How to Become a Regular at Maison Bertaux in London

Becoming a regular at Maison Bertaux demands patience — London’s oldest patisserie is among its busiest. During the morning, Japanese tourists crowd around tables with cameras hovering over their breakfast pastries. Come afternoon, Soho’s masses swing by to refuel with coffee and cake. Yet, despite its popularity, Maison Bertaux retains the intimacy of a country teahouse, beckoning you inside with fairy lights, sugar and chipped teacups.

Upon arriving in London for graduate school, I made it my mission to become a regular. I solidified my order. I established my preferred seat. After two weeks, I memorized the route there. At the end of the first month, I recognized other patrons. By four months, I chatted with the waiters and my order was a foregone conclusion when I entered. And yet, with each passing week, Maison Bertaux opened up like a treasure chest revealing new art one day and new regulars the next.

Although the cafe calls itself a French patisserie, it avoids the pre-packaged continental glamour of Laduree and the like. As soon as you enter the owner, Michelle Wade, greets you with a harried ‘Hello’ and requests your order. She could list the various pastries available — she started working there at sixteen, she’s intimate with the offerings — or you could wait for the single waiter to find the single laminated menu, by now stained with coffee and cream. It’s simpler to head to the window and point to the pastry that catches your eye. Morning? Opt for a croissant, which emerge from the kitchen at regular intervals and are left to cool on any and every available surface. Afternoon? Choose a scone studded with sultanas or a fruit tart abundant enough to serve two at nearby Pierre Herme. The pastries elude the precise glamour of their French counterparts, but their cracks offer relief from the polished experience of contemporary London life.

The coffee follows a similar pattern. Forget your meticulous flat white, at Maison Bertaux drinks prepare the stomach for a symphony of butter, sugar and flour. Sip on a creamy café au lait or brace yourself for a dense café noir (this is a French café, leave the Italian drinks at Bar Italia). Tea arrives in pots stolen from a life-sized dollhouse. But leave the rich hot chocolate for those rare chillier-than-chilly mornings in January and February.

On those days you’ll want a seat downstairs, where the constant to and fro of patrons and pastries heats the room. Otherwise, linger upstairs with art by The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding or duck next door for optimal people watching. No matter where you sit, you’ll slide out of the plastic chairs and watch your coffee and pastry teeter on the edge of the narrow, plastic-coated tables. Like the glitter-bedecked memorabilia covering the walls, broken teacups stuffed with sugar and flowers in makeshift vases clutter the tables. But being conversant in these quirks creates the homey charm of Maison Bertaux.

These quirks encompass the food. During my breakfasts, I’ve developed a catalog of the croissants’ endless variations. Unlike their restrained French counterparts, Maison Bertaux’s emerge from the oven large, deeply brown and oozing butter. Regardless of how they look that day, they fall off the plate they’re served on. Crack off an end — you might get both together or they might be on opposite ends of the plate. Whether you dip it in coffee or bite in immediately, a thin layer of crumbs dusts your pants against which the single paper napkin provides feeble defense. The pastry’s chewy bite and lack of sweetness justifies the mess — no matter when you visit, that’s for certain.

It’s a warm but grey spring morning and I meander through Soho’s morning-after calm with a flutter in my stomach. I’ve been away for a month. Will my Maison Bertaux still be there? In the past four weeks spring transformed London from a dark grey collection of shabby coats to an all-night rave covered in neon paint. The door jangles and I fall into the informal queue that’s formed. After a quick hello and smile I repeat my order and head upstairs. “Oh, of course,” the owner chirps. And with a smile I’m back home, where nothing has changed.

Aquavit and the 'must-eat' list

Every food aficionado has a list. It’s their ‘must try’ list. Like the bibliophile’s never ending chart of books to read or the traveller’s map stuck with pins, food-lovers track the restaurants they want to try and the dishes and ingredients they have yet to taste. These range from the mundane to the sublime; from tuna melts at Landmark Diner to caviar from Petrossian. And after crossing an experience off the list, it must be recorded. Or that’s how I felt after I dined at Aquavit — New York's premier Scandinavian restaurant since 1987 — in early May, my first two-star Michelin restaurant and proper fine dining experience. 

