Pascale le Glacier

 On Saturday Louise of Raids-Patisserie took us for a grand parcours/tasting of ice creams - 5 flavors!

 Have you heard of Pascale le Glacier?

I bet not.

17 rue Bois-le-Vent 75016

Metro: Passy

 Yet he provides the best ice creams to many, many restaurants and has won prizes for the special quality of his fruity, fresh seasonal sorbets.

 Over 60 parfums!

 Not cheap and you can't buy just a cone here

Intense fruitiness is guaranteed.

 Louise chooses our flavors to taste.

 Enfin we make a picnic on a banc/bench in jardins de Ranelagh. Chocolat has an almost mousse-like mouthfeel

Vanille is full of vanilla bean and exquisite - not too sweet either

Framboise could not taste more fresh or like real raspberries

Abricot is a bit 'farinee'/floury Louise declares..

Peche/peach is superbly peachy with a soft delicate mouthfeel

 Being in France is a constant challange

 To all the senses

 Visually...

 Hugo and Victor feeds the eyes and the tastebuds.

 Guerlain parfums are delicious for the nose...

 A feast for the eyes awaits in most vitrine/window

You feel constantly like a little kid.
Fresh and spontaneous.

Just open your eyes and enhale!

Merci Louise!

Nestlé Special at Salon de Chocolat

It seems that Nestlé has decided to let 'Alice' launch their new Special T rather than dear George Clooney of Nespresso. Nestlé Special T was launched at the Salon du Chocolat with these quite dreamy, surreal posters... A flowery fantasia of tea... A Panda offers flowery tea to all... BEAR is fascinated and wants to take Panda home. He likes the tea as well. The new gizmo takes pods of tea in 25 parfums/flavors. Selection rouges - oui absolutement!

Very clever indeed - the berries and cherries are inside the birdcage, whilst hummingbirds flutter and hum around dreaming of getting inside...

These birds prefer their cherries un-caged thank you very much...

But frogs don't mind a bit serving up cups of tea.

Move over cat servers!

Giraffes wearing teacup hats made of tea leaves?

Pourquoi pas! Too perfect for Easter.

I know I have a hedge skirt in the closet somewhere - must look again.

M. gave her seal of approval on the Rooibus Orange.

I am no tea expert but it tasted fine to moi...

Japanese green tea is of course included in the collection...

A cupcake made of tea leaves?

Non! Pas possible!!!

This is taking things too, too far, surreal or not!

One does have limits you know...

BONJOUR SPECIAL T!

The Perfect Scent

I have on occasion seen macaron flavors listed as parfum at the patisserie. Other times they're called savours.

Don't these macarons look jewel-like?

...like bottles of parfums?

French pastry and French perfume are not unrelated. There is an exotic quality, and an essentially French aesthetic to the visual and sensory experience of both that can not be denied

 

Perfume seems to be the ideal Valentines day gift and yet how to choose?

 

The mysteries of perfume and it's creation are explored in such depth in Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent, that I can't leave the house without this book. The French invented perfume or perhaps one should say took it to a higher level starting with the reign of Louis XIV and the adventure continues

 

Burr takes you to the flower fields of Grasse and the secretive exclusive factories that produce the rare ingredients of today's perfumes. Jean-Claude Ellena, now chief perfumer at Hermès and creator of the breathtaking Un Jardin Sur le Nil, grew up in Grasse in a family of perfumers. His story is tightly interwoven into The Perfect Scent

I stopped wearing perfume when I started shooting at the James Beard Foundation. I was told scent interfered with the aromas of food

Yet Burr tells of a group of "Gourmand" perfumes that are food related. Perfumes redolent of caramel, French mint, Brazilian cacao, Peruvian pink peppercorn, Indian saffron, fresh ginger, grapefruit, pink peppercorn, even just-baked bread. Burr even hosts 6-course "Scent dinners" where reknown chefs mingle flavors and scents in a new way

Burr says,"Guerlain's legendary 1925 Shalimar is built on vanilla, arguably its greatest example of a gourmand perfume...the velvety, succulent Ambre Narguilé, by Hermès, smells like caramel and subtle, nutty banana; Délices de Cartier, is a delicately fruity confection; and Aqua Allègoria Pamplelune, also by Guerlain, a delicious grapefruit scent." The words alone feed your senses

I promise you will be as enthralled by The Perfect Scent. It helps you go out and experience perfumes in a more knowledgeable, sophisticated way. A how-to for choosing for yourself the best scents

Old style perf bottle.

Choices, choices...but such pleasureable ones. Burr has a wonderful way with words and it's well worth following his Scent Notes at the New York Times.

0*=do not enhale

*=inoffensive

**=nice effort

***=good juice

****=Excellent

*****=Transcendent

BONJOUR PERFECT SCENT!