate with France is food and wine. But is it really as good as the French would like us to believe? Or have they been resting on their laurels? Joking about the poor quality of British food is something of a habit I have with my students, an ice-breaker that animates most French: but coming from a capital city the size and status of London I was honestly underwhelmed by the dining experience when I arrived in Grenoble. Now, however, food is one of the aspects of British culture that I do not miss in the slightest. Occasionally I get pangs of nostalgia for a full English breakfast – particularly, as they are conspicuously absent from supermarket shelves: bacon, British-style sausages and baked beans – and other novelty items such as hot cross buns, scones and, um, Marmite (try convincing the French to eat that!). Happily enough Britain is not so far away that I can’t indulge in some of these ‘delicacies’ once in a while and, in the case of the Full English, sometimes regret.

On the whole, however, I take enormous pleasure from eating in France, from the abundance of fresh, regional produce, from the sheer dizzyinging choice of things to taste and savour. I am horrified when I hear British ex-patriots bemoan the absence here of Britain’s attention deficit inducing confectionary: our fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate, even our white sliced bread. In a nation where Chocolateries take the preparation of desserts to a new artform, hearing people pine for Cadbury’s – a product not even legally permitted to call itself chocolate – seems laughable.

Before painting a generally complimentary portrait of the current state of French cuisine, Rough Guide to France mourns the fact that “those little family restaurants serving classic dishes serving the region’s produce – and where the bill is less than 15 euro – are increasingly hard to find. The processed, boil-in-a-bag and ready-to-microwave productions of the global food industry … are making serious inroads”. This tallies with my experience: one too many times I’ve had to endure hastily defrosted gratin dauphinois literally swimming in oil. Many eateries in Grenoble and further afield serve frankly sloppy fare at prices which would be considered steep even by London standards (especially given the current exchange rate). While Britain is dominated by chain restaurants, such fare meets modest expectations and is not normally overpriced. Moreover, it is usually served with a smile, and that is not always true in France.

Personally, though, I prefer the pleasure of a home cooked meal to eating out. If you enjoy cooking, like I do, you will attest to the fact that the pleasure of food is not just in the eating. France is paradise for someone like me. Coming from Tescoised Britain, where supermarkets have a cartel-like stranglehold on food retail and where independent greengrocers, butchers and bakeries are becoming a thing of the past, France is heaven. Every district seems reasonably well catered for in this respect, while traditional outdoor markets are still the central focus for many communities.

I am also amazed at gripes from ex-patriots concerning shop opening hours in France, where bakeries and butchers are often open on Sundays, and normally until 7pm during the week to catch trade on the run home from work. The high cost of hiring casual work in France means such businesses may close down while their owners take summer holidays – an almost unthinkable concept for many Anglophones – but on the whole the shops open at times that serve the needs of their clientele. In Britain the only shops open after 7pm are the likes of Tesco, Londis and Seven Eleven. When I lived in London there were few authentic bakers, butchers and greengrocers open on the weekend after Saturday morning – no chance of really fresh bread on Sunday. So what if Carrefour is closed on Sunday? Who wants to go to Carrefour on a Sunday?

Cultural observers will point to the meteoric rise of British chefs such as Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver both domestically and internationally as evidence of the nation’s resurrection as a nation of foodies. However, this phenomenon seems more symptomatic of Britain’s celebrity obsession and boom and bust attitude towards PR, than some wind-change in British cooking. Ramsey is already feeling a massive press backlash in Britain from the very papers who contributed to his initial success. Meanwhile, Jamie Oliver’s books continue to sell by the shed load, but most British supermarkets still don’t carry all of the basic ingredients required to make the recipes. While the supermarkets improve sluggishly, something about the current food culture in the UK smells of hype and faddishness. There is still this notion that ‘quality’ = ‘luxury’, so that perfectly ordinary (certainly by French standards) products are branded as de lux.

In France people seem much more in touch with flavours and ingredients. The seasonal food culture that I vaguely remember from my childhood still exists here but seems all but dead now in a Tescoised Britain. Here people know the difference between fresh strawberries and those flown in from, say, Israel, to fill supermarket shelves in November; or between delicious ripe tomatoes or those grown in enormous Dutch greenhouses for all-year-round consumption. I am consistently impressed in France with people’s engagement with food: many of my students brewing their own alcoholic drinks out of seasonal flowers (génépy, for example), or out picking elusive Morille champignon in the Vercors in the small window of opportunity between the snow melting and the onset of spring. I was only aware of one type of mushroom before I came to France, in Grenoble there are whole festivals devoted to their variety. In the late summer, opportunist pedestrians can be seen in my district picking wild berries by the side of the road; while my students have regaled me with stories of hunting sanglier (wild boar).

Another student of mine, a gruff former truck driver, has a fine palate for wine, and responded to a Guinness dégustation (tasting event) at my school by identifying caramel and coffee among its flavours, a pensive finger placed on his temple. It’s unfair but still hard to imagine a British truck driver being able to identify much more than how many sugars there are in his tea. That people are knowledgeable and passionate about food in France generally seems to transcend socio-economic and cultural barriers in ways that sadly can’t be said about the UK. The French love of food has even been attributed to the famous French paradox: how the French can indulge in a relatively high-calorie diet and stay comparatively slim.

If there is a less pleasant side to the French love of their food culture and traditions, it’s their insularity and dismissal of other nations’ specialities. I have tried on many occasions to convince my adult students of the finer points of Christmas Pudding, a dish which to be prepared properly involves the kind of lengthy preparation that would bore even a Lyon bouchon chef. Such attempts were met with suspicion and sometimes mockery: one student said something along the lines of “first it looks like shit, and then when you taste it you wish it had been shit”. Charming. As I said at the beginning of the article, I’m prepared to concede French superiority in culinary matters, but as a reasonably competent and open-minded cook, I won’t be condescended.

In inclusive Britain, we have plugged the gaps in our own food culture by embracing that of other nations. Indian restaurants, for example, a staple of British life, are not always quite so edifying in France. Imagine my disappointment when ordering a Tikka Masala at a centrally located curry house to be served chicken covered in what can only be described as instant gravy mixed with saffron for a tangy colouring. Evidently tempered for delicate French palates, the very soul of Indian cooking had been exorcised. I am happy to report, however, that there is at least one good Indian restaurant in Grenoble, ‘The Bombay’ on Cours Jean Jaures. They don’t serve Vindaloo but the helpful waiters normally ask how hot you would like it, so British castaways such as myself can sweat through their dinner like back home, cooling their tongues in Cobra and Kingfisher beers. And just in case you forget you’re in France, they offer you an apéritif too: a happy comprimise indeed for an English drunkard like me!