A Piece of Europe in
the American Southwest
Showcasing a Small Town Bakery in Editorial Format
We’d been driving for a couple of days at this point, traveling down that scenic brush of land that inherently lives in some prior decade. The immense landscape of Utah’s south—that image deemed “the West”, with visions of shoot-outs and horses and grand, towering red canyons—feels startlingly preserved. We are outsiders. Those who choose to call this piece of desolate beauty home represent a different breed of American. The near-abandoned gas stations, the wind chimes clinking on the desert breeze, the narrow, winding highway—all feel unashamedly nostalgic. A red cement building sits on a corner in the little town of Kanab, a fitting structure against the sloping stone backdrop. Despite all outward appearances, within lies a sharp sliver of contrast.
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We left Bryce Canyon this morning, following a tip from a friend toward the town of Panguitch, pursuing what he'd chalked up to be the greatest breakfast in Utah. Driving up to the little diner, we were offered no welcome, only dimmed lights and closed blinds. A Sunday morning in Mormon country, the block littered with unlit open signs, the town itself closed for the day. Thank God for Google.
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Two left turns and an hour later, we pull up to a small building labeled as the Kanab Creek Bakery. The place transports me a year back to my time spent in Europe, to the countless sidewalk bakeries and cafés. The pain au chocolat displayed in the case before me completes the vision. A bar paired with stools serves as the indoor seating, barely accommodating six. The stools face a backdrop of large windows, framing a landscape so American it shouldn’t belong. I revel in the disparity.
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Marjorie Casse is the mind behind Kanab Creek Bakery. She has a traveled air about her, an otherness exuded through her accent that I later learn to be Belgian. She moved to the United States twenty-two years ago, living in several states and eventually settling in Kanab, a small desert town of little more than four thousand people. It seems an unlikely shift, though I suppose it can be said that most who encounter this land fall in love with at least some piece of it.
I sit on a wooden bar stool beside my friend, she enjoying her croque madame, I reminiscing over my far-too-quickly finished pastry. Tourists and locals shuffle in and out, the line consistent in length, only changing in faces. In a sense, many of the European visitors seem to fit more easily into the picture this place creates, the locals themselves strokes of discrepancy. I overhear an American order a L’Assiette Française, stumbling over the pronunciation of the word. The woman behind the counter overlooks the mistake without question—the purpose behind the business was never one of exclusion.
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It was a strange idea, some little vision of Europe placed neatly within rural, vast America. Casse began her work in Kanab as a local guide, introducing tourists to the land she'd fallen in love with years ago. Many of the visitors Casse worked with were European, and while they had traveled to experience this portion of America so ingrained in our cinematic memories, the local food did not live up to the local views. To be frank, the coffee could never compare to an Italian espresso, and the gas station donuts had nothing on a freshly baked beignet. Casse explains to me that she’d heard these complaints for years, ultimately reaching a realization. “We’ve got the sun, we’ve got the landscape, why not have good food too?” Casse pitched this idea of hers—a European bakery filled with only fresh, made-from-scratch food—to Walt Thirion, a local photographer and venture capitalist. During the January of 2017, Thirion and Casse opened their solution.
Above all, Casse wanted authenticity. The business first hired American bakers, and while they were "good", she found that they “just weren’t the real thing.” Marjorie hired two French bakers, a decision that ultimately proved to be the correct one, both by the line of customers I watch move in and out and by the food I had the pleasure of tasting. Everything is made from scratch, the bakers arriving as early as two or three in the morning. This focus on authenticity is perhaps what catches my attention most, what makes the place so different from anywhere else within the region.
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Despite the initial inspiration behind the business, it is the locals that fully illustrate Marjorie’s vision for Kanab Creek Bakery: to create connections and enable legitimate human interaction. Locals stop in two-to-three times a day, in the morning for coffee and eggs, a pastry at noon, another coffee later on. Many of those born in Kanab have never traveled from their little piece of the American southwest. “I’m able to bring Europe to them,” says Marjorie. The bakery exists as a thing of contrast. The food is juxtaposed against the land, as are the contravening purposes: to bring European tourists a remnant of home and local residents a sense of elsewhere. Put simply by Walt Thirion, the bakery offers “real food for real people.” While perhaps a bit cliché, the line holds an indisputable truth.