Thomas Dura Pâtisserie

The tarte à la praline is the reason to walk into Thomas Dura Pâtisserie-Chocolaterie in Écully: pink pralines over a crisp pâte sucrée, finished with a tuile whose pattern quotes the stained glass of Lyon's Cathédrale Saint-Jean. The house carries the name of its chef pâtissier-chocolatier and runs two boutiques, Écully and L'Arbresle, dealing in pastry and chocolate rather than table service.

Praline first, with chocolate close behind

Praline is regional heritage in Lyon, and this version was billed as the Meilleure Tarte à la Praline du Monde 2025, which says plainly where the house puts its ambition. The composition is exact, and the tuile is not decoration for its own sake: it ties a counter sweet to the city's own imagery.

Chocolate stays close behind. The house keeps a dedicated chocolate card alongside separate ranges of entremets and macarons, so the sweet programme spans composed desserts and small formats as well as the chocolatier's work. One entremets is built on meringue française with an almond and vanilla praliné, putting meringue, almond praline and vanilla squarely in the house vocabulary. There is no bread or viennoiserie.

A boutique counter, not a café

The experience is retail-first: a case of finished pastry and chocolate, chosen and carried out, with larger pieces made up for events and celebrations. There is no dining room and no drinks list, so the visit is short and the whole decision is made standing in front of the display.

That format suits Écully, a western suburb of Lyon where a serious pâtissier serves everyday buyers and planned occasions in the same afternoon. The second boutique in L'Arbresle extends the same model rather than diluting it.

Order the tarte à la praline before anything else

Start with the tarte à la praline, because it carries the strongest story in the shop, one the house frames as an icon of Lyonnais tradition and regional savoir-faire. Pralines roses, pâte sucrée and the Saint-Jean tuile make a single coherent statement, and the 2025 world title for that tart is the clearest signal of what the kitchen is chasing.

Then work through the rest of the range: entremets for something more constructed than a slice, macarons for the small giftable format, and the chocolate card for the chocolatier side. Thomas Dura is a young pastry chef who opened a second boutique and also makes custom moulds for other pastry professionals in France, and that mould work explains a good deal about the shop, which runs on precision, chocolate craft and designed presentation rather than rustic abundance.