Since I hadn’t recently published a book and am still a dissertation away from finishing my master’s degree, I dined at Aquavit as my birthday from my boyfriend. Although I love fish and Scandinavia more than he does, he happily donned a tie to educate himself in the intricacies of the Michelin star system (the previous month we savored a special steak at one-star Piora, which might have contributed to his enthusiasm). So we arrived — I giddy and he buttoned-up — at 8:30 on a Tuesday evening, which Open Table suggested was the only reasonable available time. We benefitted from our waiter’s undivided attention.

But forget your the over-eager waiter at your local Thai place who refills your water after every half-sip. The drinks we ordered at the bar followed us to our table. The waiter always placed my dish in front of me and my boyfriend’s in front of him without asking who ordered what. When the candle at our table flickered out, the waiter re-lit it while calmly acknowledging the seeming flaw. The attention remained after we ordered the prix fixe sans cheese course, sans wine pairing: the cheapest option.

This practiced refinement carried through to the dishes and pacing of the meal, which, despite a few jitters, proceeded with a calm but swift pace. We started our journey through Scandinavian cuisine with two amuse bouche that proceeded our appetizers. The first, served in a box landscaped like a miniature garden, involved a light and crunchy fried potato cake, dusted with sour cream, caviar and dill along with a thimble-sized cracker topped with chewy smoked venison mixed with milky cheese. As soon as we sussed out the flavors and textures— grown-up sour cream and onion chip, sophisticated Scandi-nacho — another waiter circled the room offering bread: your choice of Danish rye, olive or sourdough. Seconds later a slate of house-churned butter appeared, which transformed the molasses-like rye into a chocolate-like treat fit for dessert. Swiftly, we’d already discovered the sea, earth and land of Scandinavia.

As the courses circled before me, I reveled in the practiced calm atmosphere: the quiet room where everyone mediated their voices; the Alvar Aalto-designed vase on the table; the heavy cutlery, which turned out to be ideal for slicing through the layers of chewy smoked salmon, sweet cream cheese, light bread and crisp prawns I enjoyed for my smörgåstårta appetizer. But I craved a breath before an intermezzo of crisp fried fish balls topped with sweet pickles arrived. And I wanted another respite before sipping a brine-y palate cleanser of lemon-mint-elderflower iced tea. Nevertheless, I became a kid eating lunch, enjoying a snack and swallowing lake water at my imaginary Scandinavia summer cottage.

But I doubt kids would have felt the glee I did when my main course arrived. I plunged into a butter-rich bowl of dill-dusted cod, sweet asparagus and earthy morels. My boyfriend waited while the waiter poured duck jus in a perfect arc over the seared bird. We prolonged the course with a flight of three aquavit brewed in-house. My favorite was the fig and cardamom sipped like a spicier, less syrupy version of a fruit-infused rosolio. Less interesting was the Campari-like bitter orange one and I remained unimpressed with the bitter-candy blueberry-elderflower flavor.

Although Scandinavian children might not have enjoyed the range of aquavit we did, they would scoop up our pre-dessert pot of light-licorice ice cream and sweet beet juice, which tasted closer a root beer float than licorice or beets. Children would also marvel at the array of petites fours we were offered, but would hang their heads at our choices: a biscotti-like oatmeal cookie and bitter passion-fruit truffle for me, a chewy almond nougat alongside a floral chai truffle for my boyfriend.

As I sat waiting for dessert, it seemed as if I could marvel at nothing else. My dish — candy-colored orbs of ice cream and cotton-y raspberry cake dotted with vibrant lingonberries — revealed I was wrong. I resisted scraping my plate, but I floated out of the restaurant gripping my complimentary rum and anise biscotti, knowing I’d scrape as much out of the memory as possible.

Seattle, New York and dynamic urbanism

I excavated my wallet for change. Five, twenty five … yes! I pieced together two dollars and fifty cents, the bus fare in Seattle. Residents may tap in and out with thick Orca cards, but it’s cheaper for visitors to hoard their change. It is a small price to pay — figuratively and literally — and not just because Seattle is the rare American city non-drivers like me can navigate solo. Seattle’s low-cost public transport supports their interpretation of an American hub city for the twenty-first century.

