A Parisian Bake Study

It has been 3 months since I have come to London, and in many respects I have settled down.  I am no longer a common "tourist" but still far away from being considered a Londoner.  I get annoyed at rude tourists on the Tube, I have membership cards at two grocery stores, and (after many close calls) there is no more confusion as to where to look when crossing the street.  Far from being complacent, now is the perfect time to visit new cities to explore.  

Over my stay, I have had the good fortune of visiting Paris a couple of times.  I visited all the cultural mainstays, but also tried to go off the beaten trail to the quiet off-streets.  My insight?  Paris has statues on almost every random plaza:

I initially prepared to show many pictures giving a proper "tour" of Paris, but in my constant desire to experiment, what I really want to talk about now is the modern Paris bakery and patisserie.
Start with a very traditional style store, such as 134 r.d.t.  This place is known for its award-winning baguettes and croissants:

Other than the pieces of paper plastered on the windows, there is no sign as to why this bakery is any more special than the other hundreds of bakeries around Paris.  It is a model of a "standard" bakery.

As for the food itself, I was slightly disappointed by how similar it looked to Costco, but it tasted pretty good, probably due to the French butter:

Moving on to the more upscale, a place called Ble Sucre (Wheat Sugar?)

Again, the style is quite rustic, though the display is quite nice and a step up from 134 r.d.t.  Outside of the bakery is a quaint gazebo:

As an aside, Ble Sucre absolutely delivered one of the best croissants I've ever had (and I've tried about 10 in Paris alone before this).  Look at the immaculate, delicacy:

The most important part of the croissant is the hard crisp shell around the exterior made by egg wash glaze and baking.  The inside needs to be chewy and buttery as well.  This croissant delivered on every level.  The first sound you hear in the first bite is the shattering of thousands of delicate layers, while the warm buttery soft center takes over at the finish.  If it sounds like I am over-exaggerating as to how good a croissant could be, then perhaps you should come to Paris.  Ultimately, Ble Sucre, hidden on a small street far from the main tourist attractions, was the baked highlight of the trip.

Notre Dame:

Next, we have a completely different sort of place, Carl Marletti, a patisserie where all the servers wear suits, and the pastries are set out like jewels (and often have silver decorations):

Doesn't look so good in a box, but they still have silver leaf:

To be honest, it was pretty good, but not as good as it looked.  It seems like there is now a trend at certain Paris patisseries to really up the display quality - getting people to buy for the looks before they have a chance to taste.  I guess it worked, because I was ready to try everything in the store, but why so nice of a treatment for neatly stacked carbohydrates?

Another example is J.P. Hevin

It seems that after a certain point, they put more effort in display quality than the effort they spend in making the food, and it comes off as slightly disappointing.  A move towards presenting each piece of food as some sort of fine piece of jewelry seems like a disturbing new trend in getting people to buy. The staff was also quite rude and pretentious, forbidding me to even touch their packaged goods until I agreed to buy it.

Familiar?

Looks good <=> taste good?  Perhaps not.  While presentation certainly is important, if there is no taste then the disappointment is ultimately magnified.

On a side note, the pizza I had was also like the high fashion pastry shops.  Looks delicious and authentic, but doesn't taste as good as the one I got from a food truck in Bellevue.

The suppose the moral of the story is that perfection and quality are hard, and even in Paris, a world-renowned food capital, you have to do some serious searching to differentiate the real thing from the flashy pretenders.

I will make one exception for the "flashy is not as good" category for Pierre Herme.  Their macarons rank among the best.

Pretender ice cream - super flashy but tastes terrible.  I hope I am just unlucky in my food choices in Paris.  I swear I am not pretentiously picky, but when you pay the money and hear the hype, a certain amount of expectation develops:

It's back to the UK next time!