Recently in Chocolate & Pastry Shops category

I’ve come to realize that I’m not very good at ‘watching’. When I worked in the restaurant business, one of my cohorts said to me one day – “There are two types of chefs: doers and watchers.” Meaning that some chefs got right into the cooking with the line cooks, while others like to stand there and watch. I, myself, could be classified as a doer because I’m like I’m a shark: If I don’t keep moving, I’ll wither away.

I’ve kind of had my fill of watching and waiting, so instead of continuing to wither away, I decided to take matters into my own hands and deal with what I could control. This week the weather took a turn for the better in Paris; it’s always one day when the bleak weather suddenly changes and we revel in the hope that the cold snap of winter is behind us.

Everyone on the sidewalks of Paris is a little stunned to see the sunlight, almost walking around in a daze (including the number of people who refused to get out of my way when I was struggling to carry an iron pipe down the sidewalk and as a consequence, almost walked right into the butt of a massive metal pipe) but within a few hours, all the café terraces are packed – and not just with the usual fumeurs – but everyone craning their necks, trying to catch a little wedge of sunshine.

Continue Reading Clasico Argentino: Argentinian Helado in Paris…

When you live in Paris, you tend to stick to pastry shops in your neighborhood. Not that there aren’t “destination-worthy” places in all twenty arrondissements – with many notable ones on the Left Bank and in swankier districts. But with young chefs opening bakeries in various neighborhoods, catering especially to locals, one doesn’t necessarily need to go all that far to find extraordinary pastries and confections.

Cyril Lignac is a chef who is hosts popular television programs in France, and a few years ago had purchased Chardenoux bistro, an aging warhorse of a place where I once went to meet a good friend who was in town for a month. As I waited for him at the table, the place – and the waiters – looked so tired (both looked ready for a much-needed retirement), when he arrived, I quickly convinced him that we were probably better off going to a corner café for a salad. So it was good to hear that the bistro had been taken over by Monsieur Lignac and just across the street, pastry chef Benoit Couvrand was turning out stellar pastries and breads.

Continue Reading La Pâtisserie…

Ever since I heard word it, I’ve been anxious to try Helmut Newcake, what’s been heralded as the first gluten-free bakery in Paris. While a couple of bakeries and natural food shops offer gluten-free bread, they’re invariably made somewhere where other breads are made (risking cross-contamination with wheat flour), or the salesclerks simply stack the gluten-free breads with the regular ones, which is little comfort to those who can’t tolerate eating gluten.

Continue Reading Helmut Newcake, Gluten-Free Bakery in Paris…

I’m excited to announce the release of the e-book of my Paris Pastry Guide!

With over 300 addresses for the best places in Paris for chocolates, pastries, and other confections, this comprehensive guide is the perfect sweet companion for your trip to Paris. But even if you’re not planning a trip, there’s plenty of pictures to so you can enjoy the scrumptious pastries of Paris – wherever you are!

The Paris Pastry e-book is available in three formats:

Mobi: For Kindle, MobiPocket, and Calibre.

A favorite chocolatier of mine has finally made it to Paris, Henri Le Roux – although he’s best known for his C.B.S. caramels, which are made in Brittany, a region known for its copious use of salted butter. Whenever I’ve traveled to that part of France, I’m always delighted at their lack of restraint, and they use salty butter in everything from buckwheat galettes, to melting into large pots of salted butter caramel sauce, which they have no problem dousing on everything.

Continue Reading Henri Le Roux in Paris…

I don’t think about this so much anymore, but one of the reasons I moved to Paris is that I could, whenever I wanted to, go to Poilâne and buy myself nice chunk of pain Poilâne. Just like that. Although I’m from San Francisco where there are quite a number of excellent bread bakeries, there’s something special about the bread at Poilâne – it has a certain flavor, just the right tang of sourdough, dark and husky but with an agreeable légèreté that makes it the perfect bread for sandwiches, to accompany cheese, or as I prefer it, as morning toast with little puddles of salted butter collecting in the irregular holes and a thin layer of bitter chestnut honey drizzled all over it.

A week after I moved to Paris, a friend and I were invited to lunch with Monsieur Poilâne and his wife. Both were lovely people and Monsieur Poilâne was animated and still excited about the bakery he’d owned seemingly forever, which was (and still is) considered the best bread in the world. (I’ve never met a bread baker who didn’t use Monsieur Poilâne’s pain au levain as a reference point for excellence.) He took out a piece of paper and a pen, and wrote down a list of places that he wanted to take me, which I thought was odd – yet rather generous – since the man had just met me.

Continue Reading Poilâne…

At long last, I’d like to introduce you to the Paris Pastry app. It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a while, doing lots of delicious research around Paris, scoping out the best bakeries, chocolate shops, and confectioners in the sweetest city in the world!

In the app, you’ll find hundreds of the best addresses in Paris where to find the most buttery madeleines and financiers, how far you’ll have to go to get the dreamiest salted butter caramels from wherever you’re standing, where is the best cup of rich hot chocolate, and how soon you can get your hands on a scoopendous ice cream shop.

Continue Reading Paris Pastry App…

In Paris, a city full of spectacular pastry shops, it really takes something major to grab me by the shoulders and shake me to attention. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the other ones, but when you see something as jaw-dropping as the pastries at Café Pouchkine, you can’t help but stop and stand at full attention.

Continue Reading Café Pouchkine…