Talking Food: Rolling into summer

Today’s post, the second in my Talking Food series, is an interview with the American-Irish couple behind Boneshaker Doughnuts in Paris.

Maple, whiskey, bacon doughnut

“Prepare to meet your baker,” a t-shirt hanging behind the counter proclaims.

Amanda Bankert-Scott, the baker in question, is upstairs in a tiny kitchen, putting the finishing touches to a batch of salted caramel doughnuts, while her husband Louis mans the counter at the couple’s handmade, small batch doughnut shop.

It’s almost a year since Boneshaker Doughnuts opened its doors on Rue d’Aboukir, near Paris’s Sentier metro stop. On a sunny midweek afternoon, trade is brisk. When I arrive, only ten doughnuts remain under the glass counter, testament to a busy morning.

A few customers wait patiently, informed by Louis that a fresh batch is about to land. And soon, a tray of hot-from-the-fryer deliciousness emerges from the kitchen above.

“I make doughnuts continually, in small batches, throughout the day,” Amanda explains. “The idea is to have a decent selection that’s freshly made.”

On a typical day, she makes about 100 doughnuts, and double that at weekends.

Peanut butter and dark chocolate doughnuts

While Boneshaker Doughnuts will mark its first birthday next month, its origins can be traced back a little further, to a trip to Amanda’s native Virginia in 2013. The couple had wanted to start their own food business, but it wasn’t until that trip that they hit on the right idea.

“We were eating doughnuts at the beach on a trip to the US. And I said, ‘I’d kill for some place to do these in Paris’,” Amanda recalls. “It was a light bulb moment.”

It was her love of food, dating back to her very first job in a local restaurant at 15, that brought her from Virginia to Paris in the first place. After she graduated from culinary school in Paris, next came an eight year stint in Dublin, working as a pastry chef.

Even though Louis is a Dubliner, the couple, who have three children, met in Paris. “When I met him, he was tending bar…of course…in an Irish pub,” she recalls. He’s been in Paris for close to 20 years, mainly working in hospitality, but also changing course at one stage to spend a number of years working at the OECD.

After the couple settled on doughnuts as the food business they wanted to pursue, they did all the work themselves to make that business a reality. “Louis laid the floor. We did literally everything beyond the electricity and the plumbing,” Amanda recalls.

“We did the best we could with what we had,” he says. She nods, saying, “when we opened the doors of this place, there was no cushion. We had to start making money from day one.”

From the start, quality was very important to them, but they wanted their business to have a casual feel too. “We wanted to keep that commitment to quality. I wanted to use the skills I’d developed over my career,” she says. “But Louis and I are pretty casual people. So I think when it comes to us having to wake up and go to work everyday, we definitely want to have a laugh.”

In devising a menu, Amanda was keen to have variety. “I definitely wanted a nod to the classic American doughnuts. But I also wanted to bring in the French aspect. And then from doing desserts for so many years in restaurants, I almost approached it more like pastries or dessert,” she says.

The ‘Raspberry Beret’, raspberry and fresh lime doughnut

For example, the doughnut of the month for May — the Mae West — is filled with rhubarb compote and vanilla pastry cream, and finished off with torched Swiss meringue on top. “The menu changes every month, but we always have the classics: beer glaze, cinnamon sugar, salted caramel and the maple, whiskey, bacon,” Amanda explains.

“Each month we’ll have flavours of the month. In February we do the love pump doughnut. We did a whole Paddy’s day themed box, with Barry’s tea, Tayto crisps, beer.”

Not all flavours are a hit with customers though.

Amanda was delighted with the mulled wine doughnut she created last Christmas, but customers were less receptive to it than she’d hoped.

She explains that, while working in the kitchen above the shop, she can hear snippets of conversation from downstairs. “Every day, day in and day out, I’d hear customers come in and say, ‘Mulled wine? That’s weird’. That’s the one that sticks out in my mind as a massive failure.”

Not with everyone though, Louis points out. “There’s a guy who comes in once a month and keeps banging on about how good the mulled wine one was. I suppose it’s a bit like Marmite,” he says.

While getting the right mix of flavours requires a bit of trial and error, it can also be tricky to match daily production with demand. Boneshaker Doughnuts works with an app called Too Good To Go, which allows consumers to buy food that’s left over in restaurants at the end of the day for a discounted price.

“The pub across the road gets doughnuts too,” Amanda says. “Louis trades it for pints.”

From behind the counter, he interjects with a smile. “Bring back barter.”

However, leftovers are less of a concern these days. “You don’t want to have 50 left over at the end of the day. But we’re starting to have the opposite problem,” Amanda says.

Doughnut deliciousness

Their small shop, just like them, is full of personality.

Louis’s artwork (he designed the logo) adorns the walls. A minimalist black and white menu board lists “sinkers and suds” as one of the options on offer. A doughnut for dunking into coffee, apparently.

The couple’s dog Roxy, affectionately nicknamed “the donut dog” by Louis, lolls about beside the till, big friendly eyes willing customers to say hello.

Brightly coloured doughnut books, including a guide to artisan doughnut shops in the United States, are propped against the wall, inviting customers to leaf through them.

A simple shelf is home to a model vintage bike, a nod to the shop’s name.

The boneshaker

The bike after which the shop was named was invented in France, Amanda explains. “We liked the French connection,” she says. “And it was given the moniker ‘Boneshaker’ by Americans when it was brought over to the States. It was a wooden frame so it was hellish to ride. We quite liked the American connection, we thought it sounded cool, and it fit the bill.”

Their shop has been one of numerous additions to the Paris food scene in recent years.

“It’s unrecognisable from when I first came here,” Amanda says. “Burgers, tacos, they just didn’t exist here then. In the last five years, the amount of speciality coffee shops. And there are new ones opening all the time.”

On one hand, she welcomes the change. But part of her is a little saddened by it too.

“I don’t like this idea of Paris as a museum. It’s a living, breathing city. My idea is if you can get a good croissant in New York, why shouldn’t you be able to get a doughnut or noodles in Paris. Of course you should, it’s a major capital city. But I feel like, unfortunately, the quality traditional French food is harder to find now,” she says.

“I mourn the loss. I feel there’s been a trade-off. There’s a load of people coming in and doing different things but you are losing it a bit. But then there are lots of young chefs coming back and actively trying to reclaim that. It’s coming back, which is great,” she says.

“Hands down” their favourite place to eat in the city is Juveniles, a wine bar in the first arrondissement, which Amanda affectionately refers to as “Juves”. “It’s been open since the 80s. Louis actually worked there at one stage. We went there on our first date. We’ve been going there since time began. It’s amazing.”

Nights out alone are reasonably rare for them now, with parenting and a business to occupy them.  Working together as a couple is “surprisingly ok”, Amanda says with a laugh. “We did really want to work together. We wanted to hang out together during the day,” she says.

The business they’ve built together is effective, judging by the steady stream of customers who pop in while we chat. And, for the record, the doughnut I ate on my way home, still warm from the oven, was the best doughnut I’ve ever eaten.