Pierre Hermé

«A Macaron is a sigh of love». It’s a sentence signed by Clémence Boulouque, one of the most young and talented French writer, who dedicated a very sweet thought to this crunchy and tender petit gâteau rondin one of her book: “Au pays des macarons”. And who’s the best interpreter of this french monument if not Pierre Hermé, the archetype of French pastry chefs?

On the eve of his 50th birthday, he’s the acclaimed king of the sweet art, maybe the most famous of them all: owner of 3 shops in Paris, one in Tokyo and a school of haute patisserie, author of many cookbooks, this boy from Colmar, born in 1961, heir of a white art dynasty from Alsace region, became the real benchmark for those who want to appreciate a «universe of tastes, sensations and pleasures», as he himself likes to say.
We owe him the concept of seasonal “collections” of new products, events that every year in December crowd his boutiques with sweet lovers, ready to wait on long queues in order to purchase happiness through a boite of colored macarons, millefeuilles or pralines.
Chocolate is Hermé’s great passion as he learned to manipulate it at the beginning by Gaston Lenôtre at Fauchon and then by Ladurée in rue Royale, the other Paris macaron place to be.

Who but him would have dared to make a petit gâteau rond with white truffles? And who could have ever invented the reverse “cake” «infinitely vanilla»? And how to forget macaron chocolate pralines, a creation that in 2008 made French people dream?
Simplicity and innovation are his best skills. In fact Hermé says: «I’m looking for substantiality of sweet things, I don’t love those desserts who just express the egos of pastry chefs». Add to this a stubborn will of perfection, precise analysis on texture and harmoniousness and then you’ll get that «sigh of love» which resumes all his pastry art.