With about ten weeks to go until I get back to Paris, my special entries and reviews of the best work are heating up. You’ve been getting a taste of it since the start of the year with everything from the coffee roasting and hot chocolate features to the Jacques Genin in-kitchen series from earlier this week. I have a pretty bang-up list of about thirty more posts, before I hop on my CDG-bound aeroplane and live the diabetes-taunting lifestyle all over again. Thankfully I’ve been able to lose 27 of the 35 pounds I gained on my last visit, so my body is more than ready for a complete sugar overload.

Not only am I excited to get back to Café Pouchkine’s sweet treats, I’m psyched to use the next couple months to share some of their best work that I’ve squirreled away until now. Pretty much all of them are ones that I wanted to whip out long ago but knew I should save for this months-long pastry crescendo I’m in the midst of unveiling. Fun as it is to post good pastries, posting spectacular pastries in quick succession is even better. So is the Macaron Fraise Coeur-Pistache really that awe-inspiring? In a word . . . yes!

Before I get into the hyperbolic description, let me just offer my effusive praise to Emmanuel Ryon and the team for doing something so few others in Paris do: flavoring the meringue. On top of that, I’d like to offer further kudos for creating a lineup of conceptual macarons. You see, not only is this a strawberry shell with a pistachio interior, but it has a companion piece that’s a pistachio shell with a strawberry interior. And their caramel shell with its lemon interior . . . yep, it has a lemon-shelled and caramel-filled counterpart. Several other inverted flavor combos round out the set. And despite each pair having the same two flavors, the experience of each is totally distinct. The Fraise Coeur Pistache here tastes completely distinct from the Pistache Coeur Fraise.

While the meringue lacks the shine one would like to see, it’s otherwise cooked to absolute Italian meringue perfection. Literally, expecting it to be any better is like asking, “What north or north?” It’s a nonsensical question. Biting in, you’re graced with a waft of strawberry before coming face-to-face with the delights of Piedmontese pistachios. Try as you might to resist the onset of yet another macaron-induced vision quest, your second bite instantly transports you to northwest Italy. Your mystical guide, Pinin, mumbles to you in the esoteric regional language of the Piedmontese people, before shooing his herd of cattle into the shade of the pistachio trees that cover his family’s land. From a satchel at his side, he offers you a handful of freshly shucked pistachios whose excellence, you discover, has been further amplified by Café Pouchkine’s love-driven crème’ing thereof. Taking another bite of your macaron, you’re somehow snapped back to the Boulevard Haussmann, just outside of Pouchkine, and you realize that you’re inexplicably on your 6th macaron. How did it happen? I think the more pertinent question is, “Given Monsieur Ryon’s skills and mastery of pastry magic, how could it not?”

Sillyness aside, the macarons are phenomenal. Their much-deserved spot on my Top 38 Best Pastries list owes itself not only to their place as the finest pistachio macarons in Paris but to their status as one of the finest pistachio-based pastries of any sort in all the entire City of Light. And this is a ville that loves to use pistachios almost as often as chocolate. Note: Hazelnuts are the only ingredient used virtually as much as flour, water, eggs and cream.

And who doesn’t love a festive dot in the center of their shell? It’s different without being weird or overthought – the best type of design sensibility.

There’s a reason I used to buy bags of this flavor alone. I mean, can’t you just imagine eating a dozen of these in one sitting, then waiting 30 minutes before downing one of the several other pastries you purchased at the shop, then waiting 30 more before moving on to the vanilla croissant you’d been saving in your Pouchkine bag? That’s the sweet rhythm of gluttony, my friends.

So, yes, definitely buy a ton of these. They get my top macaron recommendation of suggesting you buy a box of them and just them. That’s not to say you shouldn’t also explore other Pouchkine macaron greats such as the Coeur Cassis or Pur Morse (it’s like a Russian cranberry) and a bunch of pastries, too. In fact, just plan to visit them every day for a week, until you’ve enjoyed the better part of their full lineup. Long live Café Pouchkine!

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When we left off on Monday, I’d shown you a little window into the Jacques Genin empire – most notably the exceeding precision with which He prepares his raspberry tartes. Today, I’d like to give you a some more insight into The Master and His team at work. I’d also like to show you around the kitchen, seen both in full view and in smaller stolen moments.

One of my favorite captures from my morning with Monsieur Genin was the shot above. As you may remember from Monday, we’d taken a look at the ‘feeling of the flan’, which was a bit too warm to handle. As you can see in the above, it had cooled to perfection. Monsieur Genin then sliced it into six equal wedges and ever-so-delicately began to separate those sections. Look at that concentration! Then – and I was so not ready for this – the Master raises un part and almost shyly offers it to me, as though I wouldn’t want it (and the five other pieces) in my face at that second. So forgive the blurriness of the shot, but it was just this fleeting instant between me realizing He was offering me some of His amazing flan and starting to free my hand from the camera so that I could accept His awesome generosity.

Below we have a few members of the team hard at work. From left-to-right, there’s a small batch (of course) of pâte à choux being prepared, while another chef pours cream into a bubbling cauldron of caramel crème. That’s all observed by a young lady on the team, while one of the youngest members in Monsieur Genin’s crew dons his oven mits, for help in removing some baking gâteaux from the ovens, which are just out of the frame.

I just love this shot. There’s Julien, Monsieur Genin’s trusted confisseur, and his young protégée who seems to be soaking-in her caramel lesson.

Let’s take closer look. It’s a third-degree burn waiting to happen, but it’s also . . . yum.

I was too busy taking photos to completely pay attention to what had happened here. But I believe the teenage boy on the left had made some modest oversight in his gâteaux trimming. Monsieur Genin had just given him a stern, though by no means abusive, earful. I love how Monsieur Genin informs the aghast Julien of the younger one’s transgression, while another chef seems to tuck his head down, hoping to slink on by.

What do we have here? Are these the glaçages for the caramel and chocolate éclairs? Why, yes, that’s exactly what they are . . . completely left alone with me in the same room. Had I not been stuffed with a raspberry tarte and a generous helping of flan, I might have had to drink one or both of these.

And I just love this shot – like some kind of pastry/butter-centric Jan Vermeer painting. With how modern and neutrally colored the rest of the scene here is, the butter just pops out like crazy.

Look, it’s hundreds and hundreds of perfectly candied orange peels – just sittin’ there and hangin’ out. Did a fistful of these maybe wind up in my pocket? No. It was three fistfuls.

Ok, but let’s get back to The Master. In the shot below, you see a tray of pastries Monsieur Genin had just prepared. Notice how meticulously angled and arranged they are, making for a wildly efficient use of the space. Every time I see this shot, I imagine He’s saying to the girl, “Now, you know I’m going to totally ******* kill you if you drop this, right?” I’m sure it was more like, “Make sure to check if the chocolate case needs anything, too, ok?” but my imagination gets the best of me.

Kidding aside, these next four shots are truly what epitomize Monsieur Genin to me. There’s certainly the experience of eating His work or admiring its simple beauty, but it’s witnessing the following that tipped the scales and made me realize that this “great” was truly “Great” – capital “G”. With the exception of watching MOF and Champion du Monde, Philippe Rigollot, do the same, I’ve never stood there and witnessed a chef go totally OCD on arranging pastries for the case. There is absolutely no reason He needs to be doing this, but yet there’s every reason for Him to be doing this. What He’s preparing is the final presentation of His work. It is the culmination of . . . everything. He may let the other chefs prepare [most of] His recipes, but when it gets down to how they’ll look in the case, The Master generally wants to be the one in charge . . .

