Our Town: Restaurant brings charm of Europe to Long Island

Dr Tom Ferraro

There aren’t many heavenly places in the world.  Places where one is surrounded by beauty and peace and where anxiety does not exist.  And if you are a business man and manage to create such a heavenly place you will eventually get very rich.

To build a place like heaven and make it available to the public means you have in fact discovered the Holy Grail.

Well “Lordy me” to quote James Comey, I’ve just discovered such a place. And if you can believe it, the place is located at Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall.

This piece of heaven is a little Belgium bakery/restaurant called Le Pain Quotidien.

It originated in Belgium in 1990 and was created and nourished by Alain Coumont who inherited his love of baking from his grandparents and his father who was an accomplished chef as well.

Le Pain Quotidien means daily bread.

I recall the phrase ‘daily bread’ being drummed into my head as a child with the enforced recital of The Lord’s Prayer,”  which includes the line “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Well here we have our daily bread served in a heavenly glorious setting.

Le Pain Quotidien is the little bake shop that could. It is now franchised in 220 locations and in 17 countries.

So one might ask ‘what makes this bakery so special?”

Well, first off, it has what one calls the “wow factor.”

And it is rare indeed to encounter a place like this.

Other restaurants in the New York area with the Wow Factor would include the famous Tavern on the Green, 21 Club or The River Café.

When you enter these establishments you immediately know you have arrived in a special place.

They all have that ‘je ne c’est quoi” which makes you smile and relax and feel at home.

So what makes Le Pain Quotidien so special?  Three things:

1. The décor: The architecture and ambience of the bakery restaurant takes you back in time when things were real, rustic, simple and honest.

But then add a twist of French elegance and you get the idea.

All the floors are natural wood, the tables and chairs are also antique wood imported from Europe and then there is the famous communal table which seats about 20.

There is some white and blue tile on the walls which reminded me of the tiles at the Hotel Qvisisana in Capri.

On one wall is a display of tall wooden bed posts set off by columns.

The opposite wall has a huge map of the world.  The look of this place is a real knock-out punch and you haven’t even sat down yet.

2. The food: The menu is built around classic rustic loaves of bread but then the fun really begins.

I ordered a Paris ham and gruyere omelet and something called an Almond Butter Berry, which was a yummy smoothie served in a mason jar.

All very fresh and warm and European.

3. The real way to eat and drink:   Many years ago I was lucky enough to meet  one of the grandchildren of Alice Neel, one of America’s most renowned female artists.

When I asked her to describe her grandmother she said “Oh wow, she was just a natural at everything she did. When she ate food she always ate with her hands, not with spoons or forks.”

Genius always tends toward the simple way. So when I asked for some hot chocolate in Le Pain Quotidien it came in a white bowl, with the chocolate on the side which you then poured into the foamy white cream.

The waitress told me that it was served this way in Belgium and you drank it by wrapping your hands around the bowl which warmed you up.

And there is even a pictured diagram on the wall which gives instruction on how to handle and eat Belgium tartines which are  open-faced sandwiches.

It was such a fun, easy, friendly, magical old fashioned place that in fact I witnessed a miracle while I sat and ate.

I was seated at the communal table and shortly after I sat down I noticed a father and his two kids take a place at the far end of the table and proceed to submerge themselves in their individual electronic devices.

They did this for the first fifteen minutes but I noticed that by the end of the meal they had put down their electronic devices and were in fact having a friendly and animated chat amongst themselves.  And if that’s not a miracle I don’t know what is.

So congratulations to Monsieur Alain Coumont for creating this peaceful, beautiful  friendly bakery that  can perform the miracle to getting a family to put down their smart phones , look up and begin to enjoy a moment together on a Sunday morning. Wow and thanks for this  heavenly creation of good food and fine architecture and real human warmth.

Miracles do happen even on Long Island in the year 2017.

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