ITried Paris’s Best Pastries & Chocolate | Kirsten Tibballs

I'm right here in Paris and I'm going to share with you my top picks for chocolate stores, patisseries and even the best desserts. I've selected products in each of those places which are my recommendations for you to try. So where do I start? We've got creme brulee tart vanilla, mille-feuille with hazelnut, a new product which is called Fonky which is a combination between a cookie and a brownie and an espresso to wash it all down. Christophe Michalak is a very good friend of mine and a legend amongst patissiers. He's amazing at what he does and he has multiple stores in Paris. His most popular petit gateau which is available year-round is actually called Mango which I've had before so I thought I'd try something different. Now it will need to detox after today. It looks like it's got a sablé on the bottom, maybe an almond frangipane or almond cream that's baked and then the vanilla creme brulee on top which is all glazed. Here we go. First thing I can say is the texture is absolutely amazing and it's 100% backed up by beautiful flavour. I'm going to go straight into the hazelnut. You can see the ooze of the praline here, the mousseline cream. The flavour of that just absolutely blew me away. The quality of the hazelnuts really shine through but the different textures of the praline which has a little bit of hazelnut texture in it, the mousseline cream, the shortbread that's on the base, that one is an absolute stunner. I am trying to pace myself so we've got the Fonky next. Cookie and brownie combination. I can see the brownie is underneath with the cookie baked on top. I can see some sea salt on top and chocolate chips in there as well. If you're after something really rich and decadent, this is the product for you. The cookie is chewy on top and the brownie is really moist and decadent underneath. A really distinctive strong chocolate flavour. I'm here with Christophe Michalak in one of his 10 stores. This is a must visit when in Paris. The range of products is exceptional. What do you recommend Christophe for coming to your store? Thank you for coming. What I recommend? I love Danish, I love the cake, I love the mango, I love everything of my products. That's very difficult to say but I want always to take a good time and propose the best pastry from Paris. I think that you'll find some of the best textures, some of the best flavours and also one of the biggest ranges of products that you'll find in Paris here at Christophe Michalak. I'm here at Fou D'Eau Patisserie. This is quite unique because they actually have some of the best products from France's best chefs, particularly in Paris. And the products change all the time. The only product that doesn't actually change is the Montblanc from Angelina which is available year round. So when you come into the store you can see some of the best products from some of Paris's most amazing patissiers. When you walk down the street it has the most amazing aroma of hazelnut. I could smell the shop before I saw it. Now this is a fairly new store. Maxime does have two stores. He also does the patisserie design for Louboutin Café. That is a pop-up that has been extended for quite a few years. I've gone for the strawberry tart because the strawberry season has almost ended here in France. I've got the hazelnut entremet, the noisette entremet and the vanilla entremet are staples. They won't change. All the other products and small cakes will actually change with the season, right at the end of the season. So I'll let you know what I think. Beautiful crumbly pastry, a little bit of cream in there. That's great. It's not overly sweet. It really highlights the strawberry flavour when you actually try it. So you don't get a dominant flavour of sugar. The pastry is so crumbly and absolutely delicious. This is my jam. Hazelnut, praline, lots of layers, lots of flavours and textures. It tastes pretty similar to the hazelnut entremet that Maxime Frederick designed for Louboutin. Very, very similar. Both are beautiful. This really for me is the absolute hero, but that is gorgeous as well. I hope this is the correct pronunciation, but I went by Patisserie and I picked up their most popular product and something that's on the menu all the time. Their most popular product is the phil shoe bun. And I also got the flan, which is available year round and is very popular and highly recommended. A French classic. The product itself is really quite organic. It's a little hole in the wall shop, does have a few seats, but I actually got takeaway. So I'm going to try it here. So this is their flan. A secret to a good flan is to ensure that it's not cooked on too high a heat and it's not overcooked. This is so creamy. It's really good actually. And it's not normal I go back for a second bite with the volume of cakes I'm eating, but I'm actually going back for a second bite. The puff pastry is flaky and it has subtle vanilla notes. The vanilla isn't overly strong, but it's just an aftertaste when you actually try the flan. Next is a shoe bun. And I love a shoe bun that is really filled to maximum. Look at that texture of that creme patissiere inside is perfect. The shoe pastry is really well baked, which means it's nice and crunchy. And this would have been just filled this