La Patate DouceLa Patate Douce

Jules Effantin was a DJ before he was a broadcaster, and he started La Patate Douce in 2020 on a pun: patate is French slang for energy, and the sweet potato is its gentler cousin. What began at home now reaches around 200,000 listeners a month, and in 2025 he marked the station's fifth birthday by opening a cafe and listening bar in Le Marais, fitted out with flea-market 1970s furniture, vintage hi-fi, a terrace, and pastries baked by Mamiche, the Paris bakery his sister helped to found.

On air it is disco-funk first, with afro-soul, jazz and house filling in around it — broadly the records that Paris clubs leave alone. Evenings tilt toward the dancefloor, and the cafe carries that on after dark with DJ sets and live concerts. Effantin's favourite proof that any of it landed: hearing his own playlist drifting out of a beach restaurant down in Biarritz.