When you live in Paris, the pastry capital of the world, you develop a better understanding over the years of what makes one pastry mediocre and another masterful.
You understand that the best croissants have honeycomb cross-sections, that the best baguettes are traditions (pronounced trad-y-syon) and should have caramel-colored crusts, and that the best macarons have a soft, chewy shell.
That said, everyone has different tastes and preferences and any list that purports to have curated the best pastries in Paris risks stoking controversy.
So for full transparency, here’s the method to my particular madness: I’ve excluded viennoiseries (breakfast baked goods like croissants and pains au chocolate), as well as breads and baguettes, because these deserve lists of their own. Nor will you find viral desserts like the infamous "crookie," which are often passing fads with short shelf lives. I will also be clear about how my personal taste preferences have influenced my selection.
Instead, this shortlist will feature what I consider to be some of the best examples of classic French pastries in Paris that are permanent menu items at some of the top pastry shops in France. Take note: I’ve also thrown in a dramatic surprise at the end that defies category, but which I think is worthy of a special mention.
Prior to tasting madeleines at the Ritz Paris Le Comptoir, the Ritz Paris hotel’s takeaway pastry shop on rue Cambon, I had little interest in the shell-shaped sponge cake. Within the Parisian pastry repertoire, the madeleine seemed boring and uninspiring compared to gem-like macarons and fairytale fruit tarts in pastry shop windows.
But then I tried pastry chef François Perret’s version, and got a glimpse of why Marcel Proust, a Ritz Paris regular, had rhapsodized about this little cake with such fondness in his book Remembrance of Things Past.
In Perret’s modernized iteration, molten madeleines are glazed in flavors like lemon, raspberry, caramel, passion fruit and chocolate, and have equally intense fruit compote, chocolate or caramel centers. They’re especially moist, intensely fragrant and also beautiful to look at. My favorites are raspberry and caramel, but also look out for seasonal releases.
Cost: €5 each
I like lemon tarts that bite back. And this one from Stohrer, the oldest pastry shop in Paris, does that and more.
Though the shop is best known as the birthplace of the baba rhum, don’t sleep on their lemon tart, especially if you, like me, are particular about the tartness to sweetness ratio.
Made with a shortbread crust, lemon confit, yuzu cream and a lemon-lime cream which lends a subtle bitter note, Stohrer’s lemon tart straddles the fine line: it’s not enough to make you pucker, but is just acidic
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