Par ici. My piece of France in Eimsbüttel

Paris is my second home, readers of this blog know that. But for a piece of France I do not even have to board a train. It is right around the corner, on Eppendorfer Weg in Eimsbüttel: par ici, run by Agnès Brinker.

Our Saturday morning

On Saturday mornings my husband Chris and I have a fixed ritual. We sit down at par ici, order a café crème, a sweet pastry and a filled baguette, and let the week wind down before the weekend properly begins. Behind the mint-green counter it smells of butter pastry, the window bears the words „Hambourg mon Amour“, and for an hour Eimsbüttel feels like a Paris neighbourhood.

Agnès is French by birth, she comes from the southwest of France. When there is time, we have a little chat about France, about favourite places and about food. Her patisserie has the quality I know from Paris and searched for in Hamburg for a long time. You can taste that the person baking here knows it from home.

News that made me very happy

This week it was in the Hamburger Abendblatt: Agnès and Martin Brinker are taking over the Funk-Eck on Rothenbaumchaussee. The Funk-Eck, located opposite the NDR broadcasting house, was a Hamburg institution for 75 years and stood empty for almost a year after it closed. Now par ici is moving in, with a patisserie, a café and a garden. The opening is planned for spring 2027.

For me this is more than local news. The Funk-Eck is part of my family history.

Our year at the Funk-Eck

For a whole year we had breakfast there every morning, Monday to Friday at half past seven: my parents, Chris, our daughters Simona and Antonia and I. From there it was only a stone’s throw to the school on Hochallee. The twins Lieselotte and Jonica usually had our table set by the time we arrived. The two of them were an institution in their own right. In the mornings there were the legendary apple pancakes with cinnamon. And whenever tennis was played at Rothenbaum, in the era of Boris Becker and Michael Stich, there was no point even trying to get a table at the Funk-Eck.

We also celebrated many of our family occasions at the Funk-Eck. For my parents it was a place full of memories. Places like this hold more than coffee and breakfast. Three generations at one table, every morning, for a whole year. You do not forget that.

Looking forward to the garden

Which makes it all the nicer that Agnès and Martin of all people are giving this place a new life. They bring exactly what the Funk-Eck deserves: craft, warmth and a feeling for quality. And they are turning it into a family project. Their three sons are on board, one of them is a trained patissier with an apprenticeship and stations at grand addresses in Paris. Anyone who comes from a family business, as I do, reads something like that with a warm feeling.

I am already looking forward to my first café crème in the garden on Rothenbaumchaussee. And on Saturdays we will of course keep sitting on Eppendorfer Weg.

If you want to go

There are three par ici addresses in Hamburg: the boutique at Eppendorfer Weg 105 in Eimsbüttel, the café at Maria-Louisen-Straße 1 in Winterhude right by the Leinpfad, and the atelier at Rothenbaumchaussee 189. The atelier will move into the former Funk-Eck when the new place opens in spring 2027, only two side streets lie between the old and the new address. The full story of the takeover is in the Hamburger Abendblatt (in German).

Diesen Beitrag auf Deutsch lesen: Par ici. Mein Stück Frankreich in Eimsbüttel

Gifts and paper work from my Hamburg atelier are available in the Concept Store.

Trixi Gronau has run her Concept Store in Hamburg with its own print atelier since 1995. In the nineties a regular at Susanne Otto (then the only Chanel address in Hamburg, Milchstraße), at Boutique Amica run by Ina Gärtner, and at Chippis Bazar run by Mary Burose. Invited to vernissages at Galerie Levy (Pop Art and Surrealism, Hamburg-Pöseldorf).

Warmly, from Hamburg