Barcelona, the first BO&MIE bakery outside Paris

The address opens on 11 December 2021, at 433 carrer de Provença, opposite the Sagrada Família. It is the first BO&MIE bakery outside Paris — and outside France.

Why Barcelona

The choice didn’t come out of a market study. Magali Szekula and Jean-François Bandet, who met on the benches of Ferrandi, want to take the house abroad; it is their friend Bertrand Vignaud, fifteen years in the restaurant trade and settled in Spain, who takes the project in hand. The city comes with the man, not the other way round.

Barcelona also has one feature that is useful for a first attempt: a local clientele that is demanding about bread, and a flow of visitors who already know the French bakery. The gap between the two audiences can be read in the window every day.

What crosses the border

Nothing has been watered down for export. The breads are made on site, with natural sourdough and a slow twenty-four-hour fermentation — from the baguette to the two-olive tiger bread. The viennoiseries are still made with AOP butter from Poitou-Charentes, the very same one the Paris workshops use.

The menu follows the Paris one without copying it: a cruffin rolled in sugar churros-style, with a salted-butter caramel or mango centre; éclairs, Paris-Brest, cheesecake; and a savoury range — sandwiches, croque-monsieur, bagels, quiches. Birthday cakes are ordered forty-eight hours in advance.

Since then, the house has opened in Seoul, Kuwait, Riyadh and Jeddah. Barcelona is where that trajectory begins; all the addresses are gathered on the bakeries page.