"It could be a village business, but it's in the Montorgueil district ! The proximity, the contact... we create links! That's part of the life of a restaurant: you can come in at 5pm, two of them are there, eating a side of beef, others cakes: the beauty is that there's life, it's alive."
Les Artizans is the fusion of two crafts: patisserie and quality cuisine. It's the story of gourmandise, coupled with rigor, all mingled in the guets-apens of friends' tables, from the neighborhood or elsewhere. For 8 years now, it's been the success story of a duo of epicurean chefs: Pastry Chef Mathieu Mandard, co-founder and manager with Patrick Canal of the restaurant Les Artizans.
One, Mathieu, was born in Marseille and grew up in Savoie, and follows a classic pastry-making route, apprenticing for a CAP Pâtissier. He then embarked on a tour of France, "working with two of France's top pastry chefs": Patrick Chevalot in Val d'Isère, and Philippe Segond in Aix-en-Provence. This led him to the Georges V in Paris, where he won the French Dessert Championship in 2004, before leaving for Russia to open the Café Pouchkine with Emmanuel Riou in Moscow, where he stayed for three years. Finally, he settled in France, where he opened my first patisserie, Art Macaron, and then, 8 years ago, Les Artizans.
The other, Patrick, is a Catalan chef from the Pyrenees. He also declares a classic apprenticeship, followed by 20 years in gastronomic restaurants: hotels, palaces, starred restaurants. This was followed by a stint in Paris bistros. Then, from one business to another, he set up shop on rue de Tournon in the 6th arrondissement, where he managed the restaurant for 7 years, until he crossed paths with Mathieu.
And that's how the idea for the restaurant came about: Patrick had his business on Rue de Tournon, Mathieu was just behind the Luxembourg Gardens on Boulevard du Montparnasse. A mutual friend introduced them, and Mathieu offered to make the desserts for the restaurant - the Café Tournon, and one thing led to another: both the patisserie was too small for Mathieu, who wanted to do something else, and Patrick was also looking for other projects. So they decided to bring the two businesses together in one place.
The Artizans concept
"We called it Les Artizans, because pastry-making and cooking are both crafts. We wrote it with a Z for the first etymology of the word, in old French, the words Payzans, Artizans... were written with a Z. That's also why we chose the color blue for the restaurant, the blue of artisans."
On the location, at 30 rue Montorgueil, nestled between the 1st and 2nd arrondissements, the two chefs explain, "It was pure chance, but in fact it took a very long time: here we battled for over two years to get the place. We looked everywhere, and we needed a place with two labs, big enough to accommodate both activities. We liked it here because of the street, which is beautiful and busy (sometimes dirty, laughs)." We have 55 covers downstairs, Salon upstairs 30, terrace for a large dozen places.
Added value...
The two key words are Gourmandise and Régularité: the regularity of gourmet delights, both sweet and savory. But also rigor, in the raw materials and in the cooking, as if we were cooking at home. And the ambush!
...The human link
We're here all the time, that's the life of a restaurant, a lot of people come to see us. We're not detached from the business, we're free, but we're here every day. If we're not here in the morning, we're here at midday, leaving at 2pm and coming back in the evening. In 8 years, we've built up relationships with a lot of customers we didn't know, so when we get a text saying, "We're here tonight", we don't force ourselves to come and see them!
We now have too many of these emblematic customers, the guet apens! We arrive at 2pm, the day's going well, we've got a lot of work to do, but the next day we haven't done a thing: all it takes is one furious table of 4 that turns into a table of 20 and lasts until 7pm, and some weirdo spraying the ceiling (editor's note: there was a champagne stain on the ceiling), and that doesn't stain the champagne (laughs). That's the life of a place! It could be an affair in a village or town, the Montorgueil district, everyone who loves the area knows us, we do the same at other people's places, and friends from Corsica who arrive at 2pm and we have a 6-hour table: we're constantly on the lookout!
It's what we wanted, a restaurant like a village, proximity and contact create links, that's part of the life of a restaurant: you can come in at 5pm, two are there, they're eating a side of beef, others cakes: the beauty is that there's life, it's alive.
Was it also a choice linked to the diversity of customers in the Montorgueil district?
"That was the gamble here: we're opening a business for authentic bistro cuisine and great quality on desserts, and at the same time, we're setting up in a street where there are a lot of catering businesses that revolve around tourism and therefore more international gastronomy."
"When we arrived, we were the most expensive on the street and everyone was telling us it was too expensive, that we weren't going to make it, so we said we'll see! we arrived with a really different offer: if anything, the only one in the neighborhood that can come close to what we do, has a comparable offer and price in the end is Escargot, which is different all the same."
"In the beginning, like any business, it took us a year to get the machine up and running properly, but 8 years later I think we've got a pretty nice panel of different customers: the inhabitants of the 1st arrondissement, and there are still some who are discovering us, we have a lot of foreign tourists who come in, and then we have the tourists from the provinces who are coming up. We also have a good network in the rugby world, so whenever there's a match in Paris, we get a lot of people coming in.
