Pastry Nicolas Bernardé

The cake, treated as a whole language

Nicolas Bernardé built his flagship boutique in La Garenne-Colombes around a form most pastry chefs treat as a sideline: the cake. Since opening in 2011 it has been a boutique de gourmandises rather than a bakery, and the cake is the house signature in several registers at once. There is the cake de poche, made small enough to carry; the globe-trotter travel cakes built to keep; and iced versions for anyone who would rather have the format cold.

Bernardé holds the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title as pâtissier, chocolatier and confiseur, and the range reflects all three trades. Alongside the cakes sit seasonal pastries, desserts, chocolates, confectionery, macarons, sablés, moelleux, ice creams, fine grocery and honey. Recognition from Gault&Millau, the Académie du Goût and Relais Desserts places the house within specialist pastry circles rather than in general suburban retail.

A boutique that moves week to week

The shop occupies a former 1900s building, and the period character is part of why it reads as a destination rather than a convenience stop. Inside, the display is arranged as a sweet boutique: cakes and pastries to choose between, chocolates and confectionery in boxes, and jars and packets on the shelves behind.

The counter keeps moving. A new seasonal pastry arrives each Saturday, and the Folies de la semaine programme picks a cake from the gourmet collection as Cake of the Week, which ties the case to whatever the kitchen is thinking about. The same building also holds the Nicolas Bernardé pastry school, where amateurs learn from a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, so production, retail and teaching sit under one roof.

Start with a travel cake, then take chocolate

Order a cake first, since the whole house is organised around the format. The globe-trotter travel cakes are the ones built to keep, which makes them the practical purchase as well as the representative one, and the cake de poche is the version to eat straight away. If the visit falls in warm weather, the iced cakes are the same idea in a different state.

Then take a seasonal pastry, particularly at the weekend when the new one has just appeared, and follow it with chocolates or confectionery to carry home. Macarons, sablés and moelleux fill out a box for sharing, while the honey and fine grocery are the shelf items that outlast the fresh work. The Cake of the Week is always worth asking after, because it is where the kitchen’s current thinking sits.