October 2025 Newsletter

Ready for Dessert is here, and other goings-on in Paris

Pretzel croissant and coffee

I don’t know about you, but I miss summer. I miss daylight until 9pm, summer fruits and berries, as well as wearing short-sleeved shirts and sandals. Living in San Francisco, where it was nearly impossible to distinguish winter from summer, it never occurred to me to plan a vacation midwinter. That was peak citrus season, and I sure as heck didn’t want to miss that!

But in Paris, going away midwinter is the thing to do. So after two decades of living here, I decided to join everyone else and last winter we went to South Africa to get some sun in January, which felt pretty good. (January isn’t my favorite month in Paris because we’ve had a few months of winter, and spring is still several months away.)

Although I won’t be visiting any beaches, and it’s not quite winter, I’m taking a trip to Japan this month. It’s been on my bucket list to go back ever since I went years ago to teach baking classes. I was inside all day, but in the evening, they took me out for amazing meals. I always said to myself that I would return, and that time has come.

I still remember the beautiful French pastry shops there. While I don’t travel to eat French pastries since I can get them easily here, I was pretty stunned by how spectacular everything looked in the Tokyo bakeries. I joked that they made Ladurée look like Walmart in comparison. (And now that Ladurée is an international chain with shops in Miami, Mumbai, Mexico City, and in a mall in Glendale, California, I wonder if they’re going to lose what makes them special?)

Here in Paris, you’ve likely seen the pastry shops that are trending on social media. I don’t really crave a crookie, a croissant baked with chocolate chip cookie dough in it, or pastries that resemble fruit but are filled with jellied, cooked fruit puree, although I appreciate the artistry, effort, and talent that go into making them.

I tend to go for what are referred to as “baker’s pastries,” such as financiers, kouign amann, chouquettes, and flan pâtissier, which are simpler baked goods that I can get at the excellent bakeries in my neighborhood. Plus I like seeing the people who work in my neighborhood and like to patronize those businesses, too. France is all about “relationships” and fidelity pays off with smiles, friendliness, and sometimes, an extra sweet in your bag. So I don’t need to go very far.

But as soon as I heard that La Boulangerie de Christophe Michalak was making pretzel croissants (called bretzel croissants), I raced over to his shop in the Marais. I very, very (very) much miss the incredible pretzel croissants at the late, great City Bakery in New York City so was dying to try their version.

While the $5+ croissant in America raises a ruckus nowadays (one writer explains why), the pretzel croissant at Michalak was €4 ($4.75), which is a lot for Paris. Most bakeries charge between €1,25 and €1,60 for a croissant, about $1.75. Anything over that is considered criminal. Ditto with baguettes. Anything over €1,60 is scandaleux.

But labor costs, rents, and ingredient prices rise, and few bakeries in France make much of a profit on baguettes and croissants. A few years back, a French politician running for president, when asked the price of a pain au chocolat (in other countries, it’s the price of milk that aspiring politicians get asked about.), he replied that one cost somewhere between 10 - 15 centimes. 😬 Which was quite a bit off-base…

The €4 pretzel croissant was okay, although it didn’t have the hearty chew the ones from City Bakery had, and I missed the savory saltiness of them. This was more delicate, and while it was tasty, it was more like a croissant with seeds on it rather than a hybrid pretzel-croissant. It was missing the gentle toughness of the New York version.

I was on a streak (getting out of my neighborhood) and a few days later, I rode my bike over to Christophe Louie on a Sunday morning for a pop-up pastry his bakery was making. Chef Louie is a master of panettone and an outstanding baker, and what I got was (well) worth traveling to another arrondissement for.

Chef Louie was doing a collaboration with Estelle of ellevousguide, an influencer who was born in Paris but is also of Lebanese and Danish descent. I wasn’t familiar with the frøsnapper, a twist of puff pastry layered with almond paste and coated with sesame and poppy seeds (above, right). It didn’t look like anything special but the taste was spectacular. It was buttery and seedy, with the snap of almond-scented caramel that had pooled under the pastry while it was baking.

