After ten endless years, I did come back.  Would the castel be different?  Would I be different?  I worried.  But when my castel and I were in each other’s presence again, there was no doubt that the love would be stronger than ever.  After sating my desire, my head turned towards other temptations, such as a chocolate cakey delight and a chocolate-raspberry-pear hybrid.  These were equally amazing.  I tried to explain in my now-limited French how much I adore the unassuming Le Pavé du Roy patisserie to the other patrons there.  They gave me blank stares.  Of course this place was good– there would be another revolution if every little hole-in-the-wall patisserie in every crappy town wasn’t good.

In my travels, I encountered some over-the-top fancy pastries, too, that were way outta my league.  They looked like ottomans, and were almost scientific in their perfection.  The ones from Richart were accompanied by geologic-like schematical diagrams, so that you could see cross sections of exactly what was in each masterpiece.  They had serious names likes “Fire & Ice” and “Sun’s Zest.”  After scratching my head a bit trying to read the pastry “maps,” I discovered the one I would have chosen had I grown an extra stomach: “Crisp Flavors,” made up of layers of green lemon and caramel mousses, caramel-infused madeleine cookies, almond nougat, salted butter caramel cream, and toasted almond dacquoise.  Just writing this description made me feel faint– does anyone know where I put my smelling salts?

Final note: there is a specialty in Lyon called praline rouge, which you find topping many pastries.  The first time I saw it, I attributed the red color to a fruit, but a pastry proprietor told me that it’s basically just nuts (usually almonds or hazelnuts) ground up with butter, sugar, and some red food coloring; she had no idea why this trend started, and they never use any color other than red.  Weird.  Also not that tasty, really, because it’s a little “one-note” and makes you crave raspberries for some reason…

If you ever find yourself in Aix-en-Provence, by the way, hie thyself to:

I also tried an iced nougat at Brasserie Georges in Lyon, just for scientific study.  It really wasn’t tough or chewy like you’d imagine a real frozen chunk of nougat would be, but rather had that nutty flavor and candied fruit, but with a decidedly ice creamy texture.  It was tasty and a nice antidote for a rich meal.  Our evening was punctuated with the waiters firing up an old-timey barrel organ to play Happy Birthday, which would be followed by a baked Alaska-type dessert garnished with a live sparkler being placed in front of a lucky birthday boy or girl.

My favorite place in NYC to find a good macaron is Almondine, with locations in D.U.M.B.O. and Park Slope.  I found that French pâtisseries offer so many more interesting flavors than just your average chocolate or strawberry.  I saw mandarin orange, lychee, zucchini-mint, salted caramel, white peach-saffron, grapefruit, Earl Grey tea, green lemon-ginger, cola, rum-raisin, and marshmallow, to name a few.  Perhaps French pastry chefs like to experiment as much with macarons as their American counterparts do with ice cream.

Here are a few samples from different places in Lyon:

I also learned about the existence of both savory macarons, like black olive, gorgonzola-sesame, and tomato-basil, and sweet and savory hybrids, like duck foie gras with apple-spice, pimento-pepper, and carrot-cumin.  Maybe they would have been nice to try for anthropological reasons, but I had valuable stomach space to preserve!

I begin with the humble crêpe.  Maybe you’ve had one slathered with gel-like “strawberry” sauce at some crêperie in the Lower East Side.  Or you’ve tried a specimen from one of seemingly countless NYC street fairs, or even at the Bastille Day festival put on by the French Institute.  It’s fun to watch them use that little wooden wand to work their magic, isn’t it?  And how wonderful that even the bad ones are pretty good, right?

My favorite crêperie in all the land is Crêpes à Gogo in Aix-en-Provence, a small and chichi college town located just north of Marseille, and my old stomping ground when I studied abroad there.  It’s located in a depressing underground passageway beneath a traffic circle, but they’ve been around since 1979, so they must be doing something right.  They make both savory crêpes (aka galettes) and sweet crêpes:
We began with a forestière galette (ham, swiss cheese, and mushrooms) made with buckwheat flour.  It was plump with filling– a nice amount, but not sickening– and we (perhaps erroneously) felt semi-healthy for getting something with a buckwheat base.  Then we moved on to our lemon and sugar crêpe, made with generous squeezes of a lemon wedge (not that bottled stuff) and lots of sugar.  Yes, you can get Nutella and whipped cream, but the simplicity (not to mention caloric savings) of lemon and sugar are heavenly.  The secret seems to be in the repeated application of toppings after each fold of the crêpe.  Our crêpe was warm, moist, refreshing, sweet, springy, and light.  It was so juicy that the syrup dripped on my purse and leg, and, amazingly, also on my partner’s leg and shoe.  It was pretty windy, but I guess I must chalk my messiness up to being in a crêpe daze.  Adieu, perfect crêpes… until we meet again.