Pierre Hermé :: Tarte Infiniment Café
By Paris Patisseries in Pierre Herme
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Monday morning here in Paris was sublime. So I decided to take the metro up to l’Arc de Triomphe and walk back down to my apartment by strolling the Champs-Elysées, to the Pont Alexandre III, Quai d’Orsay and Boulevard Saint-Germain. For those of you who don’t know Paris, it’s among the most incredibly scenic routes you can imagine. There was even a woman along the Champs-Elsyées with her neat black ¾ length coat, strappy sandals, and tasteful floral-print dress who had decided to take a nap in the grass. The French know how to relax! Looking a little closer, I noticed she was clutching a stick about ½ the size of a baseball bat, looked a little more sun-soaked than even your average Italian, and had chocolate dribbling down her chin . . . at 10:30 in the morning. Either she was a very elegant homeless woman with a sweet tooth or a someone who got way too wild the night before. The point is that she stirred in me the desire for a pastry equally as off the wall, and given that he invented the ketchup macaron (seriously), Pierre Hermé was the man to visit. Sadly, he had nothing even remotely crazy in the shop that morning, so I decided to supplement my 10-espresso-a-day intake (which is totally crazy) with his Tarte Infiniment Café.
Now, when I do my reviews, I write notes before fact-checking that a given pastry was indeed composed of this mousse and that genoise, this crème and that caramel, overpowered by this flavor or that texture, etc.; then I revise, if necessary, which is rarely. What was suprising with Hermé’s Café is that I was going to knock it for a couple things, but after seeing not only his description of the pastry elements (which I had spot-on from merely seeing them) but the little backstory about it he had on his website, I decided to cut him some slack. I found the café flavor to be overdone, but his description says that was the point* – the café was supposed to be “intense” and then simply nuanced by the Chantilly crème. I suppose that makes sense, in that he essentially named this tarte ‘infinite coffee.’ Silly me. The other constituents of the tarte were all very nice – from the rich sablé, to the sweet smooth caramel and even the faux coffee bean (actually chocolate) atop the piece. Ah, but I said I had a couple things to knock, and I only threw him a bone on one…
The one unquestionable downside is that the café/espresso he used was far too bitter. Someone needs to get control of his phenylindanes and chlorogenic acid lactones, or maybe he needs to pull the shots faster and at a more suitable pressure. I don’t know which of those factors is screwing this pastry over, but as someone who drinks an unreal amount of the stuff every day, it’s not a small detail. Whether pulled from a $14,000 Faema or a $100 Nespresso, whether pulled on streetcorner café in Paris or in the fabled Sant’Euastachio in Rome, whether made with $50/lb. or $3/lb. beans, I’ve consistently enjoyed smoother shots. When I won’t finish eating a pastry with espresso in it, something’s wrong.
Maybe I’m just an espresso snob like Angelo Badalamenti in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (skip to 4:50 in the preceding link to see what I, too, think of poorly handled beans), but I wouldn’t recommend this. It’s actually quite excellent in all regards except for the Achilles’ heel of the flavor he intentionally wanted to dominate the pastry. Oh, Pierre! Maybe one day someone will tip him off, as if it isn’t glaringly obvious, and he’ll be able to tweak this tarte to perfection.
*”… la ganache au goût intense de café est nuancée par la crème chantilly fraîche et légère.”
