Boulangerie Guillaume

Montreal, Canada
November 13, 2010

Dear Guillaume,

We've never met. To be honest, I wouldn't even recognize you on the street. If we happened to be in the metro together I would avoid your gaze like every other polite Montrealer is instinctively supposed to do when riding the metro, except I imagine you're the kind of person who would turn to me and offer his seat when he saw how many groceries I was carrying, as I'm oft to do. The only change in my grocery-laden life is now that I'll have less back pain because bread is lighter than watermelon, and all I want to buy is loaves and loaves of your bread. Fruit is an over-rated food group, except when it comes stuffed inside your baked, slightly-fermented delicacies.

So you don't know me, but you've already done me the ultimate kindness, whether or not you give up your metro seat. You've saved me the trouble of making my own sourdough bread. When summer ended I lost my baker. Well, really, he always belonged to LaPerle (the lucky woman), but she was good with sharing. Bread-less, I resigned myself to growing my own sourdough starter so I could have a little of the tangy flavour of LaPerle's Boulanger's bread all winter. I'm not a maternal person, though, so keeping something in my house alive indefinitely is intimidating. I'm not even good with houseplants, and those need water even less regularly. It's disgraceful.

So when I found you, the weight lifted from my shoulders. I loved you instantly. I saw the list of ingredients in all your breads so I didn't even have to spend 10 minutes of my or your salesperson's time asking what was in each loaf. No milk, no butter, no additives, and half the loaves used sourdough instead of yeast. Oh, Guillaume, it was wonderful. My favourite LaPerle loaf was a hazelnut sourdough, and when I saw your walnut loaf I knew I'd make it through winter in one piece. The walnuts, like LaPerle's hazelnuts, were perfectly toasted. The second time I had this loaf the nuts were softer, a little less intense, but the bread was sponge-y, light, and chewy. I don't know if it's better than LaPerle's Boulanger's, but I consider myself an equally lucky woman, along with the rest of the Montreal population that should get to know your bread and your boulangerie.

Bear with me, Guillaume. I just finished reading a book by the Wall Street Journal's wine columnists who started something called "Open That Bottle Day", where readers would plan a special occasion to open a bottle they'd been saving for whatever reason. After the day passed, they received tons of letters from readers who had participated in the event with friends, family, or by themselves. The thing was, Guillaume, that most of the readers' letters weren't about the taste of the wine itself, but about the experience of opening and drinking the bottle - the story of the bottle, the memories. Sometimes the wine wasn't even very good, but it didn't matter. The wine often transported them back to a special moment when they bought it or received it - a wedding, a trip, a conversation, a last family Christmas, a first job celebration, the family member whose bottle that had inherited from a long-hidden collection.

Your bread, for me, was like a bottle of wine. It brought me back to the summer's sunshine, Sunday mornings of heat, abundant fresh fruits and vegetables, music, and calm. It brought me back to the last farmers' market of the season when the man from LaPerle's Boulangerie at the farmers' market said to me, "Thank you for coming back all summer," as he looked straight into my eyes with a profound, sincere expression on his face. "No," I smiled and laughed, "thank you for coming back each week. It makes my Sunday." What do you say to someone who becomes such a part of your life's routine? Maybe it's silly. I barely knew this man, but maybe you, Guillaume, can understand how important this bread was to me.

I'm loyal, Guillaume. I love your bread itself and I love where it transports me.

In respectful friendship,
Amie

Boulangerie Guillaume
17 Fairmount East
Montreal, QC
Hours: Tues-Sat 7am-7pm, Sun 7am-2pm
514-507-3199

Don't Have a Baby, Have a Market: Marché St-Jacques

Wait! That's not the series name! Haven't I spent the summer and fall extolling the value of markets over babies? Well, the world got a little turned upside down when I walked into the muzak-playing, sterilized air-pumping, recently renovated and re-opened Marché St-Jacques, and suddenly babies, by comparison, didn't seem like such a waste of space.

When I first heard about the new Marché St-Jacques, I thought someone on high had heard my plea for more markets and opened (well, re-opened) a new public market in the Centre-Sud at rue Ontario and rue Amherst, but no, turns out that in 2006 the Ville-Marie borough sold the over 100-year old market to the private sector, to a company called Rosdev for $2.3 million. The Montreal Public Market Management Corporation (CGMPM - it's in charge of the Jean-Talon, Atwater, Maisonneuve, and Lachine markets) couldn't afford the price tag, and neither could the previous ground floor tenants of the Marché St-Jacques building afford the new rent.

Who could afford the rent? Gourmet food stores.

Who can't afford the market? A good chunk of the people who live in the area, a generally low-income neighbourhood that includes the Habitations Jeanne-Mance, one of the country's largest subsidized public housing units. There is a big upswing in condo building nearby, though, and Rosdev is probably banking on their business.

There's nothing wrong with a specialty store. In fact, I love Olive et Olives who have an outlet in the new space, but the mandate of a public market (which this originally was before the 2006 sale) includes providing accessible, affordable food purchasing options for local residents. That usually means being able to buy staple goods directly from local producers and discount sellers (think those enormous $7 bags of Quebec carrots at Jean-Talon. Organic they're not, but well-priced and local they are). Compared to Marché Jean-Talon and even Atwater (which recently did its annual winter down-sizing, getting rid of most of the outside vendors and leaving residents and market-goers with fewer local, farm-fresh options), Marché St-Jacques feels like a private club...you know, one where you have to wear all white, never smile, play lots of tennis, and pay a ridiculous membership fee, which is what you essentially will be doing by buying anything here (the money part, not the tennis. The smiling is up to you I guess).
If you read French check out the Rue Frontenac article by Marie-Eve Fournier on le Marché Claude Plouffe, one of the former market stores, now moved across the street to rue Amherst south of Ontario. Ever had a lease that was supposed to run until a certain date and then you get notice that you have a year to get out? Sucks when it's your apartment, but it also sucks when it's your business. Moving fees are not included in the less-than-polite upheaval.

So should you shop at this market? Well, it's a tough call. The coffee and tea shop is beautiful, the preservative-free fresh pasta sauce shop (the pasta itself was ambiguously not described as "preservative-free" by comparison) is run by a very nice man and offers an incredible looking lamb sauce made from something ridiculous like 12 lamb shanks, there's a Poissonerie La Mer outlet (but it's better to go to the original shop down the road at René-Lévesque and Papineau for selection and a wealth of fish knowledge from the staff), a fruit and vegetable place with a smaller and only slightly less local selection than Marché Claude Plouffe down the road, a Fromagerie Atwater outlet (guess they couldn't really change the name), and a Première Moisson, with several empty shopping mall-like slots in the building for future businesses (definitely not local farmer stalls).

BYO-headphones though, because I've been in elevators with better music than this place.