I stopped at Amélie’s French Bakery & Café in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, a French bakery and café, and the decor alone is worth the visit. It’s the kind of space where you want to slow down and look around before you even order.
How it works
You order in line, and any pastries you pick from the counter are handed to you right away. Only the food is prepared in the back, and they call your name when it’s ready so you can collect it at the pickup window. The pastry counter even has little fans running to keep the flies away from the treats.
The food
For lunch I went with the Amélie’s chicken salad on a croissant, with the BLT fixings added. Any sandwich in a fresh croissant gets my vote, and this one delivered. Every ingredient tasted fresh, and the chicken salad was not your standard version, which made it a real standout.
I don’t usually have dessert at lunch, but I couldn’t pass up the chocolate petit gâteau, and it was far from petit. Layers of chocolate chiffon and mousse come wrapped in ganache and finished with toasted cake crumbs. The cake was thick and rich without being overly sweet, a great choice.
The decor
The room is a full-on fantasy built around a black-and-white checkerboard floor, powder blue striped walls, and a ceiling of exposed black ductwork that makes everything hanging from it pop. And there is a lot hanging from it. Over the front windows, giant silver cutlery (a fork, a knife, and spoons) dangles from an ornate brass ceiling mount like a chandelier for a giant’s dinner table. Nearby, another chandelier is a cluster of pots, pans, colanders, and whisks lit from within, hanging from a bright red velvet-wrapped cord.
It doesn’t stop there. A gold wire chandelier is topped with a miniature Eiffel Tower and other Paris landmarks, draped in crystal beads and curling gold ribbon. Another is made of gold trumpets, horns, and a cello, floating in a window. A gilded ceiling medallion with a painted sky sits above a candle chandelier, and another is hung with colorful hand-blown glass orbs. On the walls, vintage globes with little French flags hang above bright lime and yellow medallions and gold mirrors, one scrawled with “Je suis venu, j’ai vu, j’ai mangé.” Needlepoint tapestries in green velvet frames line the dining area, a portrait of Napoleon hangs beside “The Red Window,” where food orders are handed over, and a framed Mona Lisa wears a pair of aviator sunglasses.
Back for breakfast
I came back for a second visit, this time for breakfast, and went straight to the pastry counter. The ham and cheese croissant roulette was an interesting twist. Instead of the classic ham and cheese croissant, it’s more like a cinnamon roll, with the ham and cheese caught in the twirls, baked to a deep golden brown with a caramelized top. The strawberry cream cheese danish was topped with fresh strawberries and a dusting of powdered sugar, and it was soft and fluffy with a layer of pastry. Even the table was part of the show, painted green with drawn plates and cutlery, and the pastries came on a fruit-patterned plate.
Fresh food, a charming room, and a dessert worth breaking my own rule for.