morning. Both are absolutely stunning, but as a personal preference, I would pick the flan. That is really good. I'm here at Geoffrey Cagney's and I've selected a couple of items. I was really spoilt for choice. There's a selection between macarons, pastries, cookies, so many pettigato and tarts. So I got the rum bubba. I also got the apple tart, which looks really decadent. I couldn't resist it because of that beautiful crumble texture on the outside. But their two biggest sellers are actually their vanilla tart and their citron tart. So those are two of note that you should look at trying. So that rum bubba is so well soaked that it's just basically breaking off completely. Some vanilla cream on top. It's exactly as a bubba should be. It just falls apart with a spoon. The flavors are beautiful. The rum is certainly there, but it's quite subtle and it balances beautifully with the other flavors. All right, let's have a look inside this one. I don't want to destroy it. This one has puff pastry creme patissiere and finely diced sauteed apples. That crumble on the outside is beautiful. If you love apple, this is the one for you. I highly recommend Geoffrey Cagney's patisserie in Paris. He has multiple stores, so I'm sure that you can find one near you. I'm not sure if all stores have the full range, but certainly this one that I have gone to does have a really broad range of products. I'm here at Plaque, which is a bean to bar chocolate store, and they have a beautiful range of cakes. They have chocolate bars. They have snacking bars with filling. They also have origin chocolates that you can buy by themselves. So I have bought their hot chocolate, which is a 76% Tanzanian chocolate base. Now, I've chosen to have the hot chocolate with water rather than dairy, so I'm not going to distort the true chocolate flavor with the cocoa beans from Tanzania. It's so fruity, and you'd think a 76% cocoa solids chocolate, this would be quite bitter, but it's not. It's actually really beautiful. This is such a fabulous place. There's so many different things to choose from. This is a chocolate babka and the chocolate tart, and they've placed some little chocolate tablets to go with our coffee and hot chocolate. So that's just simply breaking away there, and what I love about this is it's all made with the bean to bar chocolate that they make here at Plaque. One bite in, and I can tell you this is one of the best pastries that I've tried in Paris this trip. Now for the chocolate tart that has cocoa nibs on top, and I can see already that the pastry is beautiful and crumbly, which is what you're wanting with a sablé. Now I'm going to break this rather than bite into it. Oh my goodness, look at that. It takes a true craftsman to be able to pull out the beautiful flavor notes of the chocolate that they've used in something like a chocolate tart like this. You would expect it to be rich and overpowering, but it's not. It's actually really light and fruity, and I think you could actually eat more than one. It's delicious. So Plaque was a last minute addition, and I'm so glad I found out about it because it really is up at the top of the list. I love the fact they focus on the flavor of the product, and the product itself is not overworked at all. I want to add in two places that I visited after we wrapped filming, and they are worth a mention. First one is Christophe Louis. Christophe Louis is a little hole-in-the-wall patisserie bakery that is really renowned for its flan, its madeleines, panettone, and beautiful bread. The madeleine flavors change with the season, but I must say it's the best madeleine I've ever tried. The next one I want to mention is Bregard. So Bregard is a patisserie where you expect to line up, but it's well worth the wait once you get inside. They have a range of pastries, petit gateaux, and breads. I did try the pistachio millefeuille, which was absolutely amazing. This is a must when you visit Paris. I went to Alain Ducasse Chocolat to pick up some chocolates to taste. Now Alain Ducasse is one of the original bean to bar icons, so he started the process of bean to bar when it was just starting to become popular. The shop that I went to, he now has a biscuit store on one side and a gelato or ice cream store on the other side. The staff was so knowledgeable and so helpful and eager to give tastings if you're interested in trying something before actually purchasing it. I purchased some chocolate bars. I really love the packaging, it plays homage to that bean to bar concept. Typically French chocolate is really quite acidic, so it'll always taste quite fruity and combined with different flavours, it really does give you a magical chocolate. I'm going to try the almond paste, pistachio and Madagascar ganache. They're beautifully finished and I'm sure the chocolate layer is going to be super thin. I love the fact that they're able to extract the flavour of the cocoa bean and really showcase and highlight that in their individual chocolates. They really are a work of art, they taste beautiful and really focus on chocolate flavour, harmonising with the filling that they've placed inside. If you love your chocolate it's a fantastic place to visit. I'm here in the Peninsula Hotel and waiting for Chef Anne to serve me her dessert. Now this dessert has won