Carlsbad — Elissa Benjamin is getting to know her regulars, learning who orders the soup and who prefers a mocha.
The baker and owner of French Door Café in Carlsbad said building community was her goal from the start.
“I’m probably one of the few coffee shop owners [saying], ‘No, please stay. Please hangout for an afternoon,’” she said. “That makes me so happy.”
The café is tucked inside an industrial park off Faraday Avenue near McClellan-Palomar Airport. Benjamin said that when she took over the colorless space, “it really wasn’t welcoming.”
So she painted the walls blue and yellow, hung personal decorations and added a family-style dining table. Anything, she said, to create a “little bit of a respite.”
“I want people to take a break from work and sit and enjoy their food and just breathe for a second,” Benjamin said.
Elissa Benjamin, baker and owner of French Door Café in Carlsbad, stands next to the dining table where she serves regulars.
Her connection to French cuisine is personal. Benjamin’s mother, Jacqueline Arsivaud, immigrated from France. During annual family trips to the Cognac region, Arsivaud said they often visited small pastry shops that also sold chocolates, teas and coffee.
“That was Elissa’s happy place,” Arsivaud said. “I think that’s where she caught the bug, as you say.”
She joked that they were always either eating, planning the next meal or cooking.
“Which was fantastic,” Benjamin said.
In her grandmother’s village, she added, food played an outsized role in daily life.
“You sit around the kitchen table and you shell peas, and that’s how you talk to your grandmother about how she grew up,” Benjamin said. “I remember the first time I was allowed to shell peas. It was a big deal for me. I wasn’t going to destroy all of the produce from the neighbor.”
Benjamin, a North County native, realized she preferred a culinary path over finishing her degree at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She moved home to intern for Michele Coulon Dessertier in La Jolla.
“She’s been there for like 30 years and remembers every single cake and every single client, which is insane,” Benjamin said of Coulon. “She’s phenomenal.”
She also apprenticed under Stéphane Tréand, a French chef who won the 2004 Meilleur Ouvrier de France award, among other honors.
Benjamin later launched Chocolate by E, creating custom and seasonal chocolate pieces. She said she enjoyed watching adults’ “eyes light up” as the chocolate transformed them “into little kids.”
French Door Café opened on Bastille Day this year with hopes of carrying that tradition forward.
“The French take their food very seriously, which we do not and I find that sad,” Benjamin said. “I think that food is one of the greatest joys in life and I mean there’s literally nothing that brings people together like sitting around a dinner table.”
The menu includes staples such as croissants, quiche, soups and jambon beurre, though Benjamin said specials can shift with her culinary interests.
While largely French in influence, she said the menu might sometimes feature a Moroccan shakshouka or Mexican empanada — “whatever I feel like making today.”
“If you’re weird, you’ll fit in very well around me,” Benjamin said. “I am a very strange person and I love that about myself. It even reflects in my menu.”
French Door Café is located at 2205 Faraday Ave, Ste C, Carlsbad, CA 92008.
