Trendy brunch spot Café Bastille brings pistachio pancakes, French breakfast burritos to west Broward

Two years after setting up their French-style brunchery on the picturesque banks of Fort Lauderdale’s New River, young Parisians Estelle Bellegy and Benjamin Amsallem are betting they can deux it again in west Broward County.

Café Bastille, their casual breakfast-lunch spot at 1660 Market St., debuted in the Weston Town Center on Friday, Jan. 16, with 54 seats indoors and 18 more on the patio. At 2,200 square feet, it occupies a high-traffic storefront in the open-air mall’s northwestern corner, and is painted in soothing olive greens with yellow flowers wreathed around its striped awnings.

Here, the menu brims with scratch-made fare du jour: trendy Dubai hot chocolate and crème brûlée croissants, triple-stack pancakes crowned with pistachio pieces and blueberry coulis, and French toast accented with kiwi slices and whipped-cream dollops resembling white roses.

It’s the fourth Café Bastille for Bellegy, 33, and Amsallem, 34, who cut their teeth at Michelin-recognized restaurants in the luxury hotel Le Royal Monceau-Raffles Paris. And now their burgeoning brunch brand is in expansion mode, they say, with a fifth location expected this spring in Miami’s MiMo neighborhood, followed by a kitchen commissary in Miami Gardens this summer, where fresh pastries will be made daily and shipped to all locations.

The couple also say Café Bastille has earned word-of-mouth buzz — commenters rave about it constantly on food groups — for their famously large portions that keep pace with viral trends.

Menus are refreshed every six months, Bellegy adds, roughly the life cycle of a TikTok food trend. Last year, Red Velvet pancakes sold like, well, hotcakes. Now they’re out, and here’s what’s in: Sweet Potato Waffles with maple-pecan butter, candied pecans and raspberry coulis.

“Instagram and TikTok have a bit of influence on what we do,” Amsallem says. “So we always look for the fun Instagram-friendly ideas that can bring people together and convince them to travel to our locations.”

Offerings, identical at all locations, include scratch-made Nutella croissants, alongside dulce de leche pancakes topped with bananas and cookie crumble, crispy French toast bites, plus iced tiramisu matcha lattes served with a ladyfinger biscuit. Even the specialty cocktails seem primed to explode on FoodTok, including a crème brûlée espresso tini “made with tequila because … Miami,” per its cheeky menu.

On the savory side, there are French breakfast burritos (spoiler: in crepes, not tortillas), plus truffle croque madames with truffle bechamel, ham and Gruyere on fresh brioche, a filet steak and eggs bowl, and Bae’s Shakshuka with three eggs, feta and a Jerusalem bagel (a sweeter, oblong, baked bread that’s distinct from New York-style boiled bagels).

The chefs in charge of menu testing are director of operations Francisco Aristy (ex-Biltmore Hotel Coral Gables, Nikki Beach) and administrative director Javier Tome, who also help develop new pastry recipes and have “the same mentality and ambitions we have,” Amsallem says.

The couple’s plan was always to open in Weston — especially after the runaway success of Café Bastille in Fort Lauderdale, which opened in late 2023 as a touristy, youthful magnet on a tranquil stretch of the New River, Bellegy says. The riverfront eatery still commands hourlong wait times for customers traveling from Sunrise, Plantation and neighborhoods west of Interstate 75, which convinced the couple to pick a suburban outpost.

“There aren’t tourists coming to Weston, so here, we’re attracting families,” Bellegy says. “Each location really has its own personality, so if Fort Lauderdale is a hidden gem, this one is an all-day cafe where people come after yoga and Pilates, have their coffee, the smoothies, their eggs. But the common thread is we believe that brunch has to be generous. If brunch is not generous, then it’s boring.”

Amsallem and Bellegy first made it their mission to make brunch less boring as front-of-house directors for two restaurants, Matsuhisa Restaurant and the Michelin-starred Il Carpaccio, both at the luxe Le Royal Monceau-Raffles Paris hotel. They bonded over a shared love of brunch, something they had no downtime to enjoy while working in hospitality.

“In our industry, you’re never off Saturdays or Sundays,” Bellegy says. “Nobody is. So we decided to leave France, because America is better. The mentality is different in America. Here, age is just a number. If you work hard, and have a good ethic, you can move up the ladder very fast. And we could do that with brunch.”

After immigrating to Miami pre-pandemic, they took over an existing French restaurant in downtown Miami and morphed it into a brunch house while keeping the same name, Café Bastille. They opened a Miami Beach location in 2024.

Now they think their casual restaurant has the potential to fit in any American city.

“We think there’s space everywhere for Café Bastille,” Amsallem says. “Depending where we are, we can be a destination for tourists but also a great choice for locals who don’t mind spending a bit extra for brunch.”

Café Bastille Weston, at 1660 Market St., debuted Friday, Jan. 16. Go to CafeBastilleDowntown.com or call 786-425-3575.