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Yesterday I went to butter class L’atelier de beurre s’il vous plaît with Caroline Mignot. I got lucky 🍀 and won 🏆 a place. Caroline is a delightful instructor. She is an expert at sharing the complexity of French flavors. She is, after all from Nantes, a vrai Nantais.
It's taken me more than a year to get to patisserie Sebastien Degardin.
Maybe I knew it would be dangerous 🆘
But so pretty.
It's in the 5th arrondissement near the Sorbonne and Pantheon.
200, rue Saint-Jacques 75005
The window beckoned, 'Come inside'.
Very lovely too.
A classic old boulangerie the new owner, Desgardin, has cherished and embellished.
Of course I was tip-toeing around
Stealthily taking pictures whenever the vendeuse went into the back to fetch more Mont Blancs. Only when I got home did I realize she was the pastry chef's wife and partner.
Isn't this witty. Hard boiled eggs garnished with biscuit 'soldiers' to dip into dark chocolate creme.
Desserts honoring the nearby Pantheon.
A chocolate egg pastry. Degardin's pastries are not at all like so many others you see repeated and repeated.
Their shapes and flavors are surprising.
Not easy to choose either but I always fall for passion fruit and mango.
The Pom Yuzu was sending out magnetic waves. A la prochaine.
I came home and consulted my new best Paris pastry guide, My Sweet Paris by Caroline Mignot.
Parisian author Mignon is a food writer for magazines Maison francaise, Prima, Regal, L'Hotellerie-Restauration, Le Monde plus her blog, Table a Decouvert . Her pastry book is just as detailed and informing.
'Another lovely cake is the Passiflore with it's extra-exotic notes: sitting on a thin coconut shortbread biscuit is a passion fruit cream topped with a very light, white chocolate mousse'. Perfect description.
On Sebastien Degardin, Mignot says,
'He was head pastry chef initially at Michel Troisgros' restaurant moving on to Pierre Gagnaire's establishment before opening his own place in the 12th arrondissement. (The diagrammatic drawing above is from the walls of his former shop). At the end of 2013 he moved into and modernized this magnificent location where part of the decoration has been classified by the Monuments Historiques of France.
I'll be coming back soon to Degardin for the Pom Yuzu. And I won't leave the house in future without My Sweet Paris.
150 pastry, ice cream, tea and chocolate shops are covered within.
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