What is Merci French Cafe & Patisserie?
Most restaurants that go through bankruptcy don’t come back. Merci French Cafe & Patisserie came back to the same storefront.
It sits at 7620 E Indian School Rd, near Miller Road on the eastern edge of Old Town, and it belongs to Duc and Noelle Liao. The couple opened Scratch Pastries in this space in the late 2000s and built a following for French pastries and an unusually ambitious little cafe menu. In 2013 they opened a second Scratch on Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix. Within months, problems with investors pushed them into bankruptcy and both shops closed. Their landlord in Scottsdale invited them back, the investors had taken little more than a mixer and a display case, and by the end of 2013 the original space had reopened as Merci.
The cafe describes itself as “French bistrot comfort food” and as a “mom and pop,” and both are accurate. Mornings bring butter croissants, pain au chocolat, eggs Benedict and omelettes, with organic coffee. Lunch is quiche, French onion soup, croque madame, salade niçoise, croissant sandwiches and burgers on house-made brioche. The pastry case is the centerpiece: Belgian dark-chocolate tart, apple tart, pear-almond bourdaloue, lemon with Italian meringue.
On Friday and Saturday evenings the cafe becomes a small bistro, with beef bourguignon, duck confit, scallops in white wine cream, steak au poivre and escargots, and you bring your own wine.
How to eat at Merci
Go early for the pastry case. Croissants and tarts are baked for the day, and the selection is best in the morning. A croissant with a latte or the 72-percent Belgian hot chocolate is the easiest introduction.
Lunch is the everyday meal. After 11:30 the menu shifts to croissant sandwiches with salad, Merci burgers on brioche with fries, the croque madame and French onion soup. It’s a relaxed, inexpensive way to eat French food in Old Town.
Dinner is a short window. The Friday and Saturday dinner service is early and brief, so plan on an early evening. Order the beef bourguignon, served over tagliatelle, or the duck confit, and share escargots to start.
Bring a bottle. Merci has no liquor license. It’s BYOB after noon, with a modest corkage fee for wine and a smaller one for beer, which makes dinner here one of the best-value French meals in Scottsdale.
Getting there. Merci shares a building with Bad Jimmy’s, the smash-burger bar in the old Starlite BBQ space, about half a mile east of Scottsdale Road. From central Old Town it’s a short drive or a long walk past the Civic Center. For more morning ideas, see the best brunch in Scottsdale and the best coffee shops in Scottsdale.
Scratch, Roosevelt Row and starting over
Scratch Pastries opened on Indian School Road in the late 2000s — the cafe dates its story to 2007, and a 2013 Phoenix New Times report put the opening in 2008 — and became a neighborhood favorite for croissants, tarts and pastries like its raspberry-rose parfaits, with a weekend brunch that Merci later carried over.
In 2013 the Liaos took the step every successful small bakery considers: a second location, a Scratch French Cafe in the former Canvas space on Roosevelt Row, downtown Phoenix’s arts district. It lasted about three months. Problems with the investors behind the renovation led to bankruptcy, and in June both Scratch locations closed.
What happened next is unusual. The Scottsdale landlord welcomed the couple back, the space was nearly ready to reopen, and before the end of 2013 the Liaos had a new name on the door. When New Times reviewed Merci in January 2014, the critic found one server running the dining room and Duc Liao alone in the kitchen, and still singled out the pastry case as the reason to go.
The honest assessment: Merci is a small family cafe, and it runs like one. The hours are short, the dinner service is limited, and it isn’t trying to be a destination restaurant. But it has outlasted a great many of Old Town’s flashier openings, and a good croissant from a family that rebuilt its business in the same storefront is one of the better small pleasures in Scottsdale.