Maison de l'eclair (House of the Eclair) - We loved it the minute we set foot in it - The decor is bright, unpretentious, simple, with groovy pieces that gives its stylish edge, but not quite your typical French cafe with the French bistro table and chairs.
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| Somebody distract the shopkeepers please ... while I steal a few of these chairs! |
The fact that throughout our visit, there was a steady stream of French patrons, proof that the French nationals gave it their tick of approval. And we approved too!
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| Dainty little eclairs |
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| Macs, Peking duck eclair, and Tarte Tropezienne |
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| Lemon meringue, passionfruit, and berries eclairs |
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| We ate this much |
They even had eclair "baguettes" - with a variety of classic (like Brie) and whacky (Peking duck!) sandwiched with choux pastry. Savoury. Its not crazy, I have had choux filled with foie gras and seen recipes of tuna pie with choux. In fact choux makes for a rich decadent but light textured pastry suitable for both sweet and savoury (hint for keen home-cooks - give it a try!!) Their macarons were fairly average though, a bit dense, subtle flavours didn't really come through. Coffee was pretty good, though the owner was a bit perplexed and amused as I devoured a peking duck eclair with my coffee (yes I had a savoury, though the sweet sauce qualifies it for a dessert... right?). The eclairs were generally, however the creme in some of them (shock horror!!) weren't light enough, but even so, every morsel made us smile.
Our appetite must have also amused the owner, as later she came to us with a huge box, saying that they bake it fresh but it looks like these might not sell, since we seem to really appreciate our food, we might as well have it for free! How lovely! It was called Tropezienne, a deliciously flaky pastry filled with almond paste (Frangipane). We devoured it later as we were already quite sugared up but it was divine! And it has a little game - a little man hides in the pie, whoever finds him gets to shout everyone else a wine or something. Don't mind the wine. We were ecstatic enough with this generous freebie!
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| Our freebie and its little man |
It seems that we have already consumed sugar enough to induce type 2 diabetes. But we soldier on. To Adriano! No introduction here, he has just become such a celebrity, everything he creates causes a gush and frenzy (sometime undeserved, but that's just me being finicky). Not having had our macaron craving satiated, we found a trio of "salted butter" macarons - salted butter caramel, salted butter popcorn, salted butter caramel on burnt toast - and a raspberry, and passionfruit and yogurt. Yummy, some of them. Much better texture than Eclair house. But our verdict was that we still like Baroque/La Renaissance much better.
The other desserts? Actually they didn't look too inspiring. Fruity meringue? Sponge roll with cream and strawberries? Adriano going back to classics? Quite unlike him. Salted caramel lamington is a lovely twist though. Today's star Zumbo offering - salted caramel "goo" tart! It was divine. Smooth, sticky, put one bit in your mouth and all you hear is "mm mm mm mm mm !!" with mad gestures of one hand pointing at the dessert and the other pointing at the mouth now stuck together trying to digest the goo. Brown sugar palmier is lovely - not my favourite palmier, but it's up there as one of the better palmiers.
We ended our indulgence at Clovelly beach, where we sat in the shade while our bodies processed the sugar. A lovely day, Maison de l'eclair a great find, will return! (and no its not because of the freebie...)
CS
PS - upon further research (thank you Dr. Google!) our Tarte Tropezienne was not quite the traditional version made famous in St Tropez, which is filled with a creamy filling rather than almond paste. I'm still not complaining! - CS.
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