Cult Store: Paris’s oldest chocolaterie

I love seeing folks all of a sudden cease of their tracks on the pavement after they first discover the store,” says Steve Dolfi, one of many 4 siblings who personal and run À la Mère de Famille. Translated as “To the Mom of the Household”, the chocolate store opened on the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre within the ninth arrondissement of Paris in 1761 and has been buying and selling on the identical location ever since. “First they research its façade,” Dolfi continues, “after which they peer by the show home windows. Nearly invariably, they lastly succumb to temptation and are available inside. The attract of this traditionally sensual store remains to be irresistible.”

It’s not simply the vintage, emerald-green façade with its gold serif letters – a listed monument, since 1984 – that make À la Mère de Famille one in every of the French capital’s best-loved confectioners. Contained in the store, vintage mahogany-framed, glass-topped show instances are stocked with dainty bins of handmade goodies (from €17.50), piles of jewel-toned fruit jellies (from €16), wealthy pralines (from €23), hyper-real marzipan fruits (from €21) and slabs of nougat (from €4). “We’re retailers of delight, as a result of what we promote creates pleasure,” says Dolfi. 

The Dolfi siblings take their position as proprietors of Paris’s oldest chocolate store critically. “Our job is to make the perfect goodies, candies and pastries in France, and to perpetuate the custom of excellence so we are able to some day move it alongside to those that comply with us,” says Dolfi. They continue to be a bean-to-bar chocolate store, buying and processing cocoa beans to make their very own signature chocolate. “We purchase cocoa beans largely from Haiti, Peru, Venezuela and Madagascar,” explains Dolfi. “Our signature chocolate has a suave texture and a heat, earthy style that remembers the tropical forests within the nations the place the beans are grown.”

Following a mannequin pioneered by Hermès, which has purchased a number of of its artisanal suppliers to maintain them in enterprise, the Dolfis bought La Maison au Négus, an acclaimed candy store within the French metropolis of Nevers, in 2013, and Stohrer, the oldest pastry store in Paris, in 2017 (Stohrer earned worldwide movie star standing in 2004 when Queen Elizabeth II visited for a Puits d’Amour, a crème pâtissière-filled puff pastry, throughout a visit to Paris). À la Mère de Famille now carries Stohrer pastries and Négus de Nevers, a smooth chocolate or coffee-flavoured caramel enclosed in a tough shell that was created to commemorate a go to from Emperor Menelik II of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1900. “We imagine in preserving the candy facet of France’s gastronomic heritage,” says Dolfi.

Regardless of the household’s reverence for French culinary historical past, the Dolfis are enthusiastic innovators. They usually introduce new merchandise, together with a praline and pumpkin-seed chocolate bar that’s turn into an energy-boosting favorite among the many dancers on the close by Folies Bergère. Additionally they now not use white sugar, preferring what the French name sucre roux, unrefined brown sugar, and utilizing “quite a bit lower than we as soon as did,” stresses Dolfi.

Requested to suggest a signature deal with among the many temptations, Dolfi insists on naming two: Toucans (from €12.50) – puffed pistachio or sesame pralines coated with chocolate and a dusting of cocoa powder, that are “bliss-inducing”, and the Palet Montmartre (from €17.50), a razor-thin chocolate disc crammed with praline or ganache that “melts in your mouth”. “It’s slightly marvel,” says Dolfi. 

À la Mère de Famille, 35 rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, 75009 Paris, France, lameredefamille.com