French Cafe Builds a Loyal Clientele in Southwest L.A.

Not long ago, a man asked Josette Leblond the question that probably occupies the thoughts of many of the more narrow-minded customers who first visit her charming French country-style bakery: Why isn’t this in Beverly Hills? Why keep it here?

Here is a worn block on Jefferson Boulevard, in a gritty Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood that is home to the hard-working underbelly of the city. But it is also home to Leblond’s Normandie Pate, a 14-year-old business that manufactures pates, sausages, earthy round loaves, authentic baguettes and other baked goodies.

Eight months ago, Leblond opened a cafe and takeout counter at her bakery and it became an instant hit, drawing customers from all over the city for her almond croissants, tangy lemon tarts and quiches, duck pate with pistachios and chicken liver pate with truffles.

Her bread-and-butter (so to speak) clientele, though, is the locals, like the little boy who came in after school one day, laid down a dollar for a baguette and walked out with a little extra on the house--a garlic loaf for “la mama.”

Leblond, who hails--of course--from the Normandy region, is slightly madcap, a whirling dervish of Franco-energy who has become one of the top pate producers in California. The demand for her pate and sausages grew so much that three years ago she moved such charcuterie production to a bigger plant in Rancho Dominguez. But the headquarters--and heart--of her domain remains in the ‘hood, on a street dominated by muffler repair shops and smog check stations.

And she likes her location just fine, thank you.

“I’ve never been messed with and I come and go at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. in the morning,” she says in the kind of rapid-fire English in which longtime French emigres excel. Mais, zee akseent eez az theek az zee Brie slathered on one of her more popular sandwiches. “All the gang members know me.”

Her reference to gangs is not idle. Only a few blocks down Jefferson, at La Brea Avenue, the granddaughter of Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks was gunned down Sunday while stopped with a companion at a fast food restaurant drive-through.

But Leblond has embraced her neighbors, many of whom she knows by name, and they have embraced her. A day in her shop is like a kaleidoscope hitting the senses: a steady stream of customers--black, Anglo, Latino, American and European--stopping in to pick up a butter croissant for breakfast, or sandwiches for lunch; the visual delight of display cases filled with the kinds of intricately finished pastries that are the trademark of a quality patisserie; the smells of baking breads and sweet confections.

All the while, Leblond is running to and fro, checking on shipping orders, joking with her workers, tending personally to customers--and almost as often to her little sleepy-eyed Chihuahua Sibo, who likes to chase birds.

Sibo bounds into the lap of regular Benny Shalom, 49, who sits at one of the outside tables Leblond has set up under a brace of jacaranda trees. Shalom works across the street at Jetro Cash and Carry, a wholesale food distributor that has come to supply Normandie with many devoted customers.

“One thing I like is that she’s very creative,” Shalom says. “You can come over and ask what’s happening on the menu tomorrow, and the next day you’ll have a surprise creation from the chef.”

“All of us at Jetro are hooked at breakfast and lunch,” Shalom adds, as Sibo--a la Francais--settles in next to him on the chair.

“The people are so nice and friendly and it’s a very easygoing atmosphere-- something really unique in this neighborhood,” says Hilda Rawls, who lives a few doors away and stops by several times a week.

Today, she’s getting a tuna sandwich, but she also swears by the chicken sandwich, the chicken Caesar salad and the sticky buns. Her grandson loves the mini muffins, and she often buys a bagful for him and his friends. Rawls, 53, said she has even deigned to let Normandie supply her with holiday pies, and her own are nothing to sniff at.

“I’m from New Orleans and I know real French food, the smell and taste of it,” she says. “Sometimes at 3 or 4 in the morning when the bread is cooking, the whole neighborhood smells of it.”

Now she’s trying to leave, to enjoy her sandwich, but Leblond won’t let her go.

“Come back later, cause we’re giving away samples of new bread today--we have harvest and six-grain.”

“I’m a bread lover,” Rawls says appreciatively.

“Yes, but not too much,” says Leblond, pinching Rawls’ midriff as she goes out the door.

Leblond, 48, is like that. She learned the art of pate making at her father’s side at the family’s charcuterie in Evreux, France. Her grandfather was a baker. She married, had a child and took over the family business, all while barely out of her teens.

She soon had a string of successful shops but very little time of her own. Then, with her marriage dissolved, she decided to sell the business to one of her workers and open a smaller shop in the south of France.

But her fate was sealed during a vacation trip to Los Angeles in the late 1980s. She was invited to a party where she met the French-born head chef of the Queen Mary. He persuaded her to help him out for a month making salads, which led to her making pates and sausages for the ship’s restaurant. Professionals told her she should have her own business. Now she employs 34 workers and, she said, brings in nearly $3 million a year in profits.

She is a supplier to supermarkets such as Bristol Farms and Pavilions, to such hotels as the Marriott, the Ritz-Carlton and the Hyatt, and several top restaurants, churning out 2,000 tons of pate and 3,000 baguettes each day.

Customers credit her attention to quality, which may have something to do with having friends like Klaus Puttkammer, a German-born bread maker who trained for five years before he was even allowed to be called a baker. He now works for a flour importer, and brought Leblond a French flour blend to try in her ovens; she turns out bread in the shape of pretzels and flowers and also heart-shaped loaves topped with sesame seeds.

For Leblond, it is important that her staff learn from such masters, she says. Her customers as well as staff become her family.

Caroline and Jocelyn Couvelaere arrived from France a few months ago to see if Jocelyn could boost his painting career here. They soon stumbled onto the bakery, and now Leblond is arranging for Jocelyn to paint the side of her building with a mural of a huge sandwich.

Leblond also hopes to start a cooking show, and will bring in young students to help them chart possible career paths.

“So many of them are out on the streets and they need jobs. My goal is to teach them something,” she says with a French flourish.