Provence in a Box

One of the first things you notice after entering , the Smith Street bistro and pastry shop owned by Jean-Jacuqes Bernat and his wife Leslie, are the antique tin boxes that line the walls. There are over a hundred of them, made to contain everything from cookies to tobacco.

Bernat has been collecting the tins since the early 1970s, and he has amassed a vast collection—a tiny portion of which he shows in the restaurant.

—which, fittingly, means “Provence in a Box”— moved from Bay Ridge to its current location in 2006.

Loyal followers from the bistro’s previous Bay Ridge location still make the trek to Carroll Gardens, where locals have embraced the restaurant as part of the neighborhood.

“We have one customer who has come in every night for dinner since we [moved to our current location] in 2006,” Bernat says. “People come in and they are glad to see us. It’s like a family.”

Bernat opened his first bake shop in his hometown in Provence, France when he was 21 years old. Over time the shop attracted a devoted following, including New York food merchant Eli Zabar, who offered him a job in New York. Despite speaking hardly any English, Bernat moved to the States to run the pastry division at Eli’s Vinegar Factory on the Upper East Side.

At first, the scale of Zabar’s operation was overwhelming, Bernat says. The company as a whole had over 700 employees.

“At the time I was 39 years old, and I thought I knew everything and Americans knew nothing, “ he said. “But when I arrived at the Vinegar Factory, I saw the laboratories with so many people from so many different cultures. So many croissants [had to be made each day]. I said ‘oh my god.’”

After a year at Zabar’s, Bernat went on to launch the pastry division at Citarella, where he stayed for over two years. It was during this time that he met and married Leslie, who had moved to New York from Provence herself, fifteen years earlier. Together, they decided to leave the Manhattan culinary world behind and strike out on their own.

“To open a business you have to have a good partner,” he said. “I remember when I opened the first restaurant in 2000, I didn’t know how to speak English. Oh my god. When the customer asked me something, I always asked my wife.”

While Bernat’s English was improving, their restaurant—a combination bakery and bistro just like the current one—steadily gained customers. The couple earned enough in Bay Ridge that, when they found a suitable space near their apartment in Carroll Gardens, they jumped at it.

Bernat makes it clear that running a restaurant is not all fun and games; it is a grueling lifestyle requiring hard work, ambition, and a healthy dose of luck. He says that his job keeps him on edge.

“The economy is very hard,” he says. “We need to do a lot of business to keep thirteen or fourteen people working here. I make a lot of stress, I scream, I’m very crazy.  [We are investing] our own money here. The money we put in this restaurant is my retirement.”

In the five years that Provence en Boite has been at its current location, the number of restaurants in the area has grown from twenty-five to eighty six. But Bernat says that competition is the least of his worries; he is more concerned about the rising cost of supplies.

“The big challenge is to get the right produce at the right price,” he said. “At the beginning of December, a case of eggs cost $23. This morning a case of eggs cost $49. The butter was $72 a case, but this morning it was $101. The prices change but I can’t change the menu."

Because Bernat refuses to skimp on the quality of his ingredients, he ends up paying whatever is needed to find the right produce. This might hurt his bottom line, but it helps him achieve what he says is the number one goal of his restaurant: making customers happy.

“It is a good thing to open a restaurant and to see people come back,” he said. “Life goes on, but customers come back to see us. We always try to help people in this neighborhood, in Brooklyn.”

Provence en Boite offers pastries and French Bistro Food. Located at 263 Smith Street between Degraw and Douglass Street, the bistro is open seven days a week.