Here’s something that surprises almost everyone: French people don’t eat croissants every day. The everyday French breakfast is almost nothing. A tartine, baguette split and spread with salted butter and jam or honey, with café au lait drunk from a bowl, not a mug. Maybe fromage blanc with honey, a little compote, or biscottes. That’s it.
Croissants are for the weekend. In our house too: on weekend mornings we walk to Authentique, a proper French bakery in London, for a pain suisse or pain au chocolat for our son. If you’ve never had one, a pain suisse is a laminated pastry filled with crème pâtissière and chocolate chips, somewhere between a pain au chocolat and a custard danish.
The other exception is vacation. Since we got back from the Var, we’ve been missing southern French hotel breakfasts. Not the pastries, exactly. More the whole thing: coming down a little late, finding a table outside, and hot coffee (sometimes it’s a make-your-own machine, others they take your order). Then the buffet, where American expectations and French reality part ways again, because in most cases there is no hot breakfast. I know. Stay with me, because here’s what you’ll find instead:
Whatever the market had that week: strawberries, melon, cherries, apricots.
Cheeses, charcuterie, smoked fish, cook-your-own boiled eggs, granola, little pots of yogurt.
Honey, sometimes a whole honeycomb you cut from yourself.
Jams, often local, sometimes housemade
Sometimes vegetables (tomatoes, cucumber, avocado).
Pastries: croissants, pains au chocolat, sometimes a regional cake.
Best of all, the bread station: whole baguettes with a bread knife and a towel to hold the loaf, so you cut your own slices without touching everyone else’s bread. What the French actually want for breakfast is baguette with salted butter and a little jam. They’re right.
Hot food, where it exists, means larger or higher-end hotels: eggs, sausage, bacon. A few make eggs to order. Lou Calen does scrambled eggs à la minute, Villa Marie in Ramatuelle puts out olives and fresh-to-order omelets, and Épi on the beach in Saint-Tropez delivered ours to the bungalow so we could have it out by the pool.
Before you book, check whether breakfast is included in your rate. Often yes, not always, and it can add up.
The good news: this is the easiest luxury to recreate at home, because nothing is cooked. A few cheeses, some charcuterie, the best fruit you can find. Yogurt or fromage blanc, honey, good jam. A whole baguette with a bread knife so people cut their own, and a dish of salted butter beside it (splurge here: Bordier or Isigny). One hot thing if you must, soft scrambled eggs. Coffee in bowls, fresh juice, done.
Tell me in the comments: what’s the best hotel breakfast you’ve had in France?
x Sarah
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.