The Frenchified Cousin of the Jamaican Patty
The Frenchified Cousin of the Jamaican Patty
Paté Fromage in Port-au-Prince
I’d been hearing about Haitian pastries—particularly those at Patisserie Marie Béliard—since I arrived in the country for a reporting fellowship. “Textile, coffee, mangoes, donuts,” one Port-au-Prince resident had told us when asked about his country’s most important products. So on my last morning in the country, sick of the hotel buffet and with a few hours to spare, I made my way through the hilly, sunblasted streets of Port-au-Prince in search of breakfast.
Marie Beliard is on a busy commercial street in Petionville. Once a leafy, exclusive suburb, sprawling Port-au-Prince has swallowed up the enclave. The neighborhood is home to both the gated mansions of some of the city’s wealthiest residents and the makeshift camps still hosting people displaced by the 2010 earthquake.
With utilitarian metal tables, a gruff staff, and what seemed to me to be a needlessly complex ticket-based ordering system, Marie Béliard is clearly confident that its products will keep customers coming. Gratefully ducking into the bakery’s air-conditioned refuge, I took my place in a long line of business-casual attired customers picking up snacks before work or deserts for later. The place is well known for its desserts and cakes, but I was here for breakfast, and in halting, high-school French managed to obtain a cup of coffee, an almond croissant, and a paté fromage.
Haiti’s dry hills are ideal for growing coffee and the product has a long and complex history in Haiti. It was staple, along with sugar, of the French-imposed slave economy; the country supplied about half the world’s coffee in the 18th century. As recently as the 1940s it was one of the world’s leading coffee producers, but decades of political instability, collapsing international prices, and environmental devastation have wrecked the industry, though there are a number of ongoing efforts to revitalize the sector. It won’t be an easy task, but one thing working in their favor is that Haitian coffee is fantastic: strong and fragrant.
The warm, flaky, sticky croissant was great, but Marie Beliard is justifiably known for what are called here patés: puff pastry stuffed with meat, chicken, or, in my case, cheese. They’re a bit like the fluffier, Frenchified cousin of the Jamaican patty.
With my curiosity satisfied and seeing the morning crowd starting to dissipate, I returned to the counter for another cup of coffee and made my way back out into the hazy Port-au-Prince morning.