Below is my absolute favorite shot of Monsieur Genin … ever. There He is with my favorite pasty – His Tarte au Citron – one in each hand, as He meditatively slides them into position. Look at the calm on His face, His posture, the position of His fingers. What other chef cares so much? When we eat His pastries, how much of the flavor comes from the love with which He imbues them?

But before the lemon tartes are perfectly aligned, He’s snapped out of his concentration. Something is awry. Something very wrong is happening. Remember when I told you on Monday to keep those chocolate éclairs in mind? They are at issue in this moment . . .

One of them is a few millimeters too far offset from the rest. It must be adjusted. Lest you think I’m being hyperbolic about this . . . rest assured I’m not. I’ve been in the boutique with Monsieur Genin when one of His chefs came down with a tray they’d presumptuously just prepared for the case. I’ve seen Him walk over, look at the chef, give a, “You’ve got to be ******* kidding me” look (a look of deep disappointment, verging on disgust), before moving one of His éphémère pastries less than ¼ of an inch into a more perfect position. I loved it, because I would do exactly the same thing. If you’ve read my hot chocolate recipe from two weeks ago, you’d know how deadly serious I am. Perfectionism, while painful for all involved, is a beautiful and wondrous thing.

Above all, Monsieur Genin is a happy, good-natured guy/demigod. Yes, He’s also the greatest hope for the future of traditional French and Parisian pastry, but He’s all smiles, too.

With a few exceptions, most notably Emmanuel Ryon and Hugues Pouget, I’m in awe of how much more excellent Monsieur Genin’s work is than so many others. With no formal training at all, The Master launched himself from a young lad in the slaughterhouses of France to become unquestionably the greatest classic pastry chef in all of Paris. He bucks the trend of obscure flavor combinations and hyper-considered aesthetics, allowing mindbending mastery over timeless pâtisseries to define His legacy. Lucky us that He allows us to experience that Divinity.

As a closing thought for you, I once told His Magnificence it would be a sad day when He’s no longer in the kitchen. His reply was that He believes one of His team members will eventually be ready to take the reigns. I believe Him, but I hope that day never comes.

By all accounts, Jacques Genin didn’t need to open His pâtisserie. The former head of pastry and chocolate operations at La Maison du Chocolat, He’d since spent years very profitably furnishing His legendary chocolates and 110€/kilo caramels to renowned hotels, cafés and restaurants across Paris and throughout France. What spurred Him to open the doors to His 133 rue de Turenne temple of pastry and confection was not an acquisitive impulse. No. At least in my romanticized view, this Titan of sweets was fueled purely by a compulsive love of the craft. Somewhere between perfection and Godliness lies the beautiful madness of Jacques Genin’s obsession.

The Great One’s team has told me, on numerous occasions, that He easily spends up to 15 hours/day every day in the shop. In that time, He’ll be engaged in some kitchen tasks most other elite pâtissiers would consider menial, and the next moment He might be handling a preparation He literally won’t even let His most trusted sous chef touch. All the while, He maintains a relaxed atmosphere to one of the most labor-intensive pastry kitchens in Paris. For you see, not only is He turning out everything from pâte de fruits to fine chocolates and pastries, but much is done in very small batches or literally prepared made-to-order. The images that follow are Part I of II that don’t so much tell the story of a single pastry from start-to-finish, but rather help explain the concept of the living Legend that is Jacques Genin.

We’ll return to the very top shot in a bit, but I want you to quickly soak in the images directly above and below. I snapped these right after entering His kitchen. Here, the Master is preparing the little paper trays for His éclairs and then carefully positioning their chocolate magnificence. In most kitchens, wouldn’t this be the job of a 15-year-old apprentice? Yes, absolutely, but this is not the average kitchen; we’re chez Genin. So just hold these images in your head, and I’ll make a lot more sense of them for you in Part II on Wednesday.

Directly below, you see the morning’s flan. And when I say “the”, I mean the single to-be-6-slice flan that has been prepared for the day. On weekends, He might prepare two or three. They will always sell out within a few hours of being put in the boutique, which typically happens a couple hours after the shop opens. Best of luck to you getting any, if you arrive after 3. The same goes for His baba au rhum.

Since I did these shots early-on in my days of working through the Master’s cases of pastries and candy, I hadn’t yet purchased a slice of the flan. So when Monsieur Genin asked what I thought of it, I had to confess that it was one of the few goodies in which I’d yet to indulge. Unacceptable. He immediately began waving the palm of his hand over it to see if it had sufficiently cooled so that He could cut me a slice. He then explained that it wasn’t quite the perfect temperature and that, once I’d finished my photos, He’d check again.

So Monsieur Genin and I started to chat, with the interpretive talents of one his fine shop masters, Arthur, while I was intermittently snapping shots of the group of chefs just off to my left. A gaggle of about 30-40 mini tarte shells were being carefully prepared. They could certainly have been churning out a few hundred, to stay well ahead of the day’s and week’s demand, but then they wouldn’t be at the height of freshness, would they? And that wouldn’t be very Genin.

The team trimmed away until they had a few rings left to fill and a pile of vanilla-imbued pate sucrée remnants…

All the while, I was continuing to talk with the Master. He asked what my favorite chocolate of His was, and I named a few – including the Tonka. He said that Americans always love it, since it’s illegal in the States and we’ve never had anything like it. Then He went on to decry the ******** policies of the American FDA, explaining how tonka is only dangerous under very specific circumstances. This conversation then somehow segued into a chat on which kitchen spices and substances can get you high. I’m not kidding. This is literally the conversation I was having with the greatest classic pastry chef in Paris. So the shot below is Him cracking up after I mentioned the hallucinogenic properties of nutmeg – properties of which He was well aware. Note: He then rattled off numerous others even I had no idea of, while His team of chefs chimed in with a couple suggestions of their own.

With our conversation having degraded into chats on substance abuse, I asked if I could get some pictures of the rest of the team at work. Quite a bit of time elapsed as I caught choux, caramel, cake, candied oranges and more all in some stage of preparation. But that’s what I’ll be sharing with you in Part II on Wednesday. Through the magic of showing you these photos in any sequence I like, imagine it’s now quite a bit later, the tarte shells we just saw have already been baked, cooled, and filled with their thick vanilla-laden deliciousness when – just then – the first delivery arrives. Raspberries and herbs!

Monsieur Genin then went on to study the raspberries. Yes, study them. They looked perfect to me, and I’ve certainly seen plenty of chefs do a cursory check of their deliveries, but the Master carefully perused several pints and sampled individual berries, while tossing out questions to the delivery guy. When He got to the herbs (shot below), I believe His question was, “Was it Guillaume who picked these this morning? Yes? I could see by the cut marks on the stem that it was he and not Vivienne or Clémence. Tell me, when he went to shake the morning’s dew from them, did he use his left or his right hand?” The man’s expression says it all, “I have no ******* idea.” Or maybe that’s because the actual question was much less bizarre, though equally challenging, and not penned by me for hyperbolic effect.

Then the apples came. After a thorough inspection, Monsieur Genin signed-off on the delivery. . .

It was immediately time to make pastries. Monsieur Genin beckoned one of his chefs over, bag of raspberry filling in-hand. The Master then hand-picked the largest, ripest most perfect berries for the lad to fill . . .

