Café Pierre Hermé

Macarons, then a seat

Macarons are the starting point, drawn from a set of eighteen flavors and boxed at the shop built into the café. Café Pierre Hermé sits in Beaupassage in the 7th arrondissement, and it is a café-restaurant rather than a pastry counter: you sit, you eat something savory, and the Maison's pastry work either finishes the meal or leaves with you in a box. The signature flavor combinations are the reason to come. Montebello builds pistachio dacquoise with pistachio mousseline cream and strawberries; Nomade Ispahan layers macaron biscuit, rose-petal cream, rose biscuit, raspberries and lychees, the rose, raspberry and lychee accord the house is known for.

A café-restaurant with a boutique inside it

The room runs through breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, with a savory and sweet menu built on seasonal produce and finished with the pastry the name promises. After lunch on the terrace, the shop inside the café carries macarons, chocolates, ice creams and the rest of the range home. Outside, the terrace catches the sun and the noise of the street; inside, the lounge is warm and quiet. That double structure, a table on one side and a boutique on the other, is what separates this address from the Maison's pastry shops, and it is why a visit can be ten minutes or two hours.

How to order

Order a savory plate first, then choose pastry rather than dessert: a seasonal creation from the counter, or one of the signatures if it is in season. Macarons are the safest single order and the easiest to take away, and an assortment covers more ground than one flavor. Chocolates, viennoiseries, cakes, spreads and ice creams fill out the rest of the range, and the ice creams are the better choice in summer, when the terrace is the point. For a short visit, a coffee and two macarons works. For a long one, lunch and a dessert outside is the way the address was designed to be used.