As a singular city that differs from the rest of France, it is no surprise that Marseille has its own lingo. Parler marseillais (Marseille speak) is mostly Provençal, the original dialect of Provence, peppered with Italian, Arabic and other languages spoken in the multicultural city. We call the fervent fans of our football team OM “fada,” Provençal for crazy. Tarpin, which means “very” in Romani Caló, is used on the daily by the hyperbolic Marseillais. When the fruit vendor rounds up your bag of peaches, that is the “bada,” Provençal for the “extra bit.” It makes a fitting name for a baker known for her bite-sized treats.
Le Bada Biscuiterie is a small-batch bakery that makes sweet and savory snacks. Their bread and butter are biscuits, the traditional, crunchy cookies that are savored across Provence. Flavored with regional ingredients like aniseed and orange-flower water, the simple recipes embody the laid-back south more than Paris’s posh cream-filled confections. Owner Mélanie Ibrahim also makes her own biscuit recipes as well as salty crackers that are ideal for apéro. She’s a one-woman show, baking everything in small batches in an even smaller atelier. Each cookie and cracker are infused with a home-baked spirit and professional heft. Interestingly, Mélanie never went to cooking school.
Born in Marseille to Syrian and Lebanese parents, Mélanie was fed by her mom and grandmother’s fantastic cooking. Her apartment building was also food-centric. Neighbors would swap recipes like croquants aux amandes, an almond biscotti born from Provence’s abundant almond trees. Mélanie first started out in nursing, yet lost interest after a decade. Losing her mom and grandmother in just one year pushed her to make a change.
Wanting to bake, yet not go to cooking school, the Marseillaise started making canistrellis and navettes, Provence’s most iconic biscuits. She then went to the Chambres de Métiers et de l’Artisanat, a state-run organization that helps tradesmen start their businesses. They hosted a speed-dating-like service to introduce fellow budding entrepreneurs. There, she met Stéphane Chevet, the smoked fish maestro behind Maison Matthieu. He also ran Temps Gourmand, an online marketplace for artisan foodstuffs. He offered to sell Mélanie’s delicious biscuits.
Mélanie quickly had to come up with a brand name and packaging. A proud Marseillaise, she liked the idea of using local slang. She thought back to her childhood, when she’d visit the iconic snack bars in Estaque that sold chichis fregis. The owner would fry a snake-like coil of dough and then cut them into sausage-length fritters. “They’d often give the extra bit at the end, the bada, to us kids,” shared Mélanie.
She told us this story when we first met her at the Cité des Arts de la Rue farmers’ market, beside the improbable Aygalades waterfall in an industrial part of Marseille. Her olive crackers caught our eye. Mélanie had revamped Provence’s classic apéro snack – tapenade spread on a crostini – into an olive-stuffed cracker. The addictive crackers were like nothing we’d ever seen…or tasted. “I had the idea for months to make a savory biscuit for summer,” she explained. To make them, she spreads tapenade between two flat ovals of olive-oil-based dough. She then flattens the dough via a pasta machine, cuts it into squares with a serrated wheel, bakes them crisp, and voilà!
Mélanie still makes the recipes that started it all. The white-wine and aniseed canistrelli come from Marseille’s large Corsican community. The navettes, Marseille’s most iconic biscuits, are named for the boat that brought the three Saintes Maries to Provence. The orange-flower-water cookies can be so dry they need to be dunked. Le Bada’s version of the 300-year-old classic can be savored solo.
Where Le Bada really shines is when Mélanie gets creative. “My favorite part of the job is testing how different ingredients react together,” she smiles. “It’s chemistry.” The Cafi – another Marseille word that means “abundant” – is a smorgasbord of pistachios, almonds, dates, raisins, and dried apricots. The most popular biscuit at Le Bada, customers say its soft texture and nutty bits remind them of Provençal nougat.
The recipes come “by chance,” admits Mélanie, who spends months tweaking them until they are just right. Sometimes they are inspired by existing cookies. Our favorite, Palets Bruns, are spin-offs of classic buttery Breton biscuits with buckwheat, cranberry, and hazelnuts. Petits Goûters, little snacks, make the most of the fresh fruit jams that are so ubiquitous in Provence. On the savory side, Le Bada’s crackers spiked with sesame, tahini, and seaweed evoke Marseille’s briny and Levantine flavors. Mélanie adds new offerings each month to both nourish her creativity and her clients’ curiosity.
Le Bada started off in Mélanie’s home kitchen in 2019. As sales increased at local farmers’ markets, she looked for a space that could be both atelier and shop. After three years of searching, she lucked upon a place in Chave in November 2023. The village-like neighborhood has been the ideal location thanks to its abundance of food-driven shops and families. Business keeps getting better, which really warms the humble baker’s heart. Mélanie can only be open twice a week since as a solo artist (baking, packaging, delivering, accounting, social media…) she needs the time to bake. We know she’s doing so when we walk by and the windows are steamed up from the toasty oven.
Mélanie still sells at the Aygalades, Canebière, and Friche la Belle de Mai markets. She also finds vendors via word of mouth: the coffee shop, La Tisserie; the gourmet market, Épicerie du Fleuve; and the nearby tea shop, Lorène Millet. Some of Lorène’s lovely teas are now sold at Le Bada, as well as art from Mélanie’s roommate, who designed her graphic biscuit bags. The five-star Hotel C2 offers Le Bada’s boxes of navettes as gifts to guests. After starting from scratch, Mélanie is building her biscuit dream bit by bit, bada by bada.
Published on June 12, 2024
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