One by one, Monsieur Genin would choose his favorite few berries from each pint, lay them down in front of the kid, who would then inject the aforementioned raspberry deliciousness. The aim was to create about a dozen raspberry tartes – enough for the first wave of customers and a special order that had to be filled. In the image below, you can see the Master contemplating the just-filled berries His assistant has placed in front of Him.

Let’s just pause here for a second. For those of you who’ve never seen or worked in a professional kitchen, keep in mind that the idea of the chef pâtissier and a sidekick tag-teaming individual raspberries with this much intent – just to make a dozen berry tartes – is something you’d pretty much never see in another kitchen . . . ever. And for those of you who’ve worked in these environments, your mind is probably more blown from seeing how gigantic and naturally lit Monsieur Genin’s kitchen is, to say nothing of what’s happening with these raspberries.

The first raspberry tarte Monsieur Genin finished was super special, in that it was given to me I was just taking hundreds of shots, trying not to get in the way, and all of a sudden there’s a tarte accelerating toward my lens. Was it tasty? Uh, is the sky blue? Of course.

The master eventually put on his glasses, for help with the berry inspections…

Notice the gigantic tub of berries below. Those are the rejects – not good enough to be in a tarte. I think about 1-in-20 berries actually makes it into a pastry. The others wind up becoming pâtes de fruits, raspberries filling, or are slated to be used for flavoring.

A few of the final pieces got boxed up. Monsieur Genin shot the camera a boyish smile as He showed them off . . .

When we pick up again on Wednesday, we’ll dive a little deeper into the work of the team. You’ll also come to better understand why Monsieur Genin tasks Himself with folding paper and inspecting individual raspberries for perfection. The insistence on quality and the level of control He ultimately exerts just blows my mind. There’s a reason I use the honorific capital “H” when referring to Him with pronouns. He is The Legend and nothing less than the greatest classic pastry chef, caramelier and pâte de fruitier in the city – arguably the greatest fondeur en chocolat, as well. He is The Magnificence. He is Jacques Genin!

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I’ll always remember the first time I had Jacques Genin’s Baba au Rhum. This is mostly because it was the first baba He had ever served to a customer, and as the crew from France 4 flanked us, camera rolling for the debut tasting, Monsieur Genin waited patiently for my verdict. “Incroyable!” I said. He beamed. The day before, He’d had me up into His kitchen to taste the yet-to-be-released orange crème for the return of His Tarte à l’Orange, but He’d disappeared into a kitchen emergency before I had time to share my thoughts. So, in addition to my “Incroyable!” for the baba, I continued, “Et la crème d’orange hier . . . sublime!” He glowed. Was I lying for the benefit of the camera crew? No, are you kidding? He’s the greatest classic pastry chef in Paris. If anything, my comments were a gross understatement of how amazing it all was.

In fact, Monsieur Genin is so amazing that this coming Monday and Wednesday I’ll be sharing my two-part series of in-kitchen photos with the Master himself! That’s right. You heard me. It’s going to be a combined 33-photo spectacular of the Legend and His team. And, as is that weren’t enough, in late February, I’ll present a three-part series just on His shop and all the chocolates, pastries, caramels and goodies therein. For how mind-blowingly crucial Monsieur Genin is to the legacy of all disciplines He touches, it’s a shame no one’s done this sooner. Truly. It’s long overdue. But enough of me wagging my finger at those who don’t show His Greatness enough respect, let’s dig into Monsieur Genin’s Baba au Rhum.

Preeminent. Virtually every other pâtissier in the city should converge on the Place de la République and take turns slapping one another for what they call a baba. Monsieur Genin won’t even allow anyone else on His team to touch the thing. It’s 100% pure Masterwork. He readies a few cakes every morning, lovingly bathes them in an obscenely decadent 30-year-old rum and then personally assembles the pieces.

While I only enjoy liquor in desserts these days, I’ve been no stranger to fine rums, Scotches and vodkas. Biting into this Baba was about as top-shelf as you’re getting before He’d be forced to charge 20€+ for the honor or partaking in one. In fact, I’m surprised He’s turning a profit on these, as that rum is smooooooooooth. Yes, 10 o’s of smoothess. And the gâteau that’s soaked it all up? Perfection. Monsieur Genin has calibrated its exact moisture content, pre-rum bath, to ensure it achieves the most exquisite consistency once soaked. The mildly astringent quality of the alcohol and texture of the cake contrast so beautifully with the fairly dense and extremely-vanillaed crème at the heart of this little guy. All that then marries with the pillowy light plume of moderately vanillaed Chantilly, and the assorted tastes and textures rollick about your mouth, exciting and delighting you with every…single…bite.

The overall experience of the piece is . . . meditative. So calm, balanced and refined that I can see why Monsieur Genin saw fit to add the pineapple garnish. The glancing shocks of sweetness and acidity it provides remind you just how astoundingly and effortlessly mellow the rest of the piece is. Brilliance.

Just look at the shot below. It’s almost profane.

I usually show the cross-section shot last, but here I thought it fitting to show the aftermath. I would have licked the plate clean, had people not been watching. Number nine on my Top 38 Best Pastries in Paris list, you just don’t understand how good it is.

So, yes, you must head to Jacques Genin’s for a Baba au Rhum. Aim to arrive at about 1:30 in the afternoon, as He’s sometimes not quite ready with the cakes when the shop first opens. Take a seat in the dining area — as it’s not available to-go — and get ready to be thrilled. Don’t miss out on getting a lemon tarte and chocolate éclair, too. And, of course, make sure to snag some chocolates, caramels and pâtes de fruits. Did I just describe exactly what I’m doing as soon as I get back to Paris? Yes.

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In writing my Laurent Duchêne piece the other day, and in referencing his croissants, I realized it had been too long since I shared anything from my 2011 croissant quest. There were four installments of the series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) before a certain “Negative Nancy” got under my skin with some off-site commentary on the last one, leading me to hang up my croissant quest moccasins. Plus, it was late July and all the shops were closing, meaning a necessary croissant hiatus. Of course I’d eaten from almost 40 shops by that point – and plan to continue the quest this spring – so I have a serious backlog of photos and critiques to share.

While Monsieur Duchêne’s piece inspired me to write this today, I’m going to focus on five other boulangeries/pâtisseries. Most are simply neighborhood shops that have fared well in the city-wide croissant rankings of the last few years. One is a true standout. Another is very good work. And the rest . . . either edible enough or simply disappointing. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or a French “expresso”, and let’s dig in.

