Your dessert type
✧ The Avant-Gardist
The lemon that is not a lemon, and the queue is part of the fun.
You want the pastry nobody has seen yet: a fruit that is a mousse, a corn cake on a plinth, a parfait built like a sculpture, a Cronut before it was famous. You follow the chefs, not the houses, and you do not mind a queue when what is at the end of it is new.
Your perfect afternoon: The rue de Castiglione counter at opening, Le Dalí at four for the lemon, and whatever Lysée or Butterfly has posted this week.
Your dessert
The sculpted fruitYour houses
The Avant-Gardist: your houses
Hotel patisserieParis · Le Meurice
La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cédric Grolet
The counter with the queue
BoutiqueNew York · West 21st Street, Flatiron
Lysée
A gallery of pastry
Hotel patisserieHong Kong · Tsim Sha Tsui, Victoria Dockside
Butterfly Patisserie, Rosewood Hong Kong
Cakes like sculptures
BoutiqueNew York · Spring Street, SoHo
Dominique Ansel Bakery
The Cronut bakery
BoutiqueTokyo · Todoroki, Setagaya
Pâtisserie Asako Iwayanagi
The parfait as sculpture
The other types
Who else is at the counter
❖ The Classicist
The Paris-Brest the way it was meant to be, and nothing clever.
◆ The Chocolate Devotee
Seventy percent, a fresh cream centre, and the box is yours.
✦ The Purist
One perfect mousse, eaten at the counter, in silence.
♛ The Tea Ritualist
Three tiers, a pot that never runs cold, and a second round of scones.
❦ The Grand Café Romantic
Red velvet, a torte with a seal, and the afternoon is yours.