For a brief period, Chef Louie made a limited-edition za’atar panettone for Maison Aleph that on paper, doesn’t sound like it would work. But boy, did it ever. So I was happy to taste it again, even though they were only selling it by the slice. So I had to share it. The pop-up required that you preorder and I should have ordered two. I’m okay sharing with Romain, but still, I would have preferred to have my own slice…as well as my own frøsnapper.

Fig leaf cordial with sparkling water

In addition to broadening my Paris pastry horizons, I’ve eaten at two very good restaurants in Paris (mentioned down below), and plucked some fig leaves off my tree to make a bottle of the fig cordial that

Adam Roberts

wrote about. It was delicious with sparkling water, and the bottle I have in the refrigerator will help brighten up this coming winter, if it lasts that long...

And finally, the newly revised edition of Ready for Dessert is out!

It’s been several years in the making, from rewriting the book to taking the photographs and designing the book. My editor (thank you Julie!) and book designer (thanks Betsy!) were really great to work with and made the book extra fun to work on.

It’s now available from your favorite independent or online bookseller. I’m glad so many of you have told me how happy you are to have a copy. It’s a pleasure to share the book with readers, which includes my favorite dessert recipes and all-new stories. And photographer Ed Anderson, who photographed my previous books in Paris, outdid himself with Ready for Dessert, including the cover shot, which he snapped while we were having lunch. With the holidays approaching, you might want to pick up a copy to share with friends and family, too!

[Thanks to everyone who came to the book launch last night in Paris at AXS design. It was great to meet so many of you! I’ll be doing another booksigning in Paris on November 25th at Smith&Son bookshop from 5:30 to 7pm.]

Some have asked me if I’ll be on book tour elsewhere, but alas, it was not in the cards forthis fall. I think my publisher may be planning something for next spring, which I’m thrilled about. I’m happy to go wherever people will host me…even if there isn’t a beach. (But if a beach is there, there’s a higher likelihood that it’ll be on my itinerary.)

-David

I’m in Wirecutter, and Elsewhere

I’m in Wirecutter!

-I spoke with the New York Times product review and recommendation section about my favorite kitchen and baking tools, including some things I’ve brought over from the U.S. and other things I get here in France. I’ve been a fan of Wirecutter for a long time, enjoying their reviews, and their humor, and was really delighted to be featured by them.

You can read the article here. (NYT/Wirecutter)

-I was thrilled when Jenna of Cookbookery Collective interviewed me about writing cookbooks, what I like (and dislike) in cookbooks, what cookbooks I collect, and even sharing some snippets of my cookbook collection, which I’m working on building back up. Read here. (Cookbookery Collective)

Building my cookbook collection back up.

-It was fun to re-listen to the podcast I did with

Everything Cookbooks

on The Writing Life in Paris.

-And how fun was it to chat with super-fun baker Jessie Sheehan of Cherry Bombe about a lot of things? From favorite bakeware to my Linzertorte recipe…

-I did a Q+A with Deb of the smitten kitchen digest about Ready for Dessert, which she’s just as excited about as I am.

-I spoke to Taste podcast about writing cookbooks and living the pastry life. (Taste)

Links

Zut. Ak-Mak crackers have been discontinued. (AOL)

The ice cream mash-up that no one asked for? What does Malört (aka, the worst spirit in the world) ice cream taste like. (Eater)

Stop throwing away fruit scraps: Use them for making cordials and syrups. (Punch)

Budget cuts ax overnight trains from Paris to Berlin and Vienna. (NYT/unlocked)

Andrea Nguyen

tests mini-choppers and reports on which one is the best. (Viet World Kitchen)

A couple decides to start making wine in Bhutan, where there isn’t even a word for “wine.” (dVIN/YouTube)

Why the hate for sweet wines? (Decanter)

French yoga teacher still teaching at 102. (NYT/unlocked)

Finally, a good hack to clear out photos and free up space on our iPhones. (Wirecutter)

San Francisco chef arrested for robbing three banks in one day. (AP)

There’s now a Basque cheesecake bar in Paris. (Hoso) And Pariès, a favorite Basque chocolate, gâteau Basque, and caramelized Spanish almond shop, opens in the Marais. (In addition to their shop in the 6th.)