Regis Colin (above): I’d heard many good things about Monsieur Colin’s croissant. But, walking up to the shop, I thought I’d perhaps gotten the address wrong, for it sits amid a super touristy stretch of Rue Montmartre in the 75002. I was sure I’d take a bite and taste nothing but hype. Au contraire. I was more than pleasantly surprised. The croissant was very buttery – but by no means wet or overdone – and with a fantastic skin, as you can see. My notes say it has a, “…nice flavor if you buy it early in the morning and eat immediately.” Since I always bought four croissants at a time, notes from the later tasting of the day said that, “…the flavor seemed to dissipate.” While the croissant lacks the refinement of the best days of Bread & Rose, Des Gateaux et du Pain, or Pierre Hermé croissants, it’s nonetheless tasty and a, “bigger, messier, more substantial chunk of awesome.” than those just mentioned, on their more middling days. Score: 8-8.5

And now on to Pichard…

Pichard: This croissant topped Paris’ official 2011 rankings for the best croissant in the city (technically, one outranked it in the outlying suburbs), but I wouldn’t quite go that far in my assessment of its quality. It was definitely a little burnt on the bottom – but in such a way that it did more to add a nice little flare to the flavor than it did to detract from it. Still, a little too charred. Very light in texture – but yet not quite as much as the lightest I’d ever had from Lenôtre … and very buttery, though perhaps a little too far along and into the realm of slightly greasy, not too unlike the croissants from Le Triomphe. My notes peg it as a hybrid of the two shops I just mentioned and the croissants from Gontran Cherrier, though lacking the perfectly nuanced character he seems to imbue in his little guys. Totally worth a purchase though. Score: 7.5

And now on to Didier Maeder…

Didier Maeder: Monsieur Maeder placed 13th on the list of best croissants for Paris (and its suburbs) for 2011. And, yeah, it was certainly not so good. I’d say 13th place was probably pretty generous. The crumble to the exterior was satisfactory – a nice medium flake. The interior was a bit too bready and lacking both in butteriness and any discernible character. Adding insult to injury was its dryness and completely misshapen form. Again, I buy four at a time, so if this was the prettiest of the bunch, imagine how ****** up the others were. My notes succinctly say, “…a notch below ‘good enough’.” Score: 6.5

And now on to Maison Delcourt…

Maison Delcourt: The croissants from Maison Delcourt, as crafted by Guillaume Delcourt, placed high on the list of the 2010 croissant rankings. Why? I don’t know. Slightly dry, slightly bready, minus any charming flavors or tones, it was just . . . boring. Looking at the exterior, I was expecting a lot more, but I was left thoroughly unimpressed. My notes say it’s, “…fine enough for slathering [in confiture]…not that I would buy it again.” Score: 6.5

And now on to Carton…

Carton: Last, and certainly least, Carton’s croissant just sucked. The exterior was “boring as ****” and not flaky/crinkly at all.” The buttery tones were there in texture only, so the flavor thereof was curiously absent. Even the scent of the interior was bland. The two “saving” graces were that the moisture of the piece was spot-on and there was a wee salty kick, but that did little to make up for how insanely lackluster the overall flavor and texture were. There’s no point in eating this thing unless you’re starving and can’t walk a few more blocks to a better shop. Score: 5.5-6

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There are so many great pastries in Paris, and I’m always conflicted about how best to cover them. Even though many people would love if I simply featured Pierre Hermé and Ladurée all the time, not only would I run out of pastries to share, but I’d never meet my aim of trying to forcibly broaden people’s horizons by showing more of the up-and-coming and not-oft-mentioned shops. And with about 85% of readers here living outside of Paris, there’s a pressure to keep most of the coverage on shops in the more tourist-accessible parts of the city. After all, when they finally do make their way to Paris on vacation, it’s nice for them to realize a shop like La Pâtisserie des Rêves isn’t that far from Musée d’Orsay or that Jacques Genin’s shop is in a fun section of the Marais they’d probably want to hit up anyway.

Of course my exploits in Paris take me all over the city. I even joke that I’ve been to the 21ème arrondissement in search of breads, candies, croissants and pastries. Not that Laurent Duchêne is quite that far afield – he’s only in the 13ème – but it’s a little off the beaten path for most. You may remember that I reviewed his Equilibre a few months ago, but now I’d like to dig into into the Fraîcheur. Is it worth the metro ride and further 2km walk to his pâtisserie?

Yes. It’s a very interesting taste experience. The glaçage on the surface of the dome is quite sweet, but as you bite into the crème that underlies it, you get hit with some decidedly prominent and very pleasant acidic grapefruit tones. Although billed as having some rose flavor woven into it, I didn’t quite pick that up, but I did enjoy the gooey and moderately sweet strawberry heart. And then there was the Dacquoise base. I love me some Dacquoise. Who doesn’t? And Monsieur Duchêne’s take was texturally spot-on – tender without being too soft. The mouthfeel complemented the main dome well; however, the intense almond tones within it conflicted a good bit with the grapefruit. A minor criticism, really, because it was a tasty piece – more than worth a repeat purchase – the highlight being that delectable and deftly-handled grapefruit mousse.

Monsieur Duchêne also sells a lineup of breads I’d like to explore further. To date, I’ve only enjoyed his pastries and croissants. And I should point out that his croissant is some pretty nice work, if a bit unconventional. My notes on it highlight its “funnel cake” flavor and “addictive” quality. So, if for no other reason than that, I have a good excuse to head down to the 13ème yet again this spring.

So, yes, the Fraîcheur makes for a nice purchase. Whether you live down in that general area or are an adventurous tourist who likes to explore the city, it can make for a fun visit. And with the shop being about a 20 minute walk from the famous Rue Mouffetard, a nice morning croissant chez Duchêne could segue effortlessly into a little Mouffetard market browsing.

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I just want to slap people when they say Ladurée or Pierre Hermé make the best macarons in Paris. And I’d be just as irritated if they said Gerard Mulot or Carette – Jean Paul Hévin or Sadaharu Aoki. Yes, I think Ladurée has more really good ones than most others, at any given point in time, but they also carry 2x-3x as many flavors as smaller shops. The reality is that there are hundreds of pâtisseries making macarons in the city, and dozens of them make consistently exceptional work. Yet, at best, any given shop might have two or three that rival their competitors. So until they all join forces into some kind of delectable macaron conglomerate, we all need to run to at least a few shops to get a fully world-class assortment.

Hugo & Victor is, in my not-so-humble opinion, home to what might well be the finest all-round single macaron in Paris. They have a number of truly delicious ones – from their Macaron Myrtille to their Combawa and Vanille – but it’s the Macaron Mangue that stands out as the most perfect realization of macarons’ potential. To put it in perspective, when I drafted my Top 38 Best Pastries in Paris list, I put Jacques Genin’s Éclair au Chocolat at the #4 position – a pastry so magnificent I use it as irrefutable proof that Monsieur Genin actually invented the éclair. Hugo & Victor’s Macaron Mangue? It’s at the #3 spot. It is literally part magic.

Hold the macaron delicately in your fingers. Feel the smooth surface and sweet crinkle of the feet. Close your eyes, as bring it to your nose and inhale. Now open them. You’re in the Andalusian countryside. A vision-quest has commenced, merely from the scent! Your mystical guide, Ramón, smiles at you from below the mango tree, where he stands slicing some jamón ibérico he’s invited you to enjoy with him and his lovely fiancée Hélena, whose family has cultivated this land for untold generations. But, before you enjoy your idyllic picnic with this lovely couple, they want you to delight in your Macaron Mangue. The succulent fruit at its heart once flourished in this same grove, but, at the mercy of Champion de France Hugues Pouget, it’s been rendered into something otherworldly. You take a bite. The light chew of the Italian meringue would be enough to delight you 1,000 times over, but you’re almost instantly awash in not only the magnificence of the of mango but the intoxicatingly transcendent mélange of black pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, clove, star anise, and nutmeg. The fruit and spices echo back and forth off of one another in the most mind-bendingly symphonic ricochet of tones and nuances you could never have otherwise imagined. It’s not like seeing a new color for the first time. It’s like discovering a rainbow – an entire spectrum of experience – to which mankind had not yet been privy.

