Hôtel Plaza Athénée

The Plaza Athénée on the avenue Montaigne is the fashion palace of Paris, and its pastry kitchen under Angelo Musa, a world champion and Meilleur Ouvrier de France, is built to the same standard.

Red geraniums on every balcony, the Eiffel Tower at the end of the street and a galerie where the afternoon tea is served on a carpet of red and gold: the Plaza Athénée is the Paris of the fashion week. Angelo Musa, pastry world champion in 2003 and Meilleur Ouvrier de France, has led the pastry kitchen since 2016. His work is classical and exact: the mille-feuille, the vanilla tart, the éclair are rebuilt with a technician’s precision and a designer’s restraint. Tea is served in La Galerie, the long salon with the harpist, and the restaurant desserts close the menus of the hotel’s dining rooms.

The hotel was also the house where Jessica Préalpato, named the world’s best pastry chef in 2019, worked her “desseralité” of low-sugar, fruit-led desserts at the Alain Ducasse restaurant. The kitchen has kept that lightness: at the Plaza the sugar is a seasoning, not the point.