Guilty Pleasures

Gray skies. Cold. Wet. Awakened by the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the window panes, I propped myself up and took a peak out the bedroom window.

Just the kind of day to pull the sheets over your head, curl up in bed, snuggle with your other half - your beau - and just sleep in for the rest of the day. Pas moi.
I was on a mission! Come rain or shine and no matter how much D griped, I was forging ahead with that plan. It's been 3 days since we moved in and I've not had a single croissant nor pastry that I really like from the nearby bakeries. How is that possible?! Aren't we in Paris? So the quest for the day was to hunt down good and reputable pâtisseries in the vicinity and for me, here in Paris, it means anywhere you can get to on foot, be it a one-hour-several miles walk.  I mapped out the entire 5+ mile route on gMap - yes, we walked over 5 miles today, quite a feat for the spoilt door-to-door-by-car people like us.

The first stop was Lenôtre on Rue Lecourbe

It was my first visit to Lenôtre. Perhaps it was the store decor, but there was a strong sense of nostalgia as I entered the place. I was totally captivated by the individual L'Opera slices - D took some really sleek pictures of the cakes

My mind went dizzy with all the choices of beautiful pastries. How and where do I even begin? 

What to order? How many of each type? 

This was our first stop and there were 5 more to go buy with only 2 pairs of hands to carry the bags! The gameplan was to get 2 common types of pastries per store so that I can compare and pick the ones I like best. If I was going to have to take a long walk in order to get my pastries, they'dbetter be the best! I finally settled on the croissant, millefeuille and eclair for this round of taste-test (I'm sure - no, I'm absolutely certain that there'll be plenty more pâtisserie-hopping days to come) and ended up getting another 3 more desserts that caught my eye. 

Next up - the Picasso of French Pastries

In case you were wondering - yes, I did get the Ispahan croissant. Of course! I've been dreaming about this since then.

It was a long walk, a very long walk to this place

Another first for me  - I've heard and read about Sadaharu Aoki but never had the chance to set foot in any one of his stores. They didn't allow any photo-taking in the store but there was this exquisite Bamboo - Sadaharu's version of L'Opera that was quite unique. I especially loved the intricate design they've done on the top of the cake - instead of the typical L'Opera written across the top of the cake, this one has  sifted cocoa, matcha powder plus confectioner's sugar to form an intricate bamboo motif on top.

A short stop at Poilane's to get our bread and viennoiseries

By this point, we were totally exhausted and thoroughly famished - I had bought all those bread and patries to sample only when we get back to the apartment. We then had lunch here, back to the same location where we had our first dinner the first time we visited Paris a decade ago:

D had one of the prettiest appetizer I've ever come across - smoked salmon eclair with avocado and lavender cream filling

Our final stop for the day :

Dalloyau has one of the prettiest store-front display amongst all

Pretty in pink

Pink is in the air.......

I was still hoping to visit one last pâtisserie - Gerard Mulot, but given the downpour and bad weather, we decided to call it a day. And my, what a day!

Now if you'll excuse me - I'll need some time to indulge in this guilty pleasure of taste-testing each item, making comparisons, taking notes, more taste-tests, more comparisons....more taste-tests.....

....more to come

I hope today's workout would retribute the amount of guilty pleasures I've gorged myself with this afternoon, It's an occupational hazard, but someone's got to do it,