Delicious future at Houma’s Best Bakery

The year was 1943 when Best Bakery first opened its oven doors, selling and delivering fresh, French bread to the Houma community. At least that is the date on the earliest documentation the current owner, Melissa Bertinot, has to show.

In 2007, Bertinot and her husband, Robert, purchased the bakery from her father, Anthony Matrana, who bought the shop from Nick Messina in 1995. Prior to this, however, the proprietor timeline is a bit puzzling.

Scribbled down on a yellow sheet of notepaper, Bertinot presumably has the answers to this history of ownership riddle, courtesy of Charlie Hebert, a former Best Bakery employee. Hebert had worked with the company since it was in its original location near what is now Terrebonne General Medical Center by the old Excelsior Bakery.

“When my dad owned the bakery, the man that was baking the bread had been working for the business since he was about 12 years old,” Bertinot said of Hebert. “From what he tells us, Joe Henry had the bakery … and was the initial owner.”

According to Bertinot, Hebert said Joe Henry then sold the business to his brother Russell Henry and from there it changed hands to Charles Adams, owner of Fanguy Bros., who moved the business to Levron Street.

The little sheet of golden parchment showed that Archie Armand was next in the ownership lineup, followed by the Oches’ family, who may have even temporarily changed the name to Oches’ Bakery. Then Nick Messina bought the bakery and moved it to its current location on West Tunnel Boulevard in the early 1980’s.

Bertinot’s father worked for Best Bakery for a number of years before purchasing the business. He then asked his daughters to come manage the shop for him.

“In 1995 I had just graduated, so I had two options. I had a scholarship to go to Johnson and Wales Culinary Institute, but I decided to come and work at the bakery with my dad because he asked me and my sister, Shelley, to come and do the majority of the work and run it and everything,” Bertinot explained, adding that she sometimes wishes she would have taken the scholarship because it might have benefited the bakery.

As the business was tossed around from one owner to the next, and was relocated twice, one thing stayed the same over the course of nearly seven decades … the recipes. So, when a customer enters into this little establishment and orders a loaf of French bread or a specialty pastry, they can expect to get a taste of history.

“As far as I know, all of the recipes were always handed down through the different owners,” said the present proprietor.

On any given day, Bertinot, her husband, and the six Best Bakery employees, almost all of which are family, including sister/general manager, Shelley Matrana, bake approximately 100 loaves of French bread. Loaves are available to purchase at the store and Cannata’s Markets.

A Houma native and longtime Best Bakery customer, Ursula Breaux said that she absolutely loves the shop’s delicious bread.

“We’re big bread eaters and actually the bakery used to be just two doors down when I grew up on Levron Street, so that used to be my snack in the afternoon after school … We just continue coming here because it is so good,” said Breaux as she purchased two hot loaves.

According to Bertinot, many others share Breaux’s sentiment.

“Our customers come in and say you can’t get a French bread as good as ours,” she exclaimed. “We make it from scratch and it’s got a crispy crust on it and is soft in the middle.”

Many local restaurants, including Copeland’s and The Lunch Basket, also love the company’s delectable breads and they serve it at their establishments.

While the bread is the creme-de-la-creme at this little shop of flour, it is not the only shining star. Another one of the more popular items on the menu is the chix-de-femme, and for $1.20 a customer can indulge in this delectable swirl of semi-sweet dough drizzled with syrup.

The name chix-de-femme, which translates into “Bun of a Woman,” comes from the appearance of this Princess Leia coiffure-like creation. According to Bertinot, this spiraled pastry has been around for more than a century.

“The chix-de-femme actually started in the early 1900’s, I believe by the Excelsior Bakery,” she said. “The story that I know of is that some of the people that worked for Excelsior, went off to work at other bakeries and brought the recipe with them.”

“I know that there are a couple of bakeries that have opened up that are trying to do the chix-de-femmes, but I don’t think they are quite like ours,” she added.

The Best Bakery King Cake is also a popular seller, possibly because it is made out of the same scrumptious, cinnamon and sugar dough as the chix-de-femmes. And best of all, you don’t have to wait until carnival time to enjoy one of these tasty cakes.

“You can get our King Cakes any time of the year and usually we’ll decorate it for the seasons, like around Christmas time we’ll do some Christmas decorations, Easter for Easter and so on. We also get a lot of special request,” said Bertinot.

During the Saints’ football season, the black and gold, Fleur-de-licious King Cake is a great treat to bring to any football party and feeds about 20 people for $25, and that’s for the decked out one with filling and half and half, which is half black and gold sugar and half caramel pecan topping.

Outside of the realm of cakes made for Kings, such as those of the birthday and wedding variety, Bertinot said she’s done a little dabbling, but that it is definitely something she would like to delve into further in the future.

Other impending plans include an interior facelift, they recently updated the exterior with a new sign, paint job and repaved parking lot, and the addition of indoor seating.

“A lot of people come in to sit down or they want to know if we have coffee because they want to just sit down and have their pastry with some coffee. I feel bad that we don’t have a place to offer them, so that is one of the next things we’re looking to incorporate,” expressed the business owner.

Over the years and through the multiple moves and various vendors, Best Bakery has remained a place that many locals have come to know and love.

With classic recipes and a strong focus on customer satisfaction, which is at the top of Bertinot’s to-do list, people will keep coming back for years to come.

“To me it’s convenient while you are in a grocery store to pick-up a bread or to pick-up something sweet. You’re right there. They have to take their time and stop here to get our products. They come out of their way to come here, so if we can’t satisfy them and give them the product they want, it makes me feel bad and they are not going to stop,” Bertinot explained. “So we try extra hard to satisfy our customers. We get special requests and we try to fill whatever we can do.

“A lot of our customers have been coming here for years and when they come through the doors, my employees know exactly what they want and they’ll go to the back and get it and bring it up before they even ask. I think we have good customer relationships here.”

According to Best Bakery owner Melissa Bertinot, the business only shuts down for four hours each night, except on holidays when they work tirelessly to meet the demand. ALYSON SHOWALTER