Paris tasting tour: pastry, chocolate and other sweet pleasures

By Betty Hallock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

It's not my first pastry of the day, and it won't be my last. This one calls to me from behind the glass at pâtissier Pierre Hermé's thronged Paris shop on the Rue Bonaparte. It's a study in elegant, precise strata: layers of hazelnut dacquoise; crunchy praline mixed with crushed hazelnuts, Piemontese hazelnut paste and La Viette butter; and chocolate ganache and milk chocolate Chantilly cream sandwiched between fine sheaves of chocolate. One of Hermé's classics, it's an over-the-top dessert aptly named "plaisir sucré."

Which is exactly why I've come to Paris--for all of its plaisirs sucrés, or sweet pleasures. Because what is Paris but pastries?

Call it an obsession: I seek out vanilla-flecked custard, chocolate ganache, dense little cakes soaked in orange-blossom-scented syrup and rolled in coarse sugar, slabs of griotte cherry clafouti, macarons filled with peach-apricot-saffron buttercream. It's a spur-of-the-moment trip, an I-need-good-brioche-and-I-need-it-now sort of a trip. And because of a canceled flight, I have only a few days. But the moment is right--the city is enjoying a new wave of pâtisseries. Hermé plans to open not one but two more Paris boutiques by the end of the year. Famed pâtissier Philippe Conticini is back on the scene with a tiny new shop, Exceptions Gourmandes, in the Marais district. Upstarts such as Hermé alum Claire Damon (Des Gâteaux et du Pain), Fabrice Le Bourdat of Le Bristol (Blé Sucré) and former Pierre Gagnaire pastry chefs Didier Mathray and Nathalie Robert (Pain de Sucre) have launched their own pâtisseries.

My strategy is to focus on the pâtisseries of the Left Bank because the highest concentration of the best and the most inventive are in the 6th and 7th arrondissements. I'm traveling alone because I don't want to be slowed down; for maximum efficiency, I map out clusters of pastry and chocolate shops. (continued)

You can keep your art, your fashion, your history. I'm here for the gâteaux.

For the most part, I won't need the Métro, a cab or even one of those Patrick Jouin-designed Vélib' (for vélos libres--"free bikes") that are all the rage. I'll walk to (and off) my pastries, which makes me fearless in the face of butter, cream and sugar-induced calories.

I've chosen a hotel with an ideal location at the edge of the 7th, on the Rue de Verneuil (the street where French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg once lived). I say ideal because it's about equidistant from Boulangerie Kayser down the block and oh-so-popular-in-the-19th-century chocolatier Debauve & Gallais around the corner on Rue des St.-Pères. That means easy access to a breakfast of brioche or petit pain mendiant (a small loaf of bread studded with dates, almonds and hazelnuts) and café crème at Kayser, as well as one, or maybe two, of D&G's gold-foil-wrapped, chocolate-covered praline and nougatine pearls (its chocolates are very ancien régime chic).

St.-Germain-des-Prés' winding, cobbled streets are lined with antiques stores, galleries and hard-to-resist boutiques (shoe-aholics, stay focused and avoid turning down the Rue de Grenelle). I plan a route between the Bon Marché (my favorite Paris department store, thanks to its extravagant Grande Epicerie food market) and the Jardin du Luxembourg. It's a course that roughly follows the unassuming Rue d'Assas, a veritable chocolate-and-pastry row. Not far from the Bon Marché is La Maison du Chocolat, the house that Basque chocolatier--a.k.a. "sorcerer of ganache"--Robert Linxe built. I already know what I want: a box of seasonal, mellow Marroni chocolates filled with a delicate candied chestnut mousse and a few chocolate-covered, candied griottes, those French dark-juiced sour cherries that are everywhere these days--in cakes, compotes, macarons--popularly paired with pistachio, as in a tart smeared with pistachio paste and dotted with griottes.

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At the legendary boulangerie Poilâne, tucked into the north side of the Rue du Cherche-Midi, the morning crush jostles for croissants (better than at Kayser--they're more buttery-tasting), little apple tarts and sourdough bâtons.

I want the punitions, or "punishments"--fine-textured, scallop-edged cookies made with three kinds of butter. I love that they're called punishments. For what offense? I take samples from a basket--they're buttery (of course), not too sweet and melt-in-your-mouth tender--and I buy a box for later, along with a miniature sourdough loaf studded with walnuts.

After lunch at Hélène Darroze around the corner, in the restaurant's salon (where I'm less impressed by several courses of tapas than by dessert--Armagnac-soaked baba with citrus sorbet and chestnuts from the Ardèche mountains), I stop at Christian Constant for gianduja-filled chocolates and at the shop of Jean-Charles Rochoux, protégé of master chocolatier Michel Chaudun. A couple of well-coiffed ladies are cooing over his detailed chocolate sculptures--round-headed babies in various poses, a bust of Molière, teddy bears in embrace, the Arc de Triomphe, a crocodile with its head reared and tail curled.

At Sadaharu Aoki, eager patrons are mesmerized by the Technicolor display of the Japanese pastry chef's pristine desserts--domes of chocolate cake layered with ginger mousse and caramel, and large violet macarons filled with raspberries and Earl Grey crème brûlée. Shopping in this starkly white boîte is a stylishly distilled experience, Paris through the lens of pastry--elegant, modern, perfect--each green tea opéra or black sesame éclair a symbol of joie de vivre. I wonder what it might be like to dive into one. I mean literally--crashing through the thin, brittle wafer of a meringue-topped tart and landing in all that soft, luscious pastry cream.

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There's more to the article, but I thought I'd post a taste of it, in case you wanted to read more....
click here

Michelle, I think I love you for posting this.

;-)