best dessert two years running, I cannot wait to try it. It looks absolutely amazing. Thank you. And two years in a row this has won the best dessert in France or Paris? Congratulations. Merci. And which restaurant can I try the dessert? How did you think of this? It's incredible. Thank you. The texture is... Yes, and it's very thin. Not a lot of sugar, yes, inside the dessert so it's quite light, yes. If you're in Paris this is 100% necessary and try Chef Anne's famous dessert. I'm here at Depot Legal which is Christophe Adam's cafe. He also has Eclair de Genie which has a wide range of eclairs. His most popular one is caramel. Here they do have a small selection of eclairs but they also have other patisserie items. Patisserie items are available in the and from lunchtime you can get savoury items as well. It's well worth a visit. The wonderful thing about the cafe is there's somewhere to sit down and enjoy his pastries, where with some of the Eclair de Genie stores you can't actually sit down. Christophe opened Eclair de Genie 13 years ago and has stores now globally but this is a must visit on your trip to Paris. I'm here at which has a selection of stores from the top patisseries, chocolatiers and bakeries, and a little bit of savoury but we don't worry about that, available here in France. Some of the stores do change but it has a great selection and it's always the best of the best that's available in France. If you're short on time it's my recommendation that you actually come in here because you'll be able to see between six and eight patisseries and pick up a range of different items and some of them have a full selection here in this shopping centre. A lot of them have really large selections here, even bigger than what they have in some of their stores. I'm here at Lagerée in Paris on the Champs-Elysees. It doesn't get any more French than this. I couldn't have a pastry guide of Paris without including Lagerée. The executive pastry chef at Lagerée is Julian Alvarez and he's a very good friend of mine. He's created a high tea which I'm going to share with you. There's no other place in Paris for macarons other than Lagerée. Julian Alvarez has added his flair to all the products. This is a matcha macaron which is so well balanced it's divine and what you're looking for in a macaron is that crisp outer layer and a slightly softer, a little bit chewy interior and they've absolutely nailed it. Now this is a new addition from Julian Alvarez at Lagerée which is called Eugenie. Now this has a chocolate exterior, a sablé base and a small filling inside. This is strawberry. The sablé base which is beautiful and crumbly on the palate. Got that pop of strawberry in the centre and the snap of the chocolate on the exterior. It is really hard to beat. The next thing I'm trying is actually a palate cleanser with the last of the season's peach. I've got a sorbet with raspberry and cassis. On top of that is yogurt, a very thin meringue that is not overly sweet. The flavours of that are absolutely superb. This is Julian's interpretation of a savoir cake which is a region in France and this is a gâteau du voyage. So how he's actually changed it is he's made the cake more moist and given a lot more flavour by using muscovado sugar. He's also used roasted vanilla so this one has a lot more flavour and a lot more depth. I'm going to try it together with a little bit of cream. Traditionally this cake is very much like a genoise, like a sponge but it has a little bit more body in it. It's still really light. It has really strong caramel tones with that roasted vanilla in the cream and in the cake. I think you could just keep going with this one. The next one I have is a tart with a beautiful thin caramelised filo pastry. It has a little bit of fig jam, has some fresh fig with a little bit of glaze on top as well. So I'm gonna go in here. Inside as well is a beautiful almond cream almond paste that just pops in the mouth when you bite into it. Combined with the fresh fig it's amazing. These figs obviously in season at the moment are absolutely divine and the perfect topping for this tart. I've indulged in so many creations of Julian's today. This is the last one which is a little chocolate souffle. It's got the gorgeous L on top which was placed on top while the souffle was actually hot. Some hazelnut there. It's still warm. It's very soft on the inside and you can see that it has a really beautiful harmony between hazelnut and chocolate in terms of the flavour. This really showcases for me what a master Julian is at what he does and you'll find that throughout all the lingerie stores. Sure they have the traditional products of macarons which have a huge variety of flavours that change regularly as well but if you actually go in and sit down in lingerie on the Champs Elysees you can enjoy some absolutely delightful creations. We've just experienced the most delightful afternoon tea in a private event with Julian Alvarez. Can you explain to me the innovation behind Eugenie which is your contribution to lingerie which is beautiful and I would think eventually is going to be just as popular as a macaron. I would like to imagine something different than macaron but with the same spirit about different flavour, different colour to make boxes like the macaron to make a gift. I