RENOU Pâtisserie

Entremets, chocolate and a tea room

The counter divides between pâtisserie, confiserie and chocolaterie, with cakes and entremets finished to a standard that makes people look before they buy, and a chocolate range running beside them. RENOU Café gives the house its tea room, so pastry can be eaten sitting down with a coffee rather than carried out in a box, which is less common than it should be at this level of finish.

Christophe Renou holds the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title in pâtisserie, awarded in 2015, and the technical standard that title implies is the argument for the whole operation. The business runs as a couple-led project across several Geneva addresses.

A boutique rather than a boulangerie

The pace here belongs to a pâtisserie-chocolaterie with a tea room, not to a bread shop. Some addresses in the wider Renou network carry a boulangerie label; this one does not, so expectations should sit with refined pastry, chocolate and confectionery, with any bread or viennoiserie behind the sweet programme rather than defining it.

Behind the shops sit an atelier and a school. The house trains as well as sells, which is worth knowing when you look at the case: the technique on display in the case is the same one taught upstairs from it.

What to take

Come for the cakes and the chocolate. An entremet is the clearest demonstration of the assembly work, layered and glazed to be examined before it is eaten, and a small box of chocolates or confectionery is the easiest thing to carry away afterwards. The house belongs to Relais Desserts, the association of pastry makers, which points the same direction the MOF title does.

If there is time, take the tea room rather than the counter queue. The format is built for sitting with a pastry and a coffee, and that is where the presentation actually pays off, since an entremet loses something in transit. Geneva is not short of counters; this one is set up for staying.