Boulangerie Les Deux Frères — Specialty Store in Montmartre, Paris

Boulangerie Les Deux Frères is an independent bakery on Rue Caulaincourt, in Montmartre, and the first thing you notice inside is the pastry case: cheesecake, pain suisse, pain aux raisins and flan lined up alongside the bread. It is a neighbourhood shop rather than a destination room, and the counter is where everything happens.

Start with the cheesecake. It is creamy and well made, the kind you would pay more for in a patisserie, and it is the single item most worth crossing the neighbourhood for. The pain suisse is a close second, a morning pastry that one visitor ranks as the finest tasted in Paris. The pain aux raisins is a swirl of pastry and raisins that a returning customer calls the best they have eaten. For bread, take the seeded baguette; it is the loaf a regular names as a favourite. The flan is restrained in sweetness with a clear vanilla flavour, and the marinated chicken sandwich makes a good lunch, part of a combo under eight euros.

You order at the counter and can sit at a table afterwards; there is a breakfast and coffee service that is pleasant enough to linger over. The shop is a large storefront on a corner of the Montmartre hill, and local Parisians stop in for baguettes in the morning.

Prices sit in the €5–20 band for a few items, and the seeded baguette and sandwiches are the value picks: a lunch combo comes in under eight euros. Note that card payments can carry a small surcharge on small amounts, so carry cash for a single pastry or baguette if you want to avoid it. The shop is closed Monday and Tuesday, opens at 7 am Wednesday to Saturday, and at 7:30 am on Sunday, closing at 8:30 pm.