Hyperbole aside, it truly is silly how delicious these macarons are. Less talented chefs would overdo the mango notes, but Hugues keeps it feeling extremely natural. Those tones of the fruit balance so nicely against the spices, which work as an amazing little team. The first time you have one of these macs, you can tell they’ve been spiced, but it’s not 100% clear which ones have been used. Successive bites and frantic gluttonous repeat purchases reveal the clove and the nutmeg and on-and-on. Perhaps the most striking thing about these, and what really sets them apart, is how vital every flavor and texture here seems to be. Most macarons come off as some version of flavored cremeux, ganache, etc. sandwiched between two meringue halves, whereas every waft and morsel of these Macarons Mangue is integral. I used to just buy a big tube of them from H&V and walk back to my apartment, nibbling away and going, “Oh my God…Wow…Oh my God…Wow…Really?…Wow…”

Especially if you’ve already enjoyed the macarons of Pierre Hermé and Ladurée, start venturing further afield. I love Monsieur Hermé’s Mogador and Infiniment Vanille, as well as Ladurée’s Fleur d’Oranger and Rose, but those and more can be topped by the finest pieces at some of the lesser-known shops. Even if H&V’s Macaron Mangue doesn’t quite live up to the hype I’ve just provided (though it should), shops like ACIDE, Un Dimanche à Paris, Art Macaron, Pain de Sucre and more have stellar pieces you’d be a triflin’ fool to miss.

So, yes, H&V’s Macaron Mangue is an absolute must-have. Not only will I give it my highest praise of saying that you should buy an entire box of it alone, but I’ll top that and suggest you call a few days ahead and order enough for three boxes – one for you, one for a friend, and another for you when you realize you ate the first box in 5 minutes and have yet to see the friend who should still be getting box #2. There’s a reason this flavor was often sold out when I’d get to the shop in the early afternoon. Even if all the others were in the case, the Macaron Mangue might have been completely snapped-up.

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After months of sipping acclaimed Parisian hot chocolates, I became preoccupied with crafting my own. It wouldn’t be enough to just recreate the greats I had though. No, you have to understand that when I work on recipes I obsess at level 1,000 on the 0-10 scale. No expense is spared. No corners are cut. I live in pursuit of perfection.

My chocolat chaud quest got so crazy that I wound up spending the better part of November and December tinkering, up to 8 times a day, with various combinations of fine chocolates and blending techniques. Tons of obsessive in-print and online recipe searches, chatting with my Parisian contacts, and discussions with State-side chocolate wizards didn’t hurt the learning curve either. Ultimately uncovering the “secret” recipes of Angelina, Jacques Genin, Ladurée, Christophe Michalak and many others – often down to the exact brand, origin and cacao percentage of chocolate used – I learned way more than I ever expected. That wealth of insider information, together with a few hundred experiments, led me to create two core recipes that I’d like to share with you today.

This first recipe, which I call L’Élémentaire, is a fairly straightforward approach that makes it easy to whip up a great cup of hot chocolate. Think of it as a hybrid of the best of Paris, although more technically refined than other recipes you’ll find on the internet or in print. The second recipe, which I’ve named L’Essentiel, is at the bottom of this post. Far more involved, I consider it the perfection of technique and ingredients, which I detail throughout the 2,500 word essay that precedes it. Enjoy . . .

L’Élémentaire Hot Chocolate
makes about 4-5 servings

Ingredients: The following chocolates can be purchased online at cocova.com

This recipe calls for indirect heating of the ingredients. If you have a small double boiler, then you’re set. If not, you can easily just take a 1-2 litre/quart saucepan and fill it with just 250- 500ml (1-2 cups) of hot tap water. Then choose a ceramic or glass bowl that will comfortably fit over the pot without touching the surface of the water.

1. Place your saucepan of water on the stove, set to low. Then add about 150ml (a little more than ½ cup) of your milk to a mixing bowl, and place it atop the pan of water.

2. Weigh out your chocolates. Then break them into 1-2cm pieces, and add it all to the 150ml of milk in your bowl.

3. Occasionally stir the mixture with a whisk, as the chocolate begins to melt. Once the chocolate is almost fully melted, whisk continuously so that your milk and chocolate form a smooth/shiny ganache texture.

4. Increase the burner to medium-low. You never want the pan’s water to boil; it should just lightly simmer. Then slowly add the remainder of your milk to the chocolate, while constantly whisking. Keep whisking until the mixture reaches about 60-65°C (140-150°F).

The final product should turn out quite smooth, so if you notice some grainy/dark cacao solids have come out of emulsion, you overheated the chocolate. Whisk a little more vigorously and be more cautious with the temperature of the water bath on your next go’round.

Serve and savor!

Of course, if you’re ready to move from a really nice recipe and into something obsessively exquisite, then keep reading . . .

After all my research, I wound up very disappointed by the state of Parisian chocolat chaud. There’s a lot of tasty work; don’t get me wrong. But, objectively, it’s not as good as it could be. From the use of sub-ultimate chocolates, to recipe procedures that literally damage the ingredients, there’s too much room for improvement. And if it’s not possible to get a perfectly refined cup of chocolat chaud in Paris, we’re just going to have to do it ourselves.

Preface: I’ve separated this into 5 subsections that then lead into the recipe. You can just skip to the recipe, but the information in the segments that follow helps explain much about how the recipe was created and will elucidate how deeply considered every element of the final process is.

Chocolate: Selecting a choice single origin or divining the perfect blend is key to achieving a sublime end product. Some insist the key is cacao powder from South American beans – preferably Venezuelan or Colombian. Others would assert that a Venezuelan Criollo/Trinitario blend couverture is the best route. Another camp swears by Madagascan couverture. Then there are the Côte d’Ivoire supporters. Yet others believe a nice Ecuadorian and a little milk chocolate together yield something truly special. Even the cacao mass recommendations range from 56% all the way up to 80%. The reality is that there’s no standard among the Parisian shops, other than a seeming preference for single origins.

I’m not quite sure why the pâtisseries/chocolateries don’t place more emphasis on blends. While single origins have a lot of character that can shine through, there are two key arguments one could make against the approach. First, and most obviously, by blending any chocolate with milk products, you mask many of the flavors in the chocolate with the milk fats and proteins. It’s a bit akin to admiring a fine work of art through a pair of foggy glasses. Still beautiful – but muddled. Why not just eat the chocolate instead, to enjoy it pure? Secondly, there’s not too much “challenge” in taking a nice single origin and melting it down in milk products. It’s not too unlike deep-frying a candy bar, as they sadly do here in America. Yeah, you’ve changed its texture considerably and can charge a few bucks for it as a novelty, but it’s still just a Snickers someone else made. Note: I love single origin hot chocolates; I’m just making a rhetorical argument against them.

With the above said, blended chocolates are going to wind up not only fighting against the milk fats and proteins but against one another, as well. In working on my recipe, I found that, at best, I could only do a 2-3 bar blend before individual characters started slipping away. I still worked my way up to experiments with as many as 5 bars, since there’s a lot of custom tweaking you can do to the subtleties, but in mixes like that you can still only pick out one variety clearly, if it’s in great enough supply. So, really, single origin vs. blend . . . it all comes down to personal preference.

