Pierre Hermé, rue Bonaparte

The rue Bonaparte boutique is where Pierre Hermé’s Paris began in 2001: a small, dark, jewel-like shop with the Ispahan, the macaron collections and the seasonal cakes behind glass, and a queue on the pavement on Saturdays.

The boutique is tiny and treats its cakes like jewels: a counter of macarons in the season’s collection, the Ispahan in every form, the 2000 Feuilles, the Infiniment Vanille tart, the seasonal Fetish creations. The rue Bonaparte shop is the original; the house has a dozen more in Paris and a café on the Champs-Élysées.

It is the boutique to understand what Hermé means by flavour, and the box is the Left Bank accessory.

What to buy

• The Ispahan, macaron or cake
• A box of the current macaron collection
• The Infiniment Vanille tart
• The Mogador macaron