From Nice to Aptos: Lifelong friends launch new French café Emilie and the Frenchies

You’d have to have a heart of stone to walk into Emilie and the Frenchies and not be charmed. The Aptos café opened in early May in the former Carried Away location – next to home decor store Outside In, in the same shopping center as Pacific Coffee Roasting Company and Companion Bakeshop – and the inside has metamorphosed into a francophonic patisserie bedecked in rosy pink and olive. 

It’s adorable, like a quirky, cheerful fantasy of some French counterpart located somewhere in the south of France. But the pastries, baked treats, sandwiches and salads are direct interpretations of what’s served in real-life restaurants in Provence, from croque monsieur – the ultimate French grilled cheese with creamy béchamel sauce – to salad Niçoise, and dozens of cookies, cakes and tarts. 

The seafood-and-vegetable-stuffed pan bagnat ($13.50) might not be the first sandwich that comes to mind when a Californian thinks of French food, but it’s a classic. This hefty lunch is, essentially, a Niçoise salad on bread. If you haven’t experienced the coastal marriage of tuna and anchovies with briny olives, hard-boiled eggs, crunchy radishes and fresh tomatoes held together by a crusty loaf, I encourage you to give it a go. 

Among the pastries, the cakey, seashell-shaped madeleines ($3.50) and delicate, nutty financiers ($2.50 to $2.90) are a must. I couldn’t resist a slice of tarte au fraise – strawberry tart ($5.90) – with glossy, riotously red berries lounging on pastry cream, which arrived on a pink heart-shaped plate. Emilie and the Frenchies also offers a wide selection of flavored coffee and espresso drinks ($3 to $6) made with coffee imported from France. 

The story behind Emilie and the Frenchies is as heartwarming as the restaurant’s ambiance. The business was founded by two lifelong friends, Mary Jane Dean and Céline Molière, who met almost 30 years ago when Dean’s family hosted Molière as an exchange student from France at their Santa Cruz home. The two teenagers bonded over 1990s grunge rock and Santa Cruz’s beach culture, and stayed close after Molière returned to France. 

In 2007, back in Nice, Molière founded a café inspired by Santa Cruz, offering American-style treats like bagels, muffins and cookies. Then called Emilie’s Cookies – after Molière’s business partner – the name was later changed to Emilie and the Cool Kids and franchised throughout France. It currently has more than 30 locations. 

But Dean and Molière never stopped dreaming about opening a business back in the Santa Cruz area. The time finally came a couple of years ago when Molière’s daughter went to college, and she was able to balance more frequent visits to Santa Cruz from her home in Nice. Molière and Dean began looking in earnest for a space throughout the county before eventually finding the Carried Away space, a longstanding catering company and takeout spot that closed in 2024 after almost 40 years. 

Molière has decades of experience in the restaurant business, but Dean’s professional background is in retail and operations management. To get up to speed, Dean worked at Starbucks for a year and a half before starting Emilie and the Frenchies in order to learn how to produce food quickly and consistently. “I’ve worked for a small business for most of my life, but seeing what a corporate company does that has refined its operations over time is very helpful,” said Dean, “If I don’t agree with their sourcing or some of their other processes, then I can do that differently with my own business.”

The menu at Emilie and the Frenchies is small, but precise: six sandwiches ($11.50 to $13.50), three salads ($13.90 each) and three breakfast tartines, or open-faced sandwiches ($7.50 to $9.50), plus an array of sweet treats. This list will be consistent for the foreseeable future, while mixing it up with daily specials for a croque, salad and quiche du jour. “We give our bakers a lot of flexibility and creative control, and we have basic recipes that we want to consistently create,” said Dean. The team is currently working on expanding the café’s gluten-free and vegan options, and considering selling premium grocery items like truffle butter. 

While Carried Away used the large kitchen, which takes up more than half of the space, for catering, Dean and Molière would prefer to open it up for more seating in the future rather than increase their production. Said Dean: “Creating a place for people to gather would be a good use of the space for us.” 

7564 Soquel Dr., Aptos; 831- 661-5139; emilieandthefrenchies.com.

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