An atypical offering: bistro cuisine and pastries
We knew what kind of cuisine we wanted to do, we weren't going to make pizzas or crêpes: we wanted a fine wine list and quality pastries. The patisserie is doing wonderfully well, in the sense that we get incredible footfall in the street, which we see in the tearoom at weekends, and which we wouldn't get if we were in a backwater street in the 5th or 9th arrondissements.
On the other hand, people didn't necessarily read "Bistrot et Pâtisserie", even though you could see it wasn't a classic patisserie. So, after 4 years, we redecorated and changed the position of the window display, which was highlighting the pastries, because people thought it was just the cakes. So we reversed the bar and the pastry case, and since we've done that we've seen an overall increase in sales. It's really added to our catering business, and it's much clearer for customers.
Even after 8 years, we're constantly questioning ourselves: for example, we launched the buffet brunch 2 years ago. Lunch was always more irregular on winter Saturdays than in summer, and we knew that no one else on the street was serving buffet brunch. Today, we have 50 places for brunch, and it's going very well. We're revitalizing lunch on weekends, and we can serve 60 covers on Saturdays and 120 on Sundays, for example.
A constantly evolving menu, in line with the seasons and producers' offers..."
When we opened, we offered a choice of starters, main courses and desserts, but we realized that this was running out of steam: now we have a set menu and a slate menu, with seasonal market produce that we work with differently" Patrick explains: "I have meat suppliers from the Haute-Loire and Aubrac regions for very specific cuts of meat. After that, I work in the neighborhood with the Tribolet butcher's shop, which is a family-run bakery, a neighborhood butcher, so it's handy to have on hand for beef sides or ribeyes. Otherwise, I get duck from the southwest, pork from the Cantal region, and scallops direct from the Baie de Seine.
"We work directly with quite a few producers. As foie gras is complicated this year, there isn't any, production has decreased, industrialists keep a lot for preserves. I buy whole fattened ducks to rework them, which lowers the cost, but you have to rework the whole duck afterwards."
A loyal customer base
What works for us is word of mouth. Food critics don't understand our dual cuisine and patisserie offering, or tell us we've been here too long - they come if there's an opening or a big change - here they don't know what they're going to talk about, cuisine or patisserie.
We've produced a culinary guide, but we give the other national guides the cold shoulder, because they ask us every year if we want to pay. We don't like that, so we ask them, "You don't charge for Michelin-starred restaurants, but you do! In our opinion, these paper guides are useless. We feed more people than the starred restaurants, our products are just as noble as those of the starred restaurants, our prices are lower, our standards are lower, but our clientele is at least as good.
Our communication is simple: now we have a person in charge who promotes the brunch, the cooking, the pastries... We ' ve been here for 8 years now, and we're in a constant state of activity.
Meeting with Sortir à Paris journalists
Your journalists have visited Les Artizans several times in recent years, first to discover the concept, then the brunch, and in particular the pastries made by chef Mathieu Mandar: the Bulliz puffs.
"The articles in Sortir à Paris about brunch and patisserie are a big hit! These articles helped us launch our brunch and logs: for example, if 15 new customers discover us one day, they'll taste them and talk about them all year long. It's rare for customers to tell us how they know us, except after an article in Sortir à Paris.
Especially since Sortir à Paris is practically the only media outlet that hasn't asked me to pay to be published".
Les Artizans, in development
"Of course we have goals to go further, but we're relieved to have a cruising rhythm with a great team, led by Anaïs, hall manager (editor's note: also sister of Mathieu Mandar, pictured at head of article)." "For the moment we're fine here, we're after our other projes."
Patrick sets up gîtes in his family home in the Pyrenees, near Font Romeu on the French border. But he also likes to breathe in fresh air and eat out. Mathieu has his own choux pastry concept, Bulliz', with a store on rue d'Hauteville and another on rue Richerand. Everything is produced here, in Les Artizans, so his aim is to relocate production and sell it elsewhere, in 2024.
A message to pass on to Parisians of all ages?
"We'll be here, even during the Olympic Games, in July or August, so it won't make any difference. We understand people's concerns about prices, but they don't realize it: they look at their own groceries. Nobody has the same prices as they did two years ago, so restaurateurs have to pass on the price too, otherwise we can't go on."
"We think differently, we find solutions, but it's a real concern. For example, deliveries are shifted to the night: for all night deliveries (from 10pm to 7am) we have to get organized. So we have more constraints than advantages, which we can't put a figure on today, but we're still not sure we'll make normal sales."
Support from the City of Paris
"Beautiful new stores are opening in the neighborhood, the level of merchants is top: but we need real cooperation from the town hall of both arrondissements; Sunday is the biggest day for merchants and paradoxically, it's the day when there are the most cars, the street isn't cleaned at the right time: there's a lack of synergy, we ask for tolerance especially in fine weather - we wonder where the support for merchants is sometimes. Entrepreneurship in Paris is gratifying, but we have to keep making the next generation want to set up shop!"
Discover original articles from Sortir à ParisLes Bûches de Noël des Artizans 2021 by Matthieu Mandard
Les Artizans, the famous Montorgueil bistro, presents its Christmas creations. Here we have a beautiful, exceptional log in collaboration with artist Thierry Martenon: "Less is More", and divine rolled creations. [Read more]
Les Bûches de Noël des Artizans 2021 by Matthieu Mandard
