Rum baba in Paris

Rue Montorgueil in Paris’s second arrondissement is a cobbled street lined with cafés, brasseries, grocers, butchers, fromageries and boulangeries. The Haussmannian buildings on either side make it a picturesque street to walk down. The locals wrapping up their morning shopping or sipping coffee at open-air cafés paint a picture from Midnight in Paris . There’s a flower girl nearby and a street musician a little ahead. Passing them by are office-goers, rushing to catch the metro from Les Halles. You almost expect Gil Pender, in his checked shirt and chinos, to stroll by with a baguette under his arm.

With its lively street markets and popular watering holes, this right-bank neighbourhood is an excellent place for tourists to stay in. It is also conveniently connected to two metro lines and very close to the Paris Opera House. As with the other touristy neighbourhoods in the city, the prices are not jacked up. With food holding the pride of place in our five-day trip to the city of lights, cheese, wine and baguettes, it is no wonder that we were staying in Montorgueil. A pair of meticulous planners, my friend and I had a long list of food we had to savour in Paris. While we would travel all over the city in search of food and sights, we kept returning to rue Montorgueil every morning for breakfast. Our destination was Stohrer, the city’s oldest patisserie.

On our first morning in Paris, the nearly 300-year-old pastry shop stood out for us with its blue-and-gold festive tent, pitched on account of the upcoming Easter weekend. A plaque on the wall mentions 1730 as its date of establishment. Underneath it, a glass showcase is filled with Easter eggs in shapes and types beyond imagination.

If Stohrer’s storefront seemed a little unassuming, the lavish indoors make up for it. The gilded ceiling and mirrored walls are a throwback to the late-baroque style of architecture, common across France. The decorative frescoes on the ceiling and walls draw inspiration from the nearby Palais Garnier (Opera House) and transport you back in time. We learn that the current design of the patisserie dates back to 1864, about a century after Nicholas Stohrer set up the store.

Monsieur Stohrer was the pastry chef of King Stanisław Leszczyński, who ruled over Poland during the early- and mid-eighteenth century and spent several years in exile in France after losing the throne. When the king’s daughter, Marie, married Louis XV of France in 1725, Stohrer accompanied her to the palace at Versailles. Some years later, he set up his own pastry shop at 51 rue Montorgueil and there it stands even today.

Eat, shop, love: Almost 300 years old, Stohrer was set up by the pastry chef of King Stanisław Leszczynski, who ruled over Poland during the early- and mid-eighteenth century

Stohrer is widely touted as the creator of the baba au rhum or rum baba, a popular liquor-soaked French pastry. The story goes that he invented the recipe while trying to fix a gugelhupf , or marble cake, that was too dry for King Stanisław. Even though the current recipe uses rum syrup, Stohrer is believed to have initially doused the cake in wine. The store may have changed hands many times — it currently shares its owners with a prominent chain of chocolaterie, À la Mère de Famille — but it stays true to the recipes created by its eponymous founder.

The other specialities of this historic pastry shop include the crème de la crème of French desserts — religieuse à l’ancienne , puit d’Amour Baba Chantilli and éclairs — which light up the bakery’s window displays. The store is small in size for its fame but the constant streams of customers do not seem to care. We take in the multitude of displays inside the store as we wait for our turn to order. Besides a bunch of tourists and first-timers like us, there are a fair number of regulars.

While the main display is filled with cakes and pastries of all shapes, sizes and flavours, the breakfast counter is piled with bread and savoury items such as sandwiches, quiches and scallops. There is also dizzying variety of Easter eggs inside the store, arranged beside the pile of chocolates and array of macarons, like a scene straight out of a gourmet’s dream.

When we finally manage to stop marvelling at Stohrer’s bewitching display of desserts, we choose to kick-start our Parisian food adventure with some jambon-beurre (a ham sandwich made with baguettes), croque-monsieur (baked ham and cheese sandwich), pain au chocolat and croissants. Of course, we also grab a couple of baguettes and some rum babas for later in the day.

Barsali Bhattacharyya is a freelance writer based in Delhi

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