Installed in the Marais, this outstanding chocolatier elaborates his pastries to order, like a goldsmith. Meeting with a self-taught and singular enthusiast.
By Xavier Aubercy
I remember a few years ago month, having ordered a millefeuille for the following Saturday at 2pm. One gentleman simply asked me: “What time will you be eating it? “I replied, “around 10 p.m.” The answer was not long in coming: “Then, Sir, I cannot make you a millefeuille 8 hours in advance. “I had never been put in such a precise way that a cake is eaten in the moment and not during the day. So I went back to get it at the end of the day, and it was fabulous. Very different from the ones you see everywhere. And this experience sums up the spirit, the values, the requirements and the uniqueness of the Jacques Genin house, located on rue de Turenne, in the third district of Paris.
Jacques Genin started out as a chef of his own restaurant. It has kept this notion of freshness of the product. Then he worked as a pastry chef for the great tables starred. Free, self-taught, he tells us his journey in his laboratory that he first wanted to create “so that the birthdays of my daughter be even more beautiful,” he says. He speaks while cutting a cake with chocolate while advising one of his apprentices, because every second is dedicated to the accuracy of the gesture, to the improvement of the preparation and to the transmission of knowledge. He describes envy, the driving force of daily life, and the love of profession and the emotions that accompany it.
Here reigns this dimension that we had felt as customers at each of our meetings. That of this collaborator who had spent a long time with us tell the complex and refined flavors of each chocolate, the tastes of the of the fruit jellies and the sweetness of the sublime caramels which are among the best in the capital. The idea, for this founder in chocolate, of a discreet luxury based on work and thought to live its dreams.
Rather than a chain of stores, the house has a second store on the left bank for its gourmets, they too can taste the creations. This summer, an area of the store of Marais will be dedicated to the manufacture and sale of minced ice cream in front of the customer. When one knows the precision of the tastes of the house, one awaits the sun with great impatience.
Everything can be guessed and understood when you meet the big blue eyes of this man who feels good when he is here, and one guesses a sensitivity, an affectivity, a tenderness which are the brand of the very best and make products that speak to us and that touch us in a universal way in the image of these Chinese customers and Japanese who were waiting, one hour before the opening, in front of the store and who had made this visit an unavoidable and cultural step of their trip to Paris. “If there’s a star here, it’s each of my clients. Their pleasure is my only reward,” he recalls, of the woman who, just after giving birth, gave him a blow in the face. to order a Paris-Brest.
Here, the cakes are on order and, on weekends, individual pastries are offered, at least until the end of the summer.
JACQQUES GENIN : 133 Rue De Turenne, 75 003 Paris / Phone : 01 53 71 72 21 / www.jacquesgenin.fr