like a lot sablé, snacking and I'm full in love with chocolate and the idea was to make a combination the texture about sablé, chocolate and something else like caramel, jam, praline, something very yummy and we worked together at the beginning I was making just some tests with sablé a small touch of caramel and on the machine chocolate machine and after we we think about this shape with the L to add something very powerful for the brand for lingerie. I can confirm the quality and the taste as I've tried six flavours today they're absolutely superb. If you have the opportunity you need to go to a lingerie store try as much as you possibly can but Eugenie for me is very special. I'm here with Sharon from Paris She Sharon. Now you have a business that does food tours of Paris so I'm giving you an outline of where you can actually go in Paris but if you're short on time or you don't want to worry about going from one place to the other Sharon is your girl. So Sharon you do food tours in Paris and you've been doing it for a long time now what would I expect if I did a food tour with you? I arrived to Paris 15 years ago and I'm taking people to see the places I love not you know the places on Instagram TikTok the places I love to buy it I love to taste so actually we taste a lot of things but it's not only tasting it's the culture the food culture the culture in general and for me Paris is food and food is culture and food connects people so for me it's like you know I live my dream. Now they are private tours you can book on one of the tours can you customise the tour? For example we have followers from all over the world some of them are professionals like you some of them are not professionals so sometimes people from the professional world they want to see only inspirations of pastry or only inspirations of chocolate so yes we can build and we do and listen I have a scoop we even started to do some tours in Strasbourg and in Lyon. What Sharon hasn't told you is she is very well known in the industry all the patissiers chocolatiers and chefs know her very very well so she can get you into places that you may not be able to on your own. I'm here with Shou Kimura and Amiko Sano at L'Etoile Chocolat now this has been recommended to me as really the best patisserie and chocolate store in the whole of Paris I have been recommended by my good friend Sharon who does chocolate and patisserie tours of Paris so I'm here to ask a few questions about your inspiration and what is behind the business? And how often do you change the products? I'm going to use my fingers. One thing that is often overlooked when you're producing cakes is texture and the first thing that really overwhelms my palette is the most beautiful range of texture within that small cake and the flavor itself is very very light you have subtle notes of vanilla you've got coconut there but there's a multitude of different textures that actually move past the palette that is that actually makes me quite emotional because it's so so beautiful. I think what a lot of people don't understand if you make a cake when you first make it the textures are amazing but when you have to make a cake and these cakes are only for one day they're fresh cakes every day but when you create a cake to be able to make a cake where the texture is maintained throughout the whole day that is pure skill. Once again I can feel the texture and it has a dark chocolate band around the outside so excuse me using my fingers. What is so unique is that these cakes really showcase and highlight the hero flavor in here which here is black sesame so the residual flavor on my palette is 100% black sesame the texture once again is just sublime flavor itself how it harmonizes and it doesn't fight with other flavors it just lets each of those flavors shine through beautifully themselves and they work their way through the palette. I can't recommend this patisserie enough I haven't even started on the chocolates yet so this is a cherry blossom chocolate so it has raspberry jelly with some plum through it so I'm going to have a taste I believe it also has a ganache there's an art with working with chocolate where the chocolate doesn't become the hero but it highlights the other flavors and that's certainly what's happening here that is absolutely beautiful I am pacing myself so I'm only going to have a half. Next is a yuzu which for me when I hear yuzu I think of Japan so it's amazing to see the of the two flavors a little bit of France which I see in the dark chocolate and definitely Japan which I see in the yuzu flavor of that and the texture is beautiful you get the snap of the chocolate and the creamy ganache interior. Now these chocolates are made by Emiko now her grandfather and her father had patisseries in Japan so she's taken that inspiration and obviously a lot of that skill and opened up her store here in Paris. Now this one is memories of her childhood which is chocolate made with corn it's like really good popcorn salty sweet snap of the chocolate it's got a lot of texture in there I think that one might be my favorite or maybe the yuzu and cherry blossom they're all really amazing. Les Trois Chocolates is actually the only place that has brought me to tears when I've tried one of their petit gateaux and chocolates truly amazing.