Who is Amélie, and why are so many bakeries named after her?
It’s getting hard to find an area of Charlotte that is not within decent proximity to an Amélie’s French Bakery & Café location. We have the multi-level location uptown, the 24-hour location in NoDa, the Carmel Commons location in south Charlotte with the great patio, the location just over the South Carolina border into Rock Hill, and the new spot coming to Park Road Shopping Center. (There’s a location in Atlanta, too.)
As managing partner Bruce Willette told the Observer, “Every Amélie’s is a little different.”
But one thing stays the same (beyond the delicious coffees and decadent pastries): The name.
The French bakery was named after the 2001 romantic comedy “Amélie.” So, to answer the question of who Amélie is, she’s “an innocent and naive girl in Paris with her own sense of justice.”
She’s also a fictional character.
What isn’t fictional is the love that Bill Lamb, one of the Amélie’s bakery owners, has for Paris and its patisseries.
Lamb, who often traveled to Paris during his 30-year career with IBM, loved the city and its food so much that he frequently catered work events from the local Parisian shops.
Then he retired in Charlotte with a dream to open a French food-related business. Back in town, Lamb and interior designer Brenda Knight Ische came up with the idea of Amélie’s.
“We aspired to create a Parisian place with a whimsical yet comfortable ambiance that combined amazing tastes and smells into one sensory joy ride for everyone who walked through the doors,” said Ische, Designer, Brand Manager and co-founder of Amélie’s. “Much like the movie ‘Amélie,’ we wanted guests to feel as if they walked in to a fantastical world.”
There’s definitely a sense of creative magic at each location, from the quirky and cluttered wall decor, to the array of lamps and chandeliers. And, of course, to that first bite of something sweet in the pastry case.
One bite of our Lavender Lemon Petit Four and your taste buds will never be the same.
A post shared by Amélie's French Bakery & Café (@ameliesfrenchbakery) on Apr 2, 2017 at 11:43am PDT
Photo: CharlotteFive
This story was originally published April 12, 2017 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Who is Amélie, and why are so many bakeries named after her?."