One thing I would caution against is taking Jean-Paul Hévin’s preferred approach of using cacao powder vs. bars or couverture. He’s a brilliant chocolatier and his hot chocolate it very well-regarded, but by eliminating cacao butter from the equation, it all basically amounts to chocolate-flavored hot milk. It’s also not hot chocolate if you use powder; it’s technically just hot cacao. I don’t think I’m alone amongst chocophiles when I say I want to experience the chocolate – not fight to tease out its nuances from the dominant fats and proteins of his pasteurized Le Briard lait entier.

If for no other reason than snobbery, also be sure to purchase chocolate that doesn’t contain additive emulsifiers/viscosity-enhancers. Even my hero (regular readers know who), by virtue of using only Valrhona in his work, is playing with the second string of upper echelon chocolates. Great though his couverture choice is – and it truly is – were he to step away from that soy lecithin-laced Valrhona Araguani, he could find a purer and superior Venezuelan.

Liquids: Whole milk is almost universally used – preferably pasteurized or raw (never “ultra-pasteurized”). Monsieur Genin employs it alone, “Ni sucre ni crème (neither sugar nor cream).” Un Dimanche à Paris uses almost all whole milk with just a touch of cream, which is the same approach as Christophe Michalak at l’Hôtel Plaza Athénée. Angelina completely goes for it with 2 litres of cream for every 3 litres of milk in their mix. Others like Hélène Darroze like to incorporate a bit of crème fraiche, to step it up a notch, while Robert Linxe at La Maison du Chocolat blends in a bit of water, to tone the milky elements down.

The rule of thumb with the use of liquids is . . . the more high quality chocolate you use, the less milk fat/protein you want in the mix. If you’re using crap chocolate from the grocery store, you probably want to drown it in milk and cream. Take a step up to something like one of the better Scharffen Berger bars (note: most of them are terrible), and you can cut it down to milk with maybe a little bit of cream. Moving a notch higher, using Valrhona, you could go to 100% milk. Heading all the way into what I call “real chocolate”, and you probably want to cut back on the milk so that water is also part of the equation. However, it gets difficult to use water alone. Unlike ganache, which is principally a very stable emulsion of roughly equal parts chocolate and cream (or water), the Parisian-style hot chocolates we’re discussing have so much liquid that they’re pretty unstable emulsions – on their way to essentially being near-pure suspensions at higher drinking temperatures. Milk helps smooth that out and does add some favorable textural elements that water simply can’t provide.

However much milk or cream you end up using, the key to a top-notch end product is the temperature to which you bring them. Do not even come close to scalding the milk, as essentially every recipe out there tells you to do. Why? I’m about to get all nerdy on you here. It’s because the scalding temperature of milk is 82-85°C (180-185°F), which is beyond the 78°C (172°F) denaturation point of lactoglobulin. When that protein breaks down, the milk starts to form hydrogen sulfide, which is the smell of rotten eggs and “other stuff”. What you want to do instead is heat the milk to around 60-62°C (140-145°F), which is what baristas do, when they whip up lattés. The heat helps convert some of the alpha lactose in the milk into beta lactose, which is more soluble and thus sweeter – allowing you to use higher cacao mass bars, less milk chocolate or additive sugar in the final mix. As an experiment, heat two different servings of milk to the temperature ranges I just detailed, and you can instantly taste what I’m describing. You really don’t want those flavors in there with any chocolate, especially high grade cacao.

But guess who goes beyond scalding their milk and all the way into boiling it? Angelina. Yes, the purported “best hot chocolate in the world” is loaded with fart gas. Yum! I’m not saying it’s not a memorable “good” hot chocolate; I’m just saying that it could be much better, if they didn’t damage the milk. The overheating of the dairy products, which are then poured over their humble and heavy-handed Forastero, also separates out some of the cacao solids from the cacao butter. It’s just bad technique through-and-through. If you’re shaking your head, “knowing” in your heart of hearts that Angelina’s is unquestionably the best, you’re wrong, but I can’t entirely blame you. Most of the other shops basically do the same, so how can anyone have a better frame of reference? But the fact remains that they’re doing sloppy, corner-cutting work that results in an unnecessary grain to their finished product, along with the aforementioned fart gas. Sorry. We’ve all been getting screwed for years.

Additive Flavors: Aside from the chocolate choice and milk/cream tonal elements just covered, you also have the option of adding flavors. Jean-Paul Hévin is a big fan of making hot cacao drinks, so he’ll weave in fruit juices, teas, oysters and more. But it’s much more conventional to use such subtle accents as vanilla and cinnamon. Of course, if you want to prepare super authentic drinking chocolate, you can pop in some chili peppers, “ear flower”/xochinacaztli, anise, cloves, pepper, or annatto.

I decided to go conservative in flavoring my hot chocolate – just sticking to vanilla and cinnamon – but soon realized it was absurd to flavor the fine chocolates I ultimately chose for my blend. I wouldn’t add a splash of Coke to a 30-year-old rum, so why would I mix any flavors into what comes to a small $10 cup of ultra-luxe chocolat chaud?

That’s not to say I didn’t experiment and come up with some novel infusion methods for my Veracruz Mexican vanilla pods and Ceylon cinnamon, but those techniques are likely better applied when I’m stuck with a few bars of Ghiradelli and someone expects me to make it taste marginally less like ****.

Process & Temperature: At the end of the day here, we’re working with chocolate, and chocolate is extremely temperature-sensitive. Once you cross the 46°C mark for milk chocolate and 49°C for dark chocolate, cacao butter and cacao solids begin to separate. So we want to get our chocolate near that temperature, before we begin adding our milk that’s been warmed to an identical temperature. By considering temperature in that way, and staging the additions of milk, we can keep the chocolate in a near-perfect emulsion/suspension.

Blending the ingredients together should ideally be taking place in a fairly thick ceramic bowl, which will help both conserve and dissipate heat far more effectively than metal. I use an Emile Henry 7″ over a 1 quart/litre saucepan. Considering how briskly I like to whisk and how “in there” I like to get, I find this bain-marie approach to be a much more flexible setup than using a swank 1 litre copper-ceramic double boiler.

Some recipes call for using an immersion blender to smooth out the end product. That’s because those recipes are ****, written by hacks who don’t know or care what they’re doing. If you follow the directions of the recipe below, a nice silicone whisk is all you need. It’s like we’re stitching an Hermès bag or building a Rolls-Royce here; greatness can only be achieved by hand. Patiently elevating the temperature, while whisking thoroughly and continuously, the end product is smooth and flawless all the way up to the 60-62°C level we’re aiming to hit.

The recipe is also completely metric by weight and temperature, as English units and volume measurements are for animals. Hopefully you have a nice digital scale on-hand. An infrared thermometer is also requisite. I have so many thermometers that it’s crazy, but this new pocket KINTREX IRT0401 I’ve been using is amazing.

My Final Blend: I can’t even count the number of bars and combinations I went through. But I do know my credit card statement shows over $800 in purchases from my awesome chocolate shop here in DC – Cocova. My diet for several weeks was basically just small doses of hot chocolate throughout the entire day, and I wound up testing the entire lines of Pralus, Cluizel, Amedei, Domori, Original Beans, Soma, Bonnat and on-and-on. Some of my tests involved only two bars, while others went up to five. I eventually settled on three. The two dominate ones are Original Beans’ Cru Virunga Congo 70% and Domori’s Porcelana 70%. My best brief description of the Cru Virunga is like a super smooth bitter cherry, while the Porcelana is an even smoother cacao with bountiful notes of strawberry butter. Adding a little more sweetness to the mix, plus some deeper cacao tones, is Cluizel’s Maralumi Lait 47% from Papua New Guinea.

