Amélie is an actress and gives theater classes. Almost every day, she comes to drink her oat milk coffee at Moutchou, a grocery store which opened in 2023 in Marseille in the popular Endoume district, on the heights of the city, a seven-minute walk from the sea. The owner of the establishment ” a code ” with Amélie: if she sees that she has time, she serves her the liquid in a blue bowl. Otherwise, it’s a bucket to swallow quickly.
“There is Caroline, too, who gives her opinion on everything. If it’s good, she tells you. If it’s not good, she tells you. On Fridays, after her yoga, she always asks for a boiled egg. It bothers the cook, who is busy preparing the lunch service, but, hey, it’s Caroline. laughs Lisa Pizzini, the founder of Moutchou. She has heard this term since childhood in her family. It is the nickname of the Mozabites (Berbers from the Mzab region, in Algeria) who ran the neighborhood grocery stores in Algiers, where his family lived.
Lisa Pizzini has a whole collection of regulars: “Mr. Schmidt”, elegant man with round glasses who, every Friday, buys many pork products (sausage, ham, etc.), but also trout (“Actually, he’s funny because he likes everything that’s already decided”) ; Elliot, who was in CM2 at the school across the street and who, as a middle school student, continues to come regularly for his lemon syrup and his cookie, which his father comes to pay for once a week…
On site, a long wooden table is placed in the middle of the central room and you can stop there for lunch or tea, with the stoves just behind. “I wanted a place that smells like cooking all the time, like a cuddly toy,” slips the boss. When we leave, we take a pack of tortas, these excellent wheat pancakes in olive oil individually wrapped in pretty paper. The work of a company from Seville, which Lisa Pizzini loves to discover and which echoes her origins and those of her companion.
She also sees herself as a “story teller”, at Mouchou’s. Not just hers: she likes to invite cordon bleus so that they can tell their own story over a meal, while cooking. This month, it was the turn of her 64-year-old Russian neighbor, after a former press correspondent in Jerusalem. Soon, there will be reflection workshops imagined by a lady who does not want to do “a complicated philosophical thing, but creating conversation”. Among the upcoming themes: “How to read the news? » Or: “How to be a good human? » A way for the founder to do her business “a little refuge, especially at the moment”.
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