Bal(l)ard in Paris

Le Balard Tabac Bar Brasserie

3 Pl Balard

75015 Paris

Tel 01 45 54 19 31

By Patricia Devine and Jim Anderson

As any Ballardite visitor to Paris would notice, the end of the Purple Number 8 Metro (subway) line is Balard. On our current visit to France, we decided to sample the fare of Ballard's sister neighborhood. We were staying in Paris' seventh arrondisement (district), near the Eiffel Tower. Luckily we were on the same subway line, and we headed out to the Balard stop early on a still-dark, chilly November morning.

A few quick stops later, we emerged in the Balard community, and made our way to Place Balard. After crossing under a rail overpass, we emerged into the Place. This is a heavily metroed area, and the Place has two other adjacent metro stops adjacent, making this an easy area to visit.

Le Place Balard is an intimate circle, surrounded by old 19th century Paris buildings and unpretentious businesses. This is an area obviously different than the more upper-crust Paris inner-city, where trim, heavily-leathered young men and women share the streets with nattily attired older French citizens, many with small dogs, stylish eyewear, and en vogue shoes. In contrast, Balard is peopled with a more gritty, working class crowd, where sweats and running shoes (still black and grey of course!) replace the leather pants and zip-up wool turtlenecks of the more stylish areas.

Le Balard shares with our Seattle Ballard haunts a working class feel. Where the seventh arrondisement coffee cafes were filled with bistro seating both inside and out, Balard instead had more simple and spartan indoor seating. In Paris, customers either order at the bar, or are served at tables where the charge for the same items is slightly higher. We felt out of place at the bar, which was filled with scruffy young men pounding down cigarettes with great energy, as is so common in this city. So we chose to be served at one of many empty small tables, almost all empty except for a young fellow with several large suitcases next to his seat.

The bartender worked feverishly at the espresso machine, keeping up with the rapid-fire orders from the parade of young French men coming in for the morning fueling session. As they stood at the bar, they sucked feverishly at their Marlboro reds, drinking heavily sugared caf/-au laits out of white cups and saucers. The short-haired mustached bartender, a middle-aged Parisian in a white shirt, black trousers, black vest, and skinny tie, took our order for "deux Caf/ Au Laits s'il vous plait" in stride, acting as though he understood our miserable French. He pointed to a table where we had been seated, saying "La?" "Oui Monsieur, la" we replied as we retreated to our small table.

Shortly our light-brown, foamy au laits arrived, with two accompanying pain au chocolates. We've been to Paris three times, and have had croissants and pain au chocolates all over the city. None of the baked goods have equaled the fare at Seattle Ballard's Caf/ Besalu. Certainly this is risky business, coming to France and saying "the baked goods just aren't as good as home," but we swear that the crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside croissants at Besalu match up very well with the Parisian originals.

It was still dark outside, nearing 7:15 a.m., and the Balard area was beginning to stir. The hours in Paris are odd. While Seattle coffee haunts start to grind it out at 6 a.m., in Paris they stay silent. Locals down coffee and bread for the morning meal, eschewing the porky bacon and eggs habits of Americans. Big meals abound around 12:30, and then dinner follows eight hours later, with people apparently eating giant meals and then rushing home to bed. Bars close early, and rare is the bar in the seventh arrondisement open after midnight.

Le Balard underscores the connectedness between all of us. While the busy bartender skips the obsequious BS of so many American places, his hard-driving manner belies a friendly, neighborhood approach. Alternating between pulling espresso shots, emptying ashtrays of the smokers bellied up to the bar for their early morning constitutional, and shaking hands with older couples coming in for their croissants, he was all business, intent on crafting a friendly place for locals while plying the regulars with their early-morning starters. We left feeling that Balard, France and Ballard, Washington are much closer than the 7,000 miles separating them on the map.

Patricia Devine and Jim Anderson are seasoned restaurant reviewers in Seattle who may be reached via bnteditor@robinsonnews.com