Excellent pâtisserie and chocolaterie! My sister specifically requested macarons as her souvenir of…read morechoice from France and I wanted to make sure I didn't forget anyone's presents. Since Ladurée is now available in the States (albeit in very limited locations and none near where we live in Atlanta), I decided that I would get macarons from a lesser-known-in-the-US bakery.
After checking out Noël Magique, as we all walked toward the beach, I noticed Christophe Roussel at a street corner. I whispered to AT, "Do you think we can stop by when we come back, since it's on the way to the car? But don't say anything right now. Let's go after." Yeah... He totally didn't pay me any mind and announced it as soon as I stopped talking. Damn him! Well, not really. He mentioned it to his family and everyone crossed the street. I kept saying, "Non! Non!" because that was about 50% of my French and no one cared. But when I approached the windows, my embarrassment dissipated, only to be replaced by pure giddiness.
We walked inside and I saw cases of macarons and pastries, as well as big, clear tubes of candies toward the back. Oh boy. We glanced around and I looked for clues as to how to buy the macarons. Did I pick them myself from the case? How big were the boxes? Were there multiple sizes? I noticed immediately that there was a box that would fit around 8 macarons, which seemed to be the perfect size. The girl in the back came forward and asked if we needed help (in French, of course). AT told her we were trying to decide on flavors but knew we wanted to buy macarons. There were innovative flavors like cheesecake, lavender apricot, pistachio Morella cherry, caramel ginger, pineapple vanilla, peach rosemary, passion fruit tarragon, lime basil, strawberry jasmine, chocolate bergamot; as well as the more traditional lemon, rose, raspberry chocolate, vanilla, raspberry, salted butter fudge, coffee, hazelnut, and chocolate. So... You can understand that it was going to be extremely difficult to narrow down my choices with such a large amount of choices. Instead of one box of 8, I got three. Yes, I got 24 macarons. In addition to that, I got some raspberry flavored almonds (they seemed to be covered in a raspberry-flavored white chocolate) after getting some samples.
The woman who helped us and rang us up was immensely friendly, which is another proof that people outside of Paris (in general) are nicer. I gave AT's family one box to sample and they all loved them. I didn't try my box until I came back to the States, at which point I also gave my sister her box. She loved hers and claimed her favorite was the cheesecake and pistachio Morella cherry. I got 2 pistachio ones because of my deep-seated affection for the green nut full of chlorophyll flavor but this was actually not my favorite of the bunch, as good as it was. Much to my own surprise, my preferred almond flour cookie sandwich was the passion fruit tarragon. The passion fruit flavor was front and center and the tarragon rounded out the flavor. It was complex and fun to eat. I wish I had more right now.