Because I want the bars to shine through as much as possible, the milk to water split is about 60/40. That gives us enough of the textural benefits of milk without having its flavors actually be obvious. By weight, these liquids are in a 2:1 ratio to the chocolate. That makes for a fairly rich hot chocolate – but one that still straddles the line between thick and thin. You can easily shift that ratio up or down for a thinner or thicker cup. Keep in mind that less than 1.5:1 would likely be gauchely thick, while 4:1 is the classic upper limit for even the thinnest preparations.

You might also be wondering, “How is it that you got the ratios of everything just right, in your mind?” Well, the first couple hundred I made for myself I assessed as follows: “That tastes like ****”, “Disgusting.”, “Who would drink that?”, etc. When I finally got down to the three bars in the final recipe, the ratios were still off, and I’d walk away from my experiments feeling that they were too sweet or too weighted in favor of the Porcelana. Then, one day, I used the ratios you’ll see below, and I knew I’d achieved the ‘perfect’ blend, because drinking a cup of it made me angry. Almost all those others I’d had before in Paris were just crude approximations, and I realized I’d been cheated out of not only money but cheated out of anything close to the experience I was enjoying at that moment. It’s the same way I feel when I eat Monsieur Genin’s lemon tarte and think about how disappointing all others were that had come before.

So let’s get going on the recipe, which I’ve named L’Essentiel. I feel this is the essential hot chocolate recipe, from the perspective of a hyper-controlled technique – a springboard for you to explore the use of single origins, blends, and more, while not mistreating ingredients in the way essentially all other recipes instruct us to do. After nearly 400 years of being completely bastardized, chocolat chaud finally has the respect it deserves.

All of the bars can be found at Cocova here in DC or by visiting them online at cocova.com.

Chocolat Chaud L’Essentiel
Makes two 150ml servings or three 100ml servings

It’s all about temperatures, process and the balance of ingredients. I recommend the pan/bowl bain-marie method vs. an actual double boiler; it gives much more control. Either way, the end product is a delicate, vaguely sweet, and beautifully expressive celebration of cherry and strawberry accented cacao.

Ingredients:

Pre-Step: Whether you’re pouring the finished hot chocolate directly into cups or into a chocolate pot or pitcher (whatever vessel you’ll be using to serve your hot chocolate), pop them into a warming drawer or keep them in a water bath around 55-60°C.

1. Fill your water pan with about 300g of hot tapwater. Then place it on the stovetop burner – set to medium-low so that your water very lightly simmers around 83°C.

2. Weigh out your chocolates and break them into chunks (no bigger than 2-3cm) by hand. There’s no need to chop it up with a knife.

3. Place your chocolate pieces in a 1½-2 litre ceramic or glass bowl and partially immerse that in a 43-45°C water bath. The chocolate will safely melt as you work on the next steps.

4. Combine your milk and water in a separate 1½-2 litre ceramic or glass bowl, and place it atop your heated water pan. Stir occasionally until the milk/water reaches 60-62°C. You can also very carefully microwave it, heating and stirring every 5-7 seconds until it reaches 60-62°C. If a skin forms on top of the milk, you overheated it, so start over. Then pour the liquid into a glass measuring cup (e.g., a 250-500ml Pyrex) that will later allow you to easily pour it into the chocolate. What we’re also aiming for in this transfer is starting a slow drop in temperature to 41-45°C.

Over the next 10-20 minutes, your chocolate will warm and your milk/water will cool. Make sure to stir the chocolate lightly, every few minutes, to ensure all the pieces get fully melted. Then, with the chocolate all melted, you’re ready to continue.

5. Once you milk/water mixture has cooled to 41-45°C, place your bowl of melted chocolate atop the stovetop water pan. Then add about 100-110g of the milk/water to the chocolate. Whisk briskly until you have a glossy, well-emulsified and thoroughly incorporated ganache.

6. Pour another 60-70g of milk/water into the chocolate and whisk until incorporated. Then pour the remaining milk/water in, while continuing to whisk.

7. Continuously whisk your mixture until it reaches 60-62°C. Then it’s done and should look as smooth as silk. Pour your mixture into the serving vessel you pre-prepared – or pour directly into your pre-warmed cups – and enjoy immediately. In the event you’re seeing a bunch of specks of cacao solids that have come out of emulsion, feel dejected, because you did something wrong.

If you ever attempt the recipe, please let me know how many tears of joy you wept after your first sip. For the rest of you, you’ll just have to believe me when I say it makes Angelina’s seem as raffish as a packet of Swiss Miss. You can also now appreciate knowing exactly how OCD I truly am. Bon appétit.

A couple weeks back, I mentioned in a post how I’m quite the chocolate snob. I love dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. A reader “found that humorous” that I’d refer to myself as a snob since “white chocolate is technically not chocolate”. I just had to shake my head and feel sorry for him. Neverminding the fact that white chocolate cannot be made without cacao beans or that fine whites actually contain more cacao butter than many inferior milk chocolates contain cacao mass & butter combined, did he know what he was missing? The sublime joys of Amedei’s Toscano Bianco, Vestri’s Bianco Pistacchi, or Valrhona’s Ivoire are not to be missed. Would he also thumb his nose at Porcelana since it comes from albino white pods?

Fortunately, Pierre Hermé embraces any & all chocolates and so much more. He had certainly amused and delighted yours truly many times over, before I ever experienced his chocolate tarte. The Tarte Céleste, Tarte Vanille, Croissant Ispahan, Gourmandises Constellation and more were all stellar pieces. After running through his full lineup of goodies, one day I looked down in the case and noticed a very special qualifier in the tarte’s name: Porcelana. “Interesting,” I thought to myself. “Very interesting!” I was going to need one of these. And so it was that Monsieur Hermé’s Tarte Fine Porcelana came home with me.

So what is Porcelana? It’s an extremely rare “heirloom” variety of albino cacao. Literally white beans in translucent white pods (sometimes purple), it was originally rediscovered in Venezuela, after being considered extinct. Other small wild crops have since been found in Peru and Mexico, in just the last 6 years or so. While cultivation is beginning to bring the price down, there are still only a few thousand kilos made every year; it shouldn’t be a shocker that it commands around $200/kg. And it’s not just the rarity and price that make it so cool. No, the flavor is truly special. Granted, it ranges, depending on producer and origin, from something like Original Beans’ fairly tame Peruvian version all the way up to Domori’s Venezuelan spin, which – between notes of strawberry and butter – seems to grab your tongue and beat it into submission while screaming “PORCELANA!” There’s literally no mistaking what it is. Eat it once, and you’ll never forget it. I wish I could have Monsieur Hermé tarte in front of me this second, to confirm, but I’m 99% sure he uses a Venezuelan, likely Valrhona’s El Pedregal.

