Artisan Passionné

Two crafts, one counter

Artisan Passionné works as a pastry house and a chocolate house at the same time, which is unusual enough in Angers to be the whole point. It opened in 2007 around a partnership between Aurélien Trottier, an Angers-born pâtissier, and a chocolatier, and the split has held ever since: modern individual cakes and refined sweet work on one side, bonbons and bars made from selected cocoa crus on the other. The house sums up its own thinking as complémentarité, modernité, originalité, and the counter reads that way, with each craft doing something the other cannot. The boutique in the centre of the city is the retail front; the baking and tempering happen at the group’s laboratory outside it.

Macarons, Paris-Brest and a cake that changes with the month

The range is organised by category rather than around a single signature: créations, pâtisseries, chocolats, macarons, cakes, confections, biscuits and a holiday-dessert line. Macarons get a section of their own, which tells you how seriously they are taken. Classic French forms are treated with respect rather than reinvented for the sake of it, and the Paris-Brest is the clearest example on the shelf. Seasonality drives the rest: the Fraisier appears as the month’s specialty when strawberries are right, and the calendar of desserts turns over through the year, so the case in June is not the case in December. A free-from range sits alongside the standard pastry, and the house has made a vegan bûche for Christmas.

What to buy and when

Go for the counter, not for a table. This is a boutique for choosing individual cakes, macarons, chocolates, biscuits and confections rather than a bread shop or a café, and the visit is short by design. The strongest pick is whatever the month’s specialty happens to be, with the Fraisier the clearest example, followed by the macarons and the Angevine and Choletais regional sweets that tie the shop to its region rather than to Paris. For chocolate, ask which cru is in the case. Trottier’s standing carries beyond the city: Bottin Gourmand named him among France’s hundred best pastry chefs and chocolatiers in 2014, and the house holds a Relais Desserts membership. Occasions are worth planning around too, since the holiday-dessert range is a real part of the year here rather than a token seasonal shelf.