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The hottest table right now in Paris is not at some snooty Michelin 3-star restaurant. It’s La Table Nutella, a temporary café to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Nutella, the world best-selling spread. Nutella, a paste made of hazelnuts and chocolate (and, um, a few other things) was invented in the Piedmonte region of Italy, famous for it’s delicious hazelnuts.

Each morning a line forms before 7 am, waiting (and hoping) for entrance. I kinda gave up, not really wanting to wake up that early and standing on the street. And I hate crowds of people grabbing food. Plus I had heard stories of a new French revolution brewing since there wasn’t nearly enough food to feed the hoards, and the staff was insanely stressed trying to control the crowd.

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It seems that the staff has figured out a solution to the problems plaguing the café by severly limited the amount of guests, which means the dreaded queue.
Then like magic, I got an email from Louisa that she scored a VIP table and we could cut in front of the queue, something the French are so adept at they even have their own word for it: resquillage.

Once seated, we ordered just about everything on the menu. All proceeds go to the group Rêves, so we didn’t feel guilty.

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This is a dessert created by pastry chef Philippe Conticini for the café, who has written a companion cookbook with stunning recipes using Nutella. It’s an eggshell filled with a rich, creamy chocolate custard that tasted remarkably like great chocolate pudding sans the skin. The baton, or cookie, that came with it was crunchy and the perfect accompaniment..

We split a giant brownie, and when I say giant, that thing was huge… Très Américain! Layers of sticky, dense brownie batter baked with a ganache-like paste of Nutella and toasted hazelnuts. I loved it, but others felt it was too rich.

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So I ate theirs for them.

The Apple-Nutella Crumble was an unfriendly Franco-American alliance on par with Bush and Chirac (Apple Crumble has replaced the ubiquitous Apple Tart in France as the dessert-of-the-moment)…although I don’t like apples and chocolate together, so I’m not the best judge. I did enjoy the fromage blanc with a dollop of Nutella but we all flipped for the little croissants which when split open, oozed out a serious amount of gooey Nutella inside.

When I cut it open, like the croissant itself, Louisa’s enthusiasm spilled out, “Oh yeah, baby, bring it on!

Seems I’m not the only one in love with Nutella.

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La Table Nutella
46, rue de Sévigné, 4th
Until June 22
Monday through Friday, 7am to 11:30am
Saturday 8am to 3pm
(Get there early; latecomers will most likely not get seated.)

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4 comments

    • Amy

    Can we please have a blogger exchange program and you send us one of yours and then a Bay Area blogger can go over your way? I guess we already did that with Pim…but these Paris blogger get togethers are getting more and more maddening on this end!

    • David

    I’m all for the Food Blogger Foreign Exchange Program (although do we have to start a blog for that too??) Since Pim came here a few weeks ago, and this weekend Clotilde is going to NYC, then I think it’s you’re turn! Tag, you’re it! : )
    David

    • Richard AB

    Where is the Nutella Brownie recipe?

    • David

    According to Louisa at Movable-Feast.com, the Nutella book by Philippe Contincini will be out here in France. See her site at: http://www.movable-feast.com/2005/05/la_table_nutell.html. Maybe the recipe is in there. I didn’t pick up a copy (although I should…) Perhaps you can order the book through Amazon.fr, or check a good cookbook seller in the US like Kitchen Arts and Letters in NYC or Cooks Library in LA.
    David

A

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