Felicity Cloake - One More Croissant for the Road

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.

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 such a burden, it makes sense to take turns in the church; I stand outside, enjoying the sea breeze and the relative peace and watching groups of excited human ants racing round on the treacherous sands below. Next to me, a British woman tells children more concerned with chasing seagulls that ‘apparently the thing to do with quicksand is not to panic and try to move – it agitates the sand and turns it liquid so it sucks you down’. Clearly the ants didn’t get that particular memo, I think, half hoping for a minor emergency to brighten the view. Suddenly an incongruous crocodile of heavily armed policeman, clad in what appears to be riot gear, march through the gardens beneath the wall on which I’m leaning. Be careful what you wish for, I think with a shiver, remembering the earlier warning about elevated security levels.

At that moment, Matt reappears blinking into the sunlight to rescue me from my morbid thoughts, and I slip into the abbey. I have a bit of a thing for monastic architecture (why, since you ask, I do have a favourite: the lovely light-filled Cistercian Abbaye du Thoronet in Provence), and this place delivers in spades, particularly in the quieter nooks and crannies, like the draughty room in the cliffside once reserved for the laying out of dead monks. I close my eyes and try to imagine the gloomy scene; the stinking guttering candles, hooded figures and howling winds. Above a child wails, ‘Bird BIT ME!’ The moment is lost. Time to go.

As we break free from the mercenary Mont without so much as a commemorative fridge magnet between us, clouds begin to gather above, and by the time we’re back at the bikes, it’s ominously dark. It’s not far to Dol-de-Bretagne, our ultimate destination, barely 30km in fact, but shortly after leaving Normandy, and well before we get there, the heavens open to discharge rain so hard and all encompassing that we’re forced to seek refuge in a handily placed bus shelter until it slackens off. Parents waiting for the school bus in their warm, dry cars watch us watching the rain, and for the first time I wish I wasn’t on a stupid bike. It certainly won’t be the last.

Finally, we tell ourselves it’s definitely getting lighter on the horizon and push off miserably into a road already lit for evening at 5 p.m. in the dying days of May, arriving in Dol-de-Bretagne damp rather than actively dripping, though clearly still a sufficiently tragic sight to merit the sympathetic offer of a hot coffee as we check in. Though our beds for the night are considerably cheaper than our lunch, the hostel is a sweet place: new and clean and cleverly designed, and Matt is even kind enough to let me have the top bunk, which immediately puts me in a good mood. If there’s an age when you grow out of the thrill of sleeping near ceilings, I’m still waiting to reach it.