One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
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are allowed to cycle the 800-metre causeway before 10 a.m., but as you can’t leave your bike at the other end it’s a largely pointless exercise unless you’re desperate to add another couple of kilometres to the day’s total, and we’re too late anyway, so we ditch them in the parking area, lugging our bags with us as the lockers are out of action ‘due to high security level’.
Though the bike racks may be quiet, the bus is busy, and we cram on behind a great muscular man with a shih tzu in a rucksack, who tuts every time anyone inadvertently brushes against the dog, which, thanks to the density of humanity on board, is fairly often. I stack my mysteriously weighty panniers on my foot, hold on and pray that the bus moves swiftly, which of course it doesn’t, stopping almost immediately at the row of rapacious gift shops a few hundred metres from the visitor centre, where more people attempt to squash in. It’s amazing, I think, how quickly even a regular passenger on the Northern Line can get used to the glorious space and solitude of the open road.
The shuttle doesn’t take us all the whole way to the Mont; it stops some distance from it, allowing everyone to rush over to the railings for snaps with the most famous island in France, a fortress that repelled every invasion attempt during the Hundred Years War with England. How things change; outside Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel is the most-visited site in the country.
Much as I love watching people pose for selfies, we’re in a hurry, surging forward through the great stone arch at the vanguard of this particular wave of heathen marauders. The restaurant, La Mère Poulard, is easy to spot, thanks to the crowd standing outside with cameras, snapping the action in the open kitchen, where huge numbers of eggs are being beaten in copper bowls ready for the lunchtime rush.
This place has been known for its omelettes for over a century: the eponymous Mère Poulard set up shop cooking for pilgrims and tourists in the late 1800s, and gained a reputation for her omelettes in particular – an easy thing to put together on an island with no grazing or agricultural land. The hotel she ran with her husband, in a prime position just inside the gates, was perfectly placed to take advantage of the tourist boom, and her dining room was soon mentioned as a must-visit in contemporary travel guides (as, in fact, was the rival establishment run by her brother-in-law, though clearly he was less good at marketing).
Poulard is said to have ruled her establishment with an iron whisk: when King Leopold of Belgium demanded to eat outside, on a terrace reserved for the taking of coffee, he was apparently given short shrift by Madame. She must have been a tartar in the kitchen, too, because those omelettes look like bloody hard work. The recipe is a closely guarded secret; despite my best efforts in wheedling French, all I can get out of the wolfish young chef closest to me is that he has to beat the mixture for 15 minutes before it’s ready. He winks – I’d make a joke about his wrist action if only I could remember the vocab.
Hanging around for slightly longer than feels entirely polite, I watch the process with a keen eye, taking notes as the team beat out a syncopated rhythm with their whisks. Each long-handled pan is heated in front of the massive fireplace until the butter inside sizzles, before the well-whisked mixture is added and the pan stacked neatly on a shelf at the side of the hearth. Once the omelette is cooked, it’s briefly toasted in the flames, and then served immediately.
Having apparently learnt all that there is to be learnt from the tight-lipped staff, and shortly before someone calls security, I make my way up to the slightly sepulchral dining room, where Matt is sitting reading The Times in the company of a pair of Korean girls charging their phones on the table, a family of voluble Italians and a grumpy British couple who look like they’d dearly like to ask him for the features section. Almost every inch of wall is covered with photographs of grandees who have been lucky enough to feast on the famous Poulard hospitality, ranging from Trotsky to Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher, who came as a guest of President Mitterand, apparently to ‘discuss the problems of the world over a good omelette’ – one hopes they weren’t served by the same rather pungent waiter that we’ve been assigned by the deliciously superior maître d’. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Matt says in a manner that suggests that even if he did he’d be too well mannered to say so, ‘but at this time of day surely it must be the beginning of his shift.’ I’m just glad he smells worse than us, I say.
I open the menu and confirm what I already know: that at €34 this omelette is to be the single most expensive dish I will eat on my entire trip, and that includes a Michelin-starred birthday treat a month from now. (The price makes the three-course menu at €48 feel like a bargain, just as it’s designed to, though in fact I probably don’t need a poached egg and samphire salad and a frozen Calvados soufflé to push my egg consumption for the day into the danger zone.)
The American journalist and gourmand Waverley Root, recalling the ‘luscious omelettes’ of 1920s Normandy in his classic work The Food of France, feels confident enough to recommend the Mère Poulard version 30 years later, ‘providing that the passage of time and of a good many thousand tourists has not wrought havoc on it’.
I can confirm that, almost a century later, mass production does not seem to have been to the detriment of quality. I suspect price inflation has been disproportionate, yet given the criminal mark-up, it’s disappointingly delicious. The outer shell is almost leathery, in pleasurable contrast to the moussey interior, and gilded with salty, slightly burnt butter – it’s almost like an American-style half-moon breakfast omelette rather than the classic runny French cigar, but stuffed with an egg-white foam rather than gooey cheese. A dish of potatoes and bacon fried in lard arrives on the side; for a few euros more I could have had scallops or foie gras instead, but, really, there are limits. My advice is, go to Mont-Saint-Michel, watch the spectacle, then go home and make one yourself.
Omelette Soufflée à la Mère Poularde
For all its carefully cultivated mystique, the world’s most famous omelette is surprisingly easy to reproduce – all you need is a bit of elbow grease (or an electric whisk). I haven’t suggested any fillings, as adding extra ingredients to the pan will knock the air out of the eggs, but a few chopped herbs on top are very welcome, and you can serve fried potatoes and cured ham, or sautéed mushrooms, or indeed foie gras if you must, on the side. I tried finishing it under the grill, to replicate the flashing of the pan through the fire, but concluded this was just for show, though if you want to get the blowtorch out, be my guest.
Per omelette
3 eggs
A pinch of salt
Oil, to grease
Generous 1 tbsp cold butter, cut into small dice
1 Crack the eggs into a large bowl with the salt, and begin whisking vigorously. Once they’re fairly foamy, oil a heavy-based frying pan about 20cm wide and put it on a medium heat.
2 Keep whisking the eggs until they’re very thick and bubbly, almost like a mousse. This will probably take just under 4 minutes with a hand whisk.
3 Pour the mixture into the pan and leave to set until it begins to come away from the side of the pan, then gently loosen the edges with a spatula and slide the butter underneath, shaking to distribute it evenly beneath the omelette.
4 Once it’s deep golden underneath but still foamy and wet above, carefully shake it on to a plate, fold over and serve immediately.
Almost €150 lighter, we stagger down the stairs with our panniers, the elegant maître d’s eyes sliding tactfully away from us as we lurch in his rarefied direction, and attack the Mont proper, which is, even on a Monday afternoon in May, fairly swarming with visitors. The single street is one long gift shop, and it’s a relief to pay the entrance fee for the abbey simply to shake off a few school parties – the man doing the bag search is all smiles when I explain we’re cyclists, and lets us go through with our massive burdens, despite their bulk being in clear violation of the security regulations (to say nothing of the deadly salami slicer at the bottom of mine).
With