Bose’s buttery speaker. (Yahoo!)

Paris Dining Spots

Reyna

I’ve been meaning to go to Reyna for ages. I’d met owner Erica Paredes long before she opened the restaurant, and while I don’t live that far from the place, it kind of fell off my radar. In my quest to catch up on things, I finally made it and was glad that I did.

We had a lovely raw sériole (amberjack) in a sauce that my friend Peter said reminded him of a Bloody Mary, in a good way. We had two orders of the famous fried chicken, which were spectacular. After tasting both, I fell into the camp behind the “medium” spicy version, which was delightfully crispy, and he liked the very spicy one. (I like spicy food but the boldly spiced sauce detracted from the chicken, for my tastes.) We also shared the very crispy pork belly that came with fluffy turmeric rice and a large wedge of Pinoy bbq cabbage, which was a super-generous portion. We were almost too full to finish it, yet we wanted dessert, so didn’t eat it all.

We went with the pandan cream puff: a round of pâte à choux with a whorl of pandan cream and strawberries. I would have liked more pandan flavor, but we ended up finishing it off. Erica just opened a new place, Mischief, and I’m not going to wait as long as I waited to go to Reyna, to try that restaurant.

Chicken liver salad and chicken curry

Les Philosophes

I was planning on getting Japanese curry at Kuma with my pal Preston to catch up with him over lunch. He’d suggested that spot because it was close to where he lives, but when we got there, they were closed due to a lack of electricity. So instead we walked a few blocks to Les Philosophes.

Les Philosophes doesn’t take reservations and their rudimentary, yet engaging, website said this:

Due to the fact that our kitchen is open continuously from noon to 1am, we do not take reservations.
For lunch before 1pm you will rarely have to wait so come early!
For the evening service please arrive before 7:30 pm to avoid waiting or join the queue with a smile on your face, like a true Parisian.
For a table of up to 4 people it is quite easy to get a table without having to wait too long before 12:30 pm or between 2:30pm to 7 pm and after 10:30pm it is even easier.

We had a very friendly waiter, who read us the blackboard specials. At lunch there is a menu that’s €36 for three courses, with several choices in each category, and the regular menu had more choices on it than I’ve seen on any menu in Paris.

While we were figuring out what to have, several medium-sized tour groups were walking by (they’re hard to miss in the Marais now) and went inside. I asked the waiter why they were all there and he said, “For the onion soup.” So I guess that’s a feature. But we didn’t order it.

We happened to be there on a Thursday and the daily special was a chicken curry (poulet au curry), which the menu mentioned was made by their chef Ganesh using farm-raised chicken. Normally I wouldn’t order a curry in a French café but it was very good. Preston liked his chicken liver salad, which I had a few bites of and was surprised (and happy) that they didn’t cook the livers to death, which makes them dry and tough. He could barely finish it all and I tried to help, but couldn’t make it to the end either.

The waiter was surprised that I knew the baker who made their flan parisien (called “custard tart" on the English menu), which was from Benjamin Turquier of Tout Autour du Pain. I don’t think they engage influencers, like other bakeries do, to push their pastries. But his croissants and baguettes are truly some of the best in Paris. (His pain d’épices is also excellent.)

However, we passed on dessert, thinking we’d get ice cream, but decided we were full enough. But if you’re in the neighborhood, the gelato at Pozzetto, the pastéis de nata at Comme à Lisbonne, the eccentric ice creams at Reÿs, the chocolates at Edwart, or the bite-size treats at Maison Aleph, are all worthy of your consideration.