Having mostly subsisted on pastries during my two month study abroad in Paris, I had the pleasure of sampling a lot of Pain de Sucre's sweet offerings. Unlike many of the other higher-end pâtisseries, M. Mathray and Mme. Robert tend to be more adventurous, bringing in flavors you don't see often see in French pastry, always top-notch ingredients. Items experienced:
Fraicheur (6€): calisson-shaped coconut and cassis tart. Firm and flavorful pâte sablée tart crust. Loved the flavor and tartness of the blackcurrant compote, worked absolutely perfectly with the strong, toasty, lightly sweetened coconut ganache. I always thought the French should use more coconut in their pastries, so this was a big hit, simple by Pain de Sucre's standards but probably my favorite of their pastries, 8.5/10.
Origami (6€): tart with green tea/black sesame ganache, fraises des bois center, layer of black sesame paste at base. tender and tangy wood-strawberries, unique but delicious green tea/black sesame filling. As usual, I'm a big fan of Pain de Sucre's firm, crunchy, and flavorful pâte sablée base. I think I might be omitting a component but regardless this was an excellent, very adventurous yet balanced work, 8.5/10.
Rosemary (6€): raspberry, rhubarb, and rosemary mousse cake, rosemary biscuit base. Very nice layers of raspberry and rhubarb, nicely tart and fresh. Thought the rosemary mousse was a little too restrained in terms of rosemary flavor and got lost in the strong raspberry and rhubarb, but the rosemary biscuit base was exceptional with a firm cookie-like texture and lots of rosemary flavor. I thought that having the three layers of mousse made it a bit uniform in texture, but generally very well balanced, 8/10.
Baobab (6€): classic baba au rhum, love the pipette of rum that lets you customize the level of booze in your baba! I'm not usually a fan of baba au rhum, but this was excellent. The brioche-like cake was pretty close to perfect texturally, not at all mushy, and would have been moist even without being soaked in rum. The vanilla cream at the bottom was great but wish it had been a little thicker. A very good, strong but not overwhelming baba, 8/10.
Tentation (6€): raspberry and pistachio tart. This is about as classic as Pain de Sucre gets, very well executed. The same excellent pâte sablée tart base, a strong layer of pistachio-almond frangipane, and picture-perfect raspberries on top. Why don't more shops add pistachio to their tarte framboise? Would have liked to see another element in there, preferably a tart one like a thin layer of raspberry compote to balance out the sweet pistachio frangipane, really the only time I'll advocate adding another component to a Pain de Sucre work, 7.5/10.
Lucile (6€): coconut, rose, and black sesame mousse cake. Nice and flavorful coconut mousse layer, a little lighter than the coconut filling in the Fraicheur. Layer of rose mousse was very delicate, worked nicely with the coconut but flavor was too faint in my opinion. Didn't get much of the black sesame flavor, although the gateau base was exceptionally moist and delicious. Overall a bit too restrained in terms of flavor and I don't think they blended as well as in the Rosemary, for instance. Beautiful presentation but lacking in the texture department, 6.5/10.
Bollywood (6€): pineapple mousse infused with cilantro, pistachio cake base, candied pineapple core. Loved the pineapple core and pistachio dacquoise, this was my first time seeing cilantro in French cuisine! The pineapple cilantro mousse is weird at first but grows on you, but in the end it's still a little weird and the cilantro lingers in your mouth too much. Props for creativity, the pastry is very refreshing and quite light but I'm not sold on the flavor combination, lacking textural contrast, 6/10.
As a bonus, you can have your pastries on a platter with a spoon to eat sûr place at one of the nice tables right outside the shop for no extra charge. read more