I come from New York. I live in London. I’m fluent in urban life. But counting quarters for Seattle bus rides introduced me to a new form of dynamism. While large cities require infrastructure to move millions of residents daily, smaller cities tend to overlook such investments. DC’s metro recently paused service. LA’s buses are infamous signs of urban blight. European cities, on the other hand, tend to boast walkable central zones and offer public transport only to the residential outskirts. In Seattle, however, the bus connects urban residents to the city, allowing people to move, work and play in a sprawling metropolitan area. The city might be small, but its public transport is dynamic.

But this isn’t the strip mall and ranch house sprawl that characterizes American suburbs. Seattle occupies a vast but compact space. The central business district crams together shops, glass office buildings and lunch counters into a busy business schedule. Walk for thirty or forty minutes and you’ll discover a mirror city that plays in the CBD’s off time. This is the face lures visitors to the Pacific Northwest. If downtown Seattle adds people to the desolate American cityscape, the residential centre adds the personality and creativity missing from big and small urban centers alike.

Unlike New York City or London, Seattle retains an atmosphere of becoming. Whereas New York transplants search for their patch of the city’s personality quilt, Seattle asks newbies to develop its landscape. Creativity remains to be created. Bus stops invite residents to sit with mosaics of chairs. Flowers adorn the sidewalks. Tables and chairs beg for al fresco lunches. In Seattle, residents design the city’s landscape.

New York deters such generation. The city unfolds before you already generated. Bus stops in New York are uninviting poles that beg would-be riders to catch the subway. Parks sort runners, bikers, walkers and drivers according to their roles. Crowded public seating prevents lingering. If Seattlites make their city, New Yorkers squeeze into the niches previously established in the urban jungle.

Maybe I’m biased. I grew up in New York. The metropolis has ascribed me roles since I was toddler able to duck under subway turnstiles. Had I been raised in Seattle, maybe I too would dread navigating their urban ecosystems. But I’m not the only visitor struck by Seattle’s creative milieu. In recent years, the city has gained a reputation at the forefront of sustainable urbanism. It’s not just their bus system —their trams and light rail also equips residents with effective and affordable access to the city. Cultural events are similarly accessible and inspiring. Local government boasts a practical progressive viewpoint that puts Bernie Sanders to shame. Not only does Seattle seem dynamic, they act like it.

Back in New York and grumbling about pretentious NYU students gabbing at my favorite café, I wonder what I crave in city life. Do I desire dynamism? Or do I desire a script? Some cities enchant with the possibility of creation (in addition to Seattle, I nominate Bristol — where I’ve lived — and Ghent — where I’ve only visited — as other spots with similarly spirited milieux). Some cities enrapture with a defined script. I dream of both. I dream of developing an urban character while being certain that where I live is important with a capital ‘I’. Can the two be reconciled? I don’t know. But if so, I hope I can find it.

Three Issues or My Magazine Universe

Some people spend money on clothes, others on meals out. I spend money on magazines. From Private Eye and Elle to Mushpit and The Gourmand, if a magazine grabs my attention, I grab it. Inspired by Magculture's 'Issues' column — in which they ask editors, illustrators and magazine mavens about their favorite issues — here are my three standout titles: a new one, an old one and a particularly brilliant detail from one. What magazines grab you?

new:  dodo magazine #3

The bright colors, fun graphics and amusing stories seduced me from the shelf at Magculture. It calls itself a personal tree house and even a quick flick through the chunky, stapled pages provides ample amusement. My childish sense of humor relishes the photos of empty log flumes and adventure stories. 

old: monocle arctic issue 68

I hoard Monocle back issues, but I’ve debated cryovacing the November 2013 issue on the far north. The stories on Svalbard and the Arctic Congress remain fascinating and the photos immersive. Bonus? The bookish design and high quality paper makes for easy storage.

detail: footnotes in the happy reader

Until I read The Happy Reader, I didn’t know I craved magazines with footnotes. Sometimes informative, sometimes funny, always useful the occasional additional bits of information embellish the esoteric knowledge of their fantastic interviewees.