The tempered sliver of chocolate atop the tarte is quite a delight, but let’s just get into the ganache, which I’m almost at a loss to describe, unless you know Porcelanas. It’s at once powerful and yet very subtle. Initially, it’s more of a sensation than a flavor, very similar to what you’d get with an Ecuadorian Arriba. Monsieur Hermé has left it quite lightly sugared and virtually undiluted, so the subtle power of the bean rings through. There’s this very pleasant musky bitterness that gives way a more pronounced fruitiness and acidity. Smooth, so smooth. And then you get to the little crushed cacao nibs just below the ganache and above the crust. As you chew them, there’s a potent bitter earthiness that comes through, and the nibs feel like they skip across your teeth. It’s perhaps the most pleasant unpleasant sensation, and I love it. These feelings and flavors then begin to marry with the grit of the cornmeal that underlies it all – yes, cornmeal. Had someone told me they’d be mixing Porcelana and cornmeal, I’d have thought they were insane, but it comes off here not so much as something delicious as much as something genius-level delicious. To me, there’s no other piece that better explains why Pierre Hermé deserves respect and admiration for what he’s capable of in the realm of flavors and textures.

I’m hoping pieces like this start to change other chefs’ attitudes toward chocolate. For such an important part of so many pastries, there’s seemingly little attention paid to sourcing the best. Even my favorite chef (regular readers know who), uses only Valrhona. To me, that’s like only dating redheads and refusing brunettes and blondes. It’s ridiculously limiting. Others, like Hugues Pouget at Hugo & Victor, actually do make use of a wide range of producers and their single origins. But, aside from Monsieur Hermé here, no one takes the time to list either their cacao’s country of origin or variety.

This ****** attitude keeps the masses from having a chance to develop an understanding of what they’re eating. Hopefully there will be a day when specifying “Ghanan Forastero 75%”, “Jamaican Trinitario 72%”, or “Bolivian Criollo 70%” is a normal part of the routine. They don’t need to give away the name of the supplier/producer, but at least having the origin, variety and percentage listed would help advance chocolate’s cause.

Another reason I wanted to highlight this piece today is that I’ll finally be publishing my hot chocolate recipe here on Wednesday! It, as you might expect, involves Porcelana, as well as some swanky chocolates of Congolese and Papua New Guinean origin. I’m even going to specify the chocolate down to the exact bars, so unlike even the great pastry chefs who write their chocolate recipes with useless ******** instructions to use a 70% or 80%, you’ll know exactly how to recreate a cup of the magic.

It’s also paired with a 2,500 word essay, where I explain how – with rare exception – most of the famous chocolats chauds of Paris are mishandled, damanged or are just inherently inferior. So, especially if you’re an Angelina lover, get ready to have your blood boil as I **** all over them.

So, yes, absolutely get yourself a Pierre Hermé Tarte Fine Porcelana. Not only is it his finest work of chocolate, but it’s among the finest chocolate pastries in all of Paris. I even put it ahead of Jacques Genin’s Tarte au Chocolat in my Top 38 Best Pastries in Paris list, so you know it has to be something special. And should you want to recreate any of Pierre Herme’s chocolate magic, make sure to check out his Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé book . . . and then send me samples of your work for taste-test purposes

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Underappreciated. Too many of the finest Parisian pastries are underappreciated. When Pierre Hermé first released the Ispahan, barely anyone cared to buy it. Instead of removing it from the vitrine, he kept it in for years, until it caught on and became one of his most popular pastries. That’s, unfortunately, not a luxury most shops have. So among my many aims with the site here is accelerating that process for certain chefs and their work – hoping that, if I get the word out, it can keep one of the treasures on display. After all, a casual shopper in any one of the grandes pâtisseries won’t have any context for how amazing Pouchkine’s Napoléon or Aoki’s Éclair Sésame Noir are. When too many other options in the cases have been dolled-up like supermodels of crème and gâteaux, the most humble works go unnoticed and, as I said, terminally underappreciated.

When it comes to Un Dimanche à Paris’ Macaron Réglisse, I never got the opportunity to write about it before the decision was made to take it out of rotation. It just didn’t sell enough for Un Dimanche to justify making them. But we’re going to remedy that today. These macarons, #13 on my list of The 38 Best Pastries in Paris, need to come back now … and forever. So let me first describe to you exactly how amazing they are, then detail the steps both we and they need to take to restore them to their rightful place in the canon of contemporary Parisian pastry.

Even as you approach for your first bite, the delicate aroma of réglisse mingles with soft notes of Caribbean molasses. Your lips embrace both halves of the shell and instinctively read their coarse sugar granules – like a sweet braille – as saying “sinfully delicious”. Then, as you cleave through the tender French meringue and allow your tongue to carry away a morsel from the body of the macaron, those granules of sugar instantly begin to dissolve and light up your taste buds. Electric. It’s only another second before this already magical experience transforms into something verging on religious perfection. The grain – the unapologetic grit – of the firm crème within the macarons is unlike anything you’ve experienced. It rakes seductively against your tongue, exploding with deep, dense, primal tones. Réglisse has rarely, if ever, known a more beautiful expression.

With every bite, you drift into a more languid delirium. These aren’t just macarons; they’re an intoxicant. As perfect on a sun-filled afternoon as on a dreary, rainy morning, enjoying these is among the requirements for a life truly well-lived.

Let me preface the following by saying I adore Un Dimanche à Paris. Quentin Bailly is a tremendously gifted chef pâtissier. Pierre Cluizel is a national treasure of France and a genius of chocolate. And Perrine de Longevialle is the greatest director in all of Paris’ patisseries, putting everyone else to shame. So take the following comments as a high complement. I care enough to be completely blunt . . .

The color of these is just not working. Yes, it’s reminiscent of the color of réglisse, and it made for a better diversity of colors in the case, but it’s a dull hue that wasn’t inspiring people to buy these macs. Everyone hates the black color Ladurée and Pierre Hermé use for their réglisse, too, so it’s a general problem where réglisse is concerned.

What about having a two-color approach? The top shell could be pink, and the bottom shell could be purple. The crème on the interior would be white. That would be beautiful and make it a true standout. Alternately, and perhaps even more likely to help, pick another appealing color or combination and accent it liberally with lustre dust, as Cafe Pouchkine does with many of their pieces – example: Café Pouchkine’s Caramel-Chocolat Macaron. Of course, no matter what, keep the same raw sugar granules on the shell, as those are part of the magic of these macarons.

Réglisse is also just not the most popular flavor to begin with, so can we sex-up the name? What about “Pure Réglisse” or “Réglisse à l’Ancienne” as the French name and “Traditional French Licorice” as the English translation on the tag? Tourists love nothing more than “authentic”, “traditional” and “ancient” things, especially when it comes to France and Paris. That approach alone could make any macaron flavor the hot seller.

As for you, my dear readers, I need you to do me a favor – but one that benefits not only me, but you and all of humanity. When you visit Un Dimanche à Paris, please please please ask if they have the Macaron Réglisse. If your French is not the best and it feels funny to say “réglisse”, just request the “black licorice macarons”. If you truly love réglisse and would be willing to buy a full box of them, express your sadness that you cannot do so. Should you happen to know anyone heading to Paris soon – someone who loves black licorice – pass this page along to them and encourage them to swing by Un Dimanche and badger the staff for a Macaron Réglisse.

And, if by chance Un Dimanche brings these back soon, make sure to buy at least one – if not a dozen – of them. Yes, they have quite a few amazing macarons there, but aside from the equally amazing coquelicot, it’s this réglisse that will truly blow your mind.

So, yes, absolutely snag the Macaron Réglisse … once they come back. Until they return, request them every single time you visit the shop. Even if you don’t like réglisse, these are one of the few confections that could change your mind. And if you already enjoy the flavor, I’m 99% certain these will thoroughly wow